Originally Posted by
andrewclaus
Think about it--if a section of the rim gets pushed to one side in an accident, the spokes on that side will become loose. If you tighten those spokes, you will make the bend worse. The idea of the spoke wrench is to tighten the spokes on the other side of the bend, pulling the rim true. A spoke wrench is not intended to just tighten loose spokes--it's used to true the wheel and all the spokes work together to do that.
But that typically doesn't work on a rim bent badly in an accident. As mentioned above, there are ways to straighten some rims to get within range of truing by spokes, but that takes time and experience.
Ooh **** lol, so I made the bend worse? how bad is a bent wheel, am I just loosing out on watts, or are they prone to failure? This bike is only 3 months old and this is already the second rear wheel, really don't want to get this bike overhauled because I need a new front wheel (broken hub)and new chain and cassette according to the bike shop. Hate putting so much money into a 450$ bike. I intend on riding it until it wont ride any more, then buy a new one