Wups!

December 17, 2011

I had a little mechanical boo-boo on the trail today.

I was rolling down some stairs that go into a switchback, when I leaned too hard on the outside bar while applying the front brake. Wups. The wheel just folded over like Newt Gingrich after a call from Grover Norquist.

Rim was cracked at the pinned seam (yeah, it was a cheapo rim), but the tire still held on and held air. It was a rim a friend gave me for free (pretty much for the same reason you see here) so I wasn’t feeling much of a loss. However, I was 4 miles from the house, and it was so badly bent it wouldn’t turn in the fork… well prong… whatever you want to call a Lefty fork… prong… pokey thing.

Here is the method for field truing a badly bent wheel in the field. (Some NSFW language and themes)

Skip to 1:50 for the fun part….

Yeah, like a boss!

I managed to get it straight enough to continue the ride… another 10 miles. But, it is basically trashed at this point. I’m going to have to rebuild it with a new rim. Hopefully, I can re-use the spokes, and I’m going to need new spoke nipples.