Carbon wheel wobble or unbalanced?

Hi all

My Roval wheelset is about 2 years old. This afternoon I noticed that the wheel seems to be unbalanced. Here’a a link to the video I just took: Wheel wobble? - YouTube

Any ideas what could be causing this? The rear axle is torqued to spec and the tubeless tires are about 2 months old, only about 400 miles on them.

Thanks!

My rear wheels, both carbon and aluminum are a little unbalanced when I spin them up on the repair stand. I have never noticed any balance issues when on the road. Loading the rear wheel with 50-60% of my mass seems to damp out any balance issues so far.

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Slightly out of true but not abnormal.

Agreed with @schils, probably won’t really notice it on the road. Things like your wheels and your saddle deform under load. You just can’t really see it happening.

Check for loose spokes, and if there aren’t any, carry on.

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Looks fine to me but there are some interesting links below. If you’re really concerned you can have your LBS check spoke tension, true-ness (if that’s even a word), balance, etc.

CyclingTips seems to thinks tubeless setups can lead to loose spokes.

Next, if out of balance, GPLama has some low-tech ways to balance them yourself.

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That’s not your wheel, looks like your tire it not seated properly, look at the line at the tire right above the wheel, the line goes in the wheel as it comes to the part where it looks like it’s unbalanced.

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My Continental GP5000 tires do this too and also have spots where there are slight “indents”. I think this is caused by them being wrapped tightly (and for prolonged periods of time) in that plastic ribbon they use before boxing them. That being said I don’t feel it and it definitely just looks like a slightly out of round tire and not the rim.

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First, put the wheel alone (no tire) on a truing stand and see what’s going on. A tire might not be 100% true and usually it won’t affect anything.

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Glad people have noticed it’s the tyre rather than advising someone who may not know what to do with them to start turning spoke nipples! Wheel looks ok/decent to me as well, the tyre is slightly uneven probably due to being folded as per above. They’ll probably improve with more miles, if not just stop looking at them :wink:

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Now that I look at it in slow-mo, it looks like the tire may not be fully seated. Look at the line on the tire right where it meets the rim. The space varies and coincides with the big dip the tire does. I’d try and reinflate it and pop it on the rim.

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Personally never had a road tire (clincher with a tube) not seat into the bead, i imagine with tubeless its a bit tougher but still, at higher pressures even with TLR I imagine it would seat fairly quick. My MTB tires will pop LOUDLY into place within about 30 seconds of seeing 40psi, and that’s using both Bontrager and Maxxis tires on a Bontrager rim. On my road clinchers with tubes, I’ve noticed that the seam you are looking at is often not even from factory, but at least on my GP5000s the out of balance spot is located elsewhere on the tire, usually lining up with an indent that happens to coincide with where the tire was bound with the plastic ribbon

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I have the same issue now with my brand new GP5000 AS TR.

My mechanic said that it was possibly from my latex tube being a bit thicker by the valve, as this is only happening by the valve on both the front and rear wheel.

Just a tiny tiny wobble just by the valve (wheelset is completely true and the rim is properly set)

Don’t notice it at all on the road though :slight_smile:

Annoying, but not an issue. Haven’t had an issue at all like this with regular GP5000.