When your customer just wants their wheel trued:
You ever seen a rim so worn you can pop the entire outer wall off with your thumbs and keep the tyre inflated?
byu/dermsUK inBikeMechanics
 That’s a whole new level of getting every last mile out of your tech, even by the desperate and depraved standards of the mechanical horror show content that we’ve seen on this live blog over the years. It’s normally tyres worn down to the casing, shark’s tooth chainrings or ninja star jockey wheels, but we’ve never had a removable outer wall before.
It seems not many in the industry have seen such ‘impressive’ levels of wear either, the bike mechanics thread on Reddit in meltdown over this achievement.
“Wow. Generally I see one side pop before the other but never seen both go as clean as that,” one mechanic said.
The mechanic from the bike shop that dealt with this explained how they felt the rim tearing all the way round, wherever they pushed… “like opening a can of tuna”… apparently. Let’s hope that wasn’t the scent too. It had worn through completely in several places and popped off with little effort.
The pads were “metal on metal” too, unsurprisingly, the mechanic guessing it was “the outer wall keeping everything together” with the pads also “way too low”.
“That is some seriously impressive wear on that wheel,” one mechanic who didn’t know whether to be disgusted or excited commented.
“Wow… just wow,” a stunned colleague added.Â
“They paid for the whole rim, by god they’re going to use the whole rim,” just about sums up the whole situation.
So what to do next? Despite the jokers suggesting it’s “nothing a little super glue won’t put back together”… or worse, tub tape… this one’s done. But could it inspire innovation from bike brands?
“New bicycle industry innovation coming 2027:Â ‘No need to have two sets of rims! Keep a set of backup tyres inflated for on-the-go wheel changes’.”
Hmmmm…