2023-09-19
Last Thursday on my commute home, trying to race the storm that was coming in, I somehow took a nail straight through my back tire. I mean probably how is that I hit it with my tire but how I didn't feel the impact immediately is a bit baffling cause the nail was huge and even damaged the rim pretty good... I noticed probably one or two blocks later as my tire clicked on each rotation and also the lack of air.
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Had it not been at the end of a very long day and in the rain I could have likely patched it or replaced the tube and made it the rest of the way home. I opted to grab some food nearby and call for a generous lift instead.
Later that weekend when I finally got around to looking closely at the situation I discovered all new completely mysterious damage on one of the hub nuts that's supposed to spin good!
/pictures/log/2023-09-19/spin-bad.mp4
But it spin bad!! I fiddled with this a bit. Tried to kinda scrape at it to shape it out, surprisingly to no avail. Meanwhile I'm still so confused about how or when this happened there's nicks all over that part... I never figured out but I'm mostly sure it wasn't the nail.
/pictures/log/2023-09-19/as-you-can-see-here.jpg
I showed a local bike mechanic and they muttered something about "why is it like that even?" which after buying a new wheel I can see why maybe, that nut that got damaged is unique (my guess is it was meant to shield the bearings? At least until it starts snagging) The new hub has normal nuts (that don't shield but that seems fine) and as an added bonus I was able to tell them to transfer just the cog and not the flywheel to the new wheel. I'm not flip-flopping, I'm committed! Couldn't flop anyway cause no breaks :P
The old wheel is still salvageable I think? Just gotta get new nuts it seems like and then it'll roll another day?? And in the future learning how to build one myself would be really sick. But I got me a brand new pre-built wheel this time and it feels pretty nice :)
As I left the shop I said I would take it far and they responded, "No doubt judging by the previous wheel!"
