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The last ride I did concluded with riding for 2hrs in pretty wet conditions with a few short stretches of up to 50mm of standing water. When I took the tyres off a few days later I a LOT of water coming out of valve hole, like about 50ml per wheel, perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me given the above. I've experienced a bit of water inside various different rims before, but not to this extent - (or maybe I just haven't noticed before). I really don't like the idea of water sloshing around and corroding everything, so I'd rather prevent this if I can.
Am I correct in thinking that if the nipple sits against the outer skin of the rim (rather than it being a shroud) then water doesn't make its way through the spoke holes? If so then I'm hoping that sealing around the valve stem tape or an o-ringed stem lockring will stop water from coming in.
If that doesn't work then the other thing I could try is drilling a small hole in the outer rim wall a little below the rim bed where I assume the water would be pushed out through via centrifugal force when the wheel is spinning. Making structural changes to a rim, albeit small, is perhaps a little scary though.
Does anybody have any other experiences or thoughts on this issue of water ingress into rims?
The problem wheels in question are carbon rim brake ones Giant SLR 0 30mm, the nipples are internally driven.
All my carbon rims have drain holes in them for this reason. Neither the nipples, not the valve stem make a water tight seal
This can also happen if your spokes are loose. Tension goes into the top spokes whilst those in the water have enough free play to allow water into the rim cavity.
You'll never stop it, as Onzadog said none of the holes are designed to be waterproof. And if you did somehow start to make them waterproof all that would probably do is prevent it getting out again.Â
If that doesn't work then the other thing I could try is drilling a small hole in the outer rim wall a little below the rim bed where I assume the water would be pushed out through via centrifugal force when the wheel is spinning. Making structural changes to a rim, albeit small, is perhaps a little scary though.
Most rims already have this somewhere, it's usually a tiny little pinhole (~0.5mm) you have to look closely for though.Â
The water might just have been there because you'd not ridden since they got wet so it hadn't had chance to dry out?
Trying to seal it will be pointless. The temperature fluctuations would pull/push air and water out of any hole.Â
This can also happen if your spokes are loose. Tension goes into the top spokes whilst those in the water have enough free play to allow water into the rim cavity.
Even higher tensions won't seal, you can look at the witness marks on an old rim and see that even with quality nipples and using washers the nipple doesn't rest 360deg around the hole.
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If the spokes were cyclically falling out of elastic tension then that'd be a big problem, leading to premature spoke failure.
I'm pretty sure these particular rims don't have any drainage holes. Once I've verified that, it seems the only appropriate course of action would be to drill my own hole in each rim. Unfortunately, this will have to wait several months as it's my Holiday bike that spends most of the year living 1000's of kms away from me (1st world problems).