How to true wheels

Quoted post said:

Originally posted by jmp03
I recently purchased a Minoura truing stand but honestly don't have a clue how to do wheel truing.
Are there any web pages or such that someone can direct me to that may show me how to do it.
Thanks, John

Try this site for starters:

http://www.parktool.com/repair_help/howfix_truing.shtml

You ARE a newbie if you don't know all roads lead to Sheldon.

sheldonbrown.comwheelbuild.htmlOpen ↗

A couple more from my precious stash of URLs garynuke.homestead.comwheel.htmlOpen ↗
khsnm.comwheels1.htmlOpen ↗

<[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I recently purchased a Minoura truing stand but honestly don't have a clue how to do wheel truing.
Are there any web pages or such that someone can direct me to that may show me how to do it.
Thanks, John

Quoted message said:

I recently purchased a Minoura truing stand but honestly don't have a clue how to do wheel truing.
Are there any web pages or such that someone can direct me to that may show me how to do it.

I have the same type of stand. There are three adjustments you need to know about, and I do them in
the order listed below. Before you start, remove the tyre and tube, and preferably the rim tape as
well. If the wheel is old, spray all the spoke nipples with WD40 or similar and leave it overnight.
Some will find its way down the threads if you're lucky.

Important: After all adjustments, untwist and stress relieve the spokes by squeezing pairs of them
together (leather gloves are useful for this) and laying the wheel with the hub locknut on the floor
and pushing down at various opposite positions around the rim. Health warning: the latter can crisp
your wheel if you are the kind of Neanderthal throwback who regularly strips threads and rounds off
bolt heads ;-) Don't assume that you've got the adjustment right until the wheel has survived the
above treatