How round are your wheels?

m_cozzy

Silly question perhaps, but should wheels be perfectly round & true?
I noticed tonight whilst riding my commencal meta am1 29er the front wheel was slightly out of true side to side and upon further investigation, very very slightly not perfectly round either.
The same with the rear wheel.
Its only a few months old, I dont know if I have caused this with my ham fisted riding, or if they could have been like this since new.
I dont want to spend a stack of money on stronger wheels as I will likely be replacing the bike by the end of the year anyway.

supersonic

Absolute trueness is not essential - even spoke tension is more important. As rims rarely start out round, even tension doesn't always build a perfectly true wheels.

Check it over and make sure the spokes are good. Also check there is no play in the bearings.

The Rookie

Measure accurately enough and no wheel is true......Otherwise as SS says

Can you measure how much side to side you have (lay a rule across and get max and min values)

CitizenLee

New wheels tend to loose tension as the spokes bed in, especially machine built wheels compared to hand built.

cycleclinic

even tension is important but a wheel should still be true and round to with 0.5mm. a bump at the weld join is allowable to a point. serious hop in a wheel means a dented rim or a shoddy build. spokes should not loose tension over time. None of my personal wheels ever have had spokes loosen off again this is an indication of insufficient tension on the spokes and or insufficient stress relieving when building.

So there is probably little wrong with your wheels. True the front if it bother you otherwise ride it to destruction that's what MTB's are for.