DT Swiss Mountain Bike wheels wobble

DHFrame

Hi Guys,

Just wondering if someone can help me. I have the DT Swiss X1700 that came with my Canyon Grand Canyon AL 8.0, and was wondering if the trueness of the wheels need to be perfect? I have notice when I spin the front wheel it has a wobble which looks like its about 2mm out in one place and very similar to the back wheel as well. I can live with it, and it doesn't really bother me but, because I am new to the sport it would be good to know if need to get them sorted. I cant remember if they were like that out of the box, or if it has happened over the last 65 miles. It looks like the wobble is over a vast area of the wheel, like half of it. It doesn't effect riding as far as I can tell.

Thanks!

Dan

Tonyandthewhale

Sadly sometimes wheels need a little truing even straight out of the box. Spokes will also loose tension over time as you ride so a little bit of wheel truing is something you should include in your general maintenance programme. If the wheel is only out of true a few mm it shouldn't cause any real problems, especially if it's not enough to cause rubbing on the brake pads.
Spoke wrenchs are pretty cheap and easy to use so long as the wheel isn't too far out of true.

C3PO

Tonyandthewhale wrote: »

Spoke wrenchs are pretty cheap and easy to use so long as the wheel isn't too far out of true.

Easy to use maybe ..... easy to use properly .... hmm!

Lumen

RPL1 wrote: »

Easy to use maybe ..... easy to use properly .... hmm!

^^ this.

Some professionals who claim wheelbuilding expertise have difficulty building a wheel that stays true.

techieelectric

Plus most builders don't go for a perfectly true wheel, better to have equally tensioned spokes. The materials are never perfect having the wheel dead straight means the spokes aren't so evenly tensioned. 1 or 2mm is the accepted wobble I seem to remember.

Greyspoke

techieelectric wrote: »

Plus most builders don't go for a perfectly true wheel, better to have equally tensioned spokes. The materials are never perfect having the wheel dead straight means the spokes aren't so evenly tensioned. 1 or 2mm is the accepted wobble I seem to remember.

That's a very interesting point of view - never thought of looking at it that way before! However, it doesn't look right if a wheel isn't running true though does it?!
As regards OPs problem, it's worth getting any new wheel checked over after the first few spins because as things settle, little wobbles can appear. If you're running disc brakes then the effect of a slight buckle can be a lot less obvious as you have no pads rubbing against the rim to alert you of any lack of trueness.

seamus

Also note that wide tyres can appear to "wobble" a tiny bit due to imperfections and slight misalignment in the tyre on the rim. Your actual wheel/rim could be dead straight.

DHFrame

Thanks for all the help guys. I think I will definitely leave it for now and keep an eye on it. Like techieelectric said, it's definitely acceptable, for me anyway, as it's not having impact on performance at all.

DHFrame

seamus wrote: »

Also note that wide tyres can appear to "wobble" a tiny bit due to imperfections and slight misalignment in the tyre on the rim. Your actual wheel/rim could be dead straight.

Just to pick up on what you said Seamus, I was curious that you mentioned tires, so after further investigation I can say it is definitely the tires, the rims are perfect.. Just goes to show, seeing is believing. So can I re-align the tires easy enough?

Greyspoke

Regarding the tyres, the best you can do is look for the line around the sidewall of the tyre that's usually visible just above the wheel rim. If it's evenly spaced from the wheel rim then the tyre should be running pretty true. Sometimes it works to pump the tyre well up to the max to seat it properly and then release air down to the required pressure.
Sometimes and particularly I think with fatter tyres, no matter what you do, some tyres will always have a bit of a wobble on them.

doozerie

techieelectric wrote: »

Plus most builders don't go for a perfectly true wheel, better to have equally tensioned spokes. The materials are never perfect having the wheel dead straight means the spokes aren't so evenly tensioned. 1 or 2mm is the accepted wobble I seem to remember.

I take the contrary view to this. Spokes can be considered equally tensioned if they all fall within the same range of tension i.e. they don't all have to be at the very same tension (if this were even possible to achieve - at the very least it would be difficult and I suspect impossible due to the inherently imperfect nature of materials that you refer to above). There should be no discernable wobble in a well-built wheel - certainly, if a wobble is detectable by eye while the wheel is on the bike then the wheel is poorly built and/or in need of maintenance.

For those with a lot of skill or a lot of patience, plus a hefty amount of spare cash knocking around, you can use the Park Tool dial indicator to reduce any wobble down to less than 0.01mm.

seamus

DHFrame wrote: »

So can I re-align the tires easy enough?

As Greyspoke points out there are a couple of things you can try, but sometimes they will always be like that. A little frustrating, but you could find yourself inflating and deflating 50 times trying to get it right. The wider the tyre, the more likely you are to get "wobble" in it.

Generally the tyre tends to align itself properly through use. Try pumping it up to 50psi (though watch out for the max pressure on the tyre!) and doing 10-15 km on it before bringing it back down to the normal pressure.