Stomp Straighten a Bicycle Wheel

Intro: Stomp Straighten a Bicycle Wheel

Seems like every time Star goes off a ski jump with her bike or finds a load of scrap iron to carry home, she needs a new bike wheel.
Here's how we straighten them back out in a hurry, or make "taco-ed" bike wheels from the bike shop's dumpster usable again.

This wheel is pretty bent. Notice how the joint is even coming apart.
Pix by Star

STEP 1: Find a Hole

You can stomp a wheel pretty close to straight on regular pavement, but it's a lot easier if you find a way to do it without pushing on the hub. A hole in the pavement, a round table with a hole in the middle, the top of an oil drum, or a big iron garbage can are all good options. Cut a hole in a heavy piece of scrap plywood if you've got one handy.

As they say in Venezuela, "En tiempo de guerra, Cualquier hueco es trinchera."

I guess the city is planning to plant a tree here. In the meantime it's a good place to fix a wheel. Here I am uncovering the hole. Remember to cover it up again, this is a litigious society.

STEP 2: Do the Stomp

This is the easy part.
Just go for it and stomp it flat.
Extra points for yelling and gesturing.

STEP 3: Overbend

The metal rim has memory, so it'll spring back a bit after you flatten it.
So you have to bend it a little further than straight.
Put one or more sticks under the low spots and stomp again, a little more carefully this time.

After a bit of this the wheel will be mostly straight.

STEP 4: Spin and Eyeball It

Spin the wheel and hold it by the hubs to see where the bent spots are.
You can mark them on the side with a pencil if you want.

STEP 5: Repeat

Repeat sighting and bending.
Here's another way to arrange the sticks.

STEP 6: Knee Technique

Here's another method to bend the wheel. Try out any technique that seems like it might work.
The wheel is now straight enough to ride again.

If you want it totally straight, now that you've got the tight kinks out, use a spoke wrench.
That only works if you've gotten the tight bends out.
Messing with the spokes is for gentler bends.
Tighten the spokes to move the rim toward that side.
Loosen a spoke to let the rim move away from it.
Hit the the spokes to make them ring.
The pitch of the tone you hear tells you the spoke tension.
If the spoke tension is totally non-uniform the wheel will get bent again just from riding it.

Comments

[aimania]

tq

[raymccullie]

Wow, that rim is bent. What are those "spoke" thingies for?

[savant77]

This should come in handy for trailside repairs, thanks for sharing man!

[Lokisgodhi]

This reminds me of how I used to fix the rims of my old junker Datsun 200SX when one of the NYC potholes would swallow it and put dent in the rims.



Pull it off the car, utter a few choice curses, put the dented side up and wail on it with a large headed long handled ball pein hammer until it was mostly round again. Bolt it back on, pump up the tire with flat fixer and I was good to go.



Who says blacksmithing is a dead art?

[masterochicken]

It's too bad my local bike shop keeps their dumpster locked.

[Lokisgodhi]

That's what bolt cutters or a crew bar is for. Pop that lock right off.

[ortsa]

i hope you dont continue to use wheels repaired in this way.

[Darwinfish]

Of course he doesn't actually use them, he goes to all the trouble of straightening them and then throws them away afterwards. (Make a passive agressive comment, you'll get a sarcastic answer.)

Thanks for the Instructable Tim, I'll have to try this out sometime. :-)

[guatsamosa]

nice crocs man :D stomp in styleeee

[{tauney}]

woohoo! I'll give this a try when I get home--too bent to be trued, this ought to do the trick tho!

[garrys newman]

i wonder what ppl in the street were thinking by seeing u like this

[sscooley]

Perhaps OK to get out of the woods, or home in the city, but not a long term fix. The rim pictured (with compromised weld joint) will fail catastrophically, which is to say, all at once. On a rear wheel, that would at best mean a sudden loss of motion; on a front wheel, at best a severe endo. Add traffic or hillside trail conditions, and results could be much worse. Be safe folks!

[Derin]

I dont think this would work with the superbent wheel i saw in italy,it was small enough to fit in a 9" CRT case,and the wheel was about 17"

[JerryMopar]

Good instructable!!! I will have to try this on one of my "tacoed" wheels I got from an aquired bike!!

[JerryMopar]

I just did it in a sitch I have nearby, worked GREAT, just needed to true it up a little bit

[Jay Walker]

I gotta say that I don't think that's a fix I'd like to trust rippin' 'er down a slope at 60K. I mean, when the seam is coming apart, how stressed is the metal and the seam. Looks dangerous dude ...

[nrlucre]

I've been poking around Instructables for a week or so now, spending most of my free time here, and this is the most useful item I've seen yet. Those who posted wondering how that wheel could ever get so messed up obviously didn't grow up in a college town, where few drive and many drink. To think all the stomped-wheel frustrations and missed appointments / late dates could have abated with an appreciation of this nifty technique.

[incorrigible packrat]

Bent a rim on my bicycle wheel garden cart, carrying 400 lbs. of rocks on a side slope. Bent it back by levering a 2x4 against cart frame and rim. My cart is incredibly ugly. I put skis on it for winter; didn't bother taking off the wheels.

[callmeshane]

Oh what a sexy clever man... Thanks for putting up a really neato "fixit".... I had a small problem with CHEAP, THIN and SOFT rims for a while...and because of my weight 6'2" and big and muscley and a bit fat too - and the flimsy rims, they would distort and go out of true just from riding on the flat roads... Ended up getting some very high quality "A" section rims with some extra thick stainless spokes.. I now have solid wheels that never go out of true. But it's a good fix for crashes and bad rims..

[dillweed]

scul hearts taco stomping. -pilot dillweed