Eric F 

As I understand it, that's pretty much the opposite of what his *sigh* was about.

timtak

Most of the things that I think may be a waste of money, I have not actually purchased because I can't afford them.

I do have some Arsuxeo shirts. The pockets are a bit small or loose but the fit was okay perhaps because I am not as fit as WiFi.
Orange Arsuxeo Cycling Wear by Timothy Takemoto, on Flickr
Wosawe (another Chinese brand) are better and about the same price at 30USD for a jersey shorts summer set.
Wosawe Cycling Wear by Timothy Takemoto, on Flickr

I have wondered about expensive brake pads. Some of the yellow ones named after a mountainous country came with a bike lately and they were goo, but about 40 USD a pair. Now that I have swapped them for my usual KingStop reds from aliexpress, which are 5 usd for two pairs,

Kingstop Brake Pads 2 pairs for 5USD

I am not able to tell the difference. Cheap Shimano ones were nasty though. And perhaps the yellow ones are kinder to rims or create less heat when going down Alps in summer. I won't be buying 40usd brake pads.

DangerousDanR

Lightbicycle, Yoelo, Winspace, Ican. They all have rim brake wheels and they are all high quality wheels.
Chain Reaction still lists Campagnolo Bora rim brake wheels.
Lots of high quality wheels out there.

Jeff Neese

You also may have a higher standard when it comes to "quality" than I do, but both Velomine and Modern Bicycle, and I'm sure others, sell both 27" and 26" pre-built wheels. You have a couple choices of rims, and the Origin8 hubs that are on my Velomine wheels are surprisingly nice. The only downside seems to be that they almost all use straight-gauge spokes, but for the price I can live with that.

Last year I got an old Fuji with 27" wheels. I ended up buying 700Cs for it, but only so I'd have another wheelset that fit two of my other bikes. I was happy to see that if I wanted to buy brand new 27" wheels for it, I had several good choices.

Lombard

I'm not impressed with Velomine. Their wheels need to be re-trued after the first 100-200 miles. That indicates they didn't stress relieve their wheels and most likely they didn't equalize tensions either - both signs of a sloppy wheel build. Since I build wheels, it wasn't a big deal to finish the job they didn't do. If you're not familiar with wheel building, you will need your bike shop to finish the job.

Jeff Neese

Yes, that's a known part of buying any machine-built wheels. You could say the same thing about most wheels shipped with bikes these days. I haven't bought a new bike in a long time but I'm told that shops don't routinely check true and tension on new bikes like they used to.

Your results may vary but my Velomine wheels were pretty good right out of the box. Naturally I did have my "wheel guy" go through them before I put them on the road. $40. He commented on what nice wheels they were for the price. Even paying my wheel builder the $40, they're still a great deal and the quality is more than acceptable.

Lombard

FWIW, I had a set of entry level Shimano RS-11's come on my new 2014 Cannondale Synapse Carbon. I rode those 4000 miles without ever needed to put a spoke wrench to them. Their demise was a matter of premature hub bearing failure which scoured the cups. Shimano replaced them free even though they were past the 1-year warranty.

cyccommute 

Honestly the shops didn’t routinely check wheels back “they used to”. I’ve often had to true, tension, and dish wheels that are OEM on 30 to 40 year old bikes at my local co-op. Going out of true is just part of riding but dish isn’t something that can really change due to riding.

PeteHski

Seems reasonable to me if you are looking at premium brand bikes. Below that there are plenty of cheaper options out there, some worthy of consideration, some junk. Should Trek be offering cheaper bikes? Should Shimano offer a lower group tier?

I duuno? People often moan about the high cost of modern living, but my standard of living is way higher than my parents and there's was way higher than my grandparents. I realise that may vary in different parts of the world.

seypat

Someone was trying to establish an entry level base. I was simply helping establish it.

PeteHski

Fair enough. I thought someone was suggesting that Trek etc were promoting their higher spec bikes as "entry level".

7up

I’ve purchased vintage Campagnolo aero water bottles with cage for over $100 each.Not a waste to me but the water will be as hot as the ambient temps.

seypat

The thread is making me think of this movie clip.

Lombard

Really? If that's the case, the wheel build wasn't done right in the first place. I have never had re-true any of the wheels I've built and one pair has over 10,000 miles.

