1983

Yes I searched, no I didn't find what I was looking for.

I have a set of HED Ardennes plus LT wheels, of which the front is not in good shape. I got pushed off the road by a cop a while back and ended up in a a ditch...long story but at the end of the day the front wheel ended up very out of true in both directions. Had a local shop fix it (and said that there is no hop) but honestly they did a ****ty job and now it's only slightly less bad. Rideable but the brakes pulse like a car with warped rotors when you stand on the brake pedal. Went back to school, got busy, and hung the bike up last summer. Ready to start riding again now that all classes/labs/clinicals are online, but all the shops are closed and a new wheel is north of $500. I'm looking at a truing stand and some decent tools to fix the wheel, but should I loosen all the spokes and approach it as a rebuild or just start tightening everything up? I know everyone is going to ask for specifics that I don't have the answer to - I am rather inquiring generally as to how those who have experience in working with salvageable wrecked wheels would approach this. Like I said it's plenty out of true but actually rideable and supposedly has no hop. Appreciate all insight.

hrdknox1

No, don't rebuild. Some spokes are just out of true. Get a truing stand and begin by tightening loose spokes where the braking surface touches the calipers of the truing stand. Do the same amount of turns on the spoke wrench of each loose spoke until the wheel no longer rubs the calipers.

Unca_Sam

If I thought it was trued but not equalized and it still has a radial hop, I'd back the tension off and treat it like a rebuild.
Absent that radial hop, see if you can improve the true and equalize tension.

cyccommute 

I have to disagree with hrdknox1. “...out of true in both directions” sounds like a classic “taco” or “potato chip” shape that indicates the rim is bent. That can’t be fixed simply by loosening and tightening spokes. The rim needs to be bent back into shape which can be hard to do with aluminum rims. You could try to find where the rim bends and push down on it (with lots and lots of force) to bend it back but that doesn’t always work.

Most likely you’ll need another rim. You might be able to use the spokes if you can find the same rim as you have now or if you can find one with the same ERD. That is often not easy to do. If you can find the right rim, it’s relatively trivial to loosen the spokes and transfer them from the old rim to the new one. Then tension the wheel. Since it’s a front one, that’s usually easy as well.

Andrew R Stewart 

Try both, do the truing job AGAP and see what happened. Then fall back on the long term repair and replace. Andy

Russ Roth

This is a front wheel, if it isn't disc then both sides have equal tension. I would back all spokes off till I could see a single thread on each spoke, if it still seems like there's a good amount of tension on the spokes back each off a few more turns. Sometimes the warp that can appear is from the wheel being knocked and the spokes maintaining the warp, if the rim can be "reset" by having the spoke tension taken off this will do the job. The up side is that being a front wheel you now aren't dealing with other issues other mechanics may have put into the wheel but haphazardly trying to true it and with each spoke having the same number of threads showing you can start re-tensioning them. Being loose its also easy to get a little lube on the nipples so they won't seize up against the rim as you tighten them up. For the first couple rounds you can do half turns of the nipples, as they start to get tighter use quarter turns. Once you start getting close to final tension make sure the wheel is true; if at this point the wheel has a lot of wobble to it or a number of spokes with really low or no tension while a few others seem like a lot more tense then the majority then you have a warped rim and you need to replace it. If tension seems fairly even and the rim only needs a little truing to get it straight then you're probably good to go, straighten it, make it round and finalize the tension.

tFUnK

If it's rideable now it could still be salvageable with a true. Worst case you try to true it to see how it spins. If the brake pulsation persists, you can decide to do a full rim replacement then.

cpach

I wouldn't really ever zero tension--if it can be trued well, it can be done by balancing and adjusting the tension on a built wheel, or it can't. What I look for when I consider how trueable a wheel can be is how much the deviations from true appear to be the result of unequal spoke tensions. For example, if it's laterally untrue to the left, I'd expect the left spokes to be under more tension. If the opposite is true, then that just means the rim is bent. Sometimes you can effect a serviceable repair using unequal spoke tension to basically bend a bent rim into true if it's not too bad, but you'll never get it as good as a straight rim and the spokes will have decreased life as a result. If the rim is out significantly I'd buy an identical rim, tape it to the old rim in place, and transfer the spokes over. It's slightly faster to do it this way than doing a completely fresh relace. If you're rich on time and poor on money and willing to take a risk, you can also try to zero the wheel with slack tension and then physically bend the rim closer to true before retensioning and truing the wheel. TBH this takes too long given the inconsistent results to do in a commercial setting so I actually have really little experience (I'm a pro mechanic.)