Wheel noise

[vhfman]

Last year I bought a new Halo Combat II wheel and used it for about 150 miles before my winter layup. When I started using it again this spring there seemed to be a scraping noise. I thought the brakes were catching, may be the disc was bent; also I noticed that the wheel was not really centralized in the forks. So I took the wheel off the bike and set it up in my homemade wheel balancing /truing stand to check it out.

When I spun the wheel I could hear the same noise and realized that it was not the brake disc catching. The noise is coming from inside the double skin wheel rim. I think that it must be a broken spoke nipple that has been left inside since the wheel was built. It's a commercially built wheel and I have not had any problems with the spoke tension or broken any spokes since I checked the wheel when I got it. I took the tire and rim tape off and had a look for the source of the noise but I cannot find anything, so whatever it is, is stuck in there.

Any ideas how to solve this without taking the wheel apart or will I simply have to live with the scraping noise and use it as a spare.

Here is a short video of the wheel in the stand.

[video=youtube;Nf3xosIzeyk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf3xosIzeyk[/video]

Chris

 

[amigafan2003]

Take one spoke out - should be easy to do and easy to put back in with out upsetting the trueness of the wheel. Should should then be able to fish whatever is in the rim out through the spoke hole.

 

[Artstu]

Will it come out through the valve hole?

 

[vhfman]

Thanks amigafan2003 + Artstu for your thoughts, but with the rim tape off there are 36 holes plus the valve hole available for whatever is in the rim to drop out. So far I have not been able to find anything in there, I just hear it!

Chris

 

[johnc461165]

Drill a small hole in the well off the wheel where the tube fits inject plenty of adhesive into the cavity, try to do this with the hole at the bottom, rotate the wheel until the noise stops then allow the glue to harden. Worth a try. John

 

[Deleted member 4366]

It'll be a nipple that fell between the inner and outer skin during wheel-building. Sometimes there's enough space between the the two to shake it out a spoke hole or round to the valve hole, but for rims that aren't so deep, it'll get trapped between nipples, so nothing you can do other than remove a spoke adjacent to where it is and try and shake it out. I've done it a couple of times when building wheels, and I soon learnt that it's easier to get them out before progressing any further.

 

[vhfman]

Well it looks like I will have to take a few spokes out and see if I can encourage the debris out. Whatever it is it must have been wedged in between the 2 walls of the rim for the first 150 miles. Now it’s on the move, but is possibly restricted by spoke nipples from moving completely as I can’t see anything passing the top holes in the inner rim.

Thanks for all the comments I will have another look in a couple of days. But at the moment I am using another wheel I built, and while the weather is fine I would rather be out on the bike than indoors attacking the wheel.

Chris

 

[Chris the Sheep]

I've only just seen this thread so I doubt whether this will be noticed; but a few months ago I cack-handedly dropped a nipple inside a bike rim, and tried all sorts of things but then in a rare moment of inspiration tried a vacuum cleaner - worked a treat!

Make sure all the holes but one or two are covered with rim tape, and suck. Worked a treat for me - hope that helps.