Common slang among bicyclists (usually mountain bikers), meaning to bend one of the wheels on your bike severely. Bent wheels usually bend sideways, making them look like a taco. This is usually caused by putting too much force on the wheel, such as going way too fast down a trail and burying the front wheel in a ditch.

How to Fix a bad taco'd wheel on the trail (this is from memory, so YMMV, IANAL, IMHO, ROFLMAO, etc...):

  • Remove the wheel from the bike.
  • Find something hard to strike the wheel against. Packed dirt works well, rocks work well, logs work well. Don't do it against living trees, since you'll be smacking this object pretty hard and you wouldn't want to kill a tree for no reason.
  • Grab one edge of the wheel, on the vertex of one of the bends. Since the wheel usually bends symmetrically, the other side facing away from you should have a bend in it as well.
  • Now, strike the bend against the preselected hard object. You're going to have to do this pretty hard.
  • If you're doing this properly, the wheel should eventually bend back into a generally circular shape. Ride back slowly and carefully, and buy a new wheel as soon as possible. The taco'd wheel should be considered broken, since you have stressed the wheel far beyond what it was meant to handle.

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