Jeff Neese

To be honest, I haven't bought that many new bikes in my life, and the last time I did it was a 1983 Trek 720, and then another one (an '84) for my girlfriend at the time. Truing and tensioning the wheels was definitely part of what they did for me, on those bikes. I toured a lot of miles on those wheels and never needed a thing.

I've heard other shop owners say they did that too, but for only higher-end bikes or by customer request. Most shops offer some sort of tune-up after a period of riding, don't they? Would they check then? We all agree that wheel truing and spoke tension is important. I'm wondering how that happens for the average Joe, or maybe a first-timer.

cyccommute 

Gonna call BS on that one. If we never had to true wheels, wheel truing wouldn’t be a thing.

cyccommute 

Back in the day, it was supposed to be part of the bicycle preparation process when the bike came out of the box. Some shops did it during preparation and a number didn’t. Some did wheel checks on tune-ups but lots of bikes never went back for the tune-up. Most of the off-center wheels I’ve seen have been on bikes that probably went into a garage after a few rides and never saw the light of day until they were donated. Bikes that saw more use either got the problems corrected by the user or some mechanic or the wheels broke and were replaced.

Lombard

Call BS all you want. You seem to do that a lot and I don't have any way of proving I'm not BSing you. That's on you if you don't believe me.

If wheels need to be re-trued regularly, it could be due to a number of things - poor wheel build, abuse or inferior components in that order. It has nothing to do with re-trueing being "a thing" or not. The notion that one should expect that wheels need to be re-trued regularly is a myth that needs to be dispelled.

Eric F 

Is it okay to expect that some wheels might need to be re-trued occasionally? That has been my experience. That said, lateral wobble is way less critical on disc brake bikes, and "meh - close enough" has been applied, on occasion.

Trakhak

'83 and '84 would have been right around the time that Trek had a bit of a problem with wheel tension. In our shop in Baltimore, we were having to tension and true wheels out of the box.

When we asked the sales rep about it, he admitted that, thanks to the exponential increase in their sales numbers over those years, they'd had to farm out the wheel building to senior citizen centers in the vicinity of Waterloo, where the Trek factory was. So the low tension of your wheels might have a side-effect of arthritis.

The only other times I remember seeing woeful wheel tension were with my own bikes.

One was an Eco Pista, Bianchi's then brand-new economy track bike, introduced in 1983. Maybe they were in a rush to get that new line of cheap track bikes out the door. (More evidence of haste: someone forgot that the Eco Pista would be equipped with training-size tubulars, apparently. To make room, the underside of the fork crown was crudely cut away with a coarse half-round file before painting.) Broke several spokes on the front wheel, of all things, before I gave up and rebuilt it with new spokes.

The other was a first-year Specialized Langster fixed-gear bike---broke quite a few spokes in both wheels before rebuilding them. Also probably a rush job. One of the fork blade tips is welded at a canted angle, so I have to pull the front wheel to one side while tightening the axle nuts. Very annoying. They'd have given me a warranty replacement, no doubt, if I hadn't procrastinated for 14 years before going back to the dealer. (Three-year warranty on the fork.)

genejockey 

I have a set of custom wheels built that needed slight truing after I hit a pothole hard enough to blow both tires, toss both my bottles out of their cages, and rotate the bar forward quite a bit. That's all they've needed in maybe 7-8000 miles. OTOH, all the C&V bikes I bought in 2020-2021 needed some truing. Make of that what you will. Absent something like that pothole, a well built wheelset may simply not need to be trued after thousands of miles.

obrentharris 

I don't quite get the desire to disparage how other people choose to spend their money. Somewhere we've lost track of the idea that your waste of money isn't necessarily my waste of money. I'd never buy Rapha or Assos clothing and I don't spend my money on energy bars, most of which I consider inedible. But many people enjoy those things and consider it money well spent, and that's fine with me. On the other hand my wife spent $9,000 on a hand-built custom steel bike frame as a special present for me. I imagine most people here would consider that more than excessive!

There is some wisdom to that old saying "To each his/her own."
Brent

Eric F 

WOW!!!! You got yourself a keeper, for sure.

Lombard

Well yes, if you hit a large enough pothole that blows both tires, there is a good probability the wheels will be out of true. That falls under "abuse" even though it's not intentional. Naturally, mountain bikers who do 3ft+ drops can expect wheels to go out of true.

But JRA, you shouldn't have to re-true unless the build was poor or the components were inferior.

smd4

I’m sure his wife is pretty cool too.