The other day I bent my rim on my 26 Sun. I would strongly advise against doing jumps on a Sun because they are not very sturdy. Looks like I have to go down to the bike shop now, unless someone knows how to fix a bent rim in an easy manner.
unless the bend is VERY slight you will need to take all the spokes out & bend the rim back straight, then rebuild the wheel. It is quite trickey to bend rims straight & they will never be as good as a new one.
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-- mike.hinson - Unicyclist since Nov 2000
"I have to overcome a 'stress hill' when tightening the nuts, but once installed they sit in a 'stress valley'. "
iamthewaltrus, i might be able to help. PM me if you're interested.
By the way, do you know about the 'Austin One Wheelers email list' (http://place.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aow)? If you're interested in joining us for rides, you should join the list.
Nice job! Even with no kinks that rim was a mess. Most bike shops wouldn't even attempt to straighten it. How did you get it back without introducing a few kinks?
-- cyberbellum - Level 1.0 rider!
Optimists think the glass is half full. Pesimists think the glass is half empty. Engineers think the glass is too big. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cyberbellum's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/4550 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/32604
* Nice job! Even with no kinks that rim was a mess. Most bike shops wouldn't even attempt to straighten it. How did you get it back without introducing a few kinks? *
It has a few kinks still.. it is sort of experimental.. Once it has been ridden on I may have more comments :-)
I used a straight edge to try and judge how I wa doing with it & took my time (probably spent getting on for 2 hours just straightening it).
/\/\
-- mike.hinson - Unicyclist since Nov 2000
"I have to overcome a 'stress hill' when tightening the nuts, but once installed they sit in a 'stress valley'. "
The other day I bent my rim on my 26 Sun. I would strongly advise against doing jumps on a Sun because they are not very sturdy. Looks like I have to go down to the bike shop now, unless someone knows how to fix a bent rim in an easy manner.
The rim is so soft you may be able to get more life out of it by simply truing the wheel. Most good bike shops should be able to help, though mechanics used to doing precision work could get confused trying to put the wheel on a truing stand. Tell them to get it as close as they can and it should be fine.
If the rim is beyond repair, I'd recommend looking at a new wheelset rather than a rebuild. The Sun hub is a piece of junk - mine sheared off at the hub and I wasn't even hopping on it. The Semcycle XL wheelset from Unicycle.com might be a good choice, though single-walled rims aren't the strongest. The bad news is that it costs as much as a new Sun unicycle ($80).