Broken Uni. How to fix it before passing it off to a friend?

Unicycles and Equipment
1

I was jumping down a 3 set today and bent the wheel really badly. I was planning on passing it off to a friend, but I need to at least sort of fix it for him. Should I just hammer it back into place? Or is there a better way?

2

Any repair is going to take some skill with wheels. If it is a cheap wheel it might be cheaper to replace than to pay someone to fix; and, if it a decent wheel you will probably be replacing the rim anyway.

How is it bent? If it is taco’d you can fix it to some degree by un-lacing it, straightening the rim, and re-lacing the wheel. If you have a flat spot in the rim you will need a special tool that pulls the flat spot out.

If it is so “bent” that it won’t turn in the frame your best solution is to replace the rim, and maybe the spokes.

3

uhh… Post some pictures, they would help a lot.

re true it? do what you said?

seriously post up some pictures, its hard to make a guess on how to fix it if we dont know how its bent.

Is it like thrown out of true really badly? Or does the rim have a flat spot?

4

Ill post pictures when I get home. I was sidehopping down the stairs, one at a time. I got to the bottom on a bigger bounce, felt the uni bend sideways, and jumped off and it quickly went back into place. I sort of shrugged it off and went to hop back up and on a big prehop it just bent underneath me. The rim of the wheel is bent badly in one spot, so if I were to pick up the uni and only spin the wheel you can watch it wiggle and one spot is off by an inch or two.

Hopefully that helps until I can get pictures.

5

If it is bent that bad you probably won’t be able to make it perfect again but you should be able to get it ridable again with just a spoke wrench.

I wouldn’t worry about doing a great job at it, just tighten the spokes on the side the rim needs to go to. If you are worried about roundness you should loosen the spokes on the other side as well but the spokes are most likely stretched.

After a while the rim may bend back into shape with time and repeated trueings but I would not count on it.

6

Sounds like a plan, Eric. Thanks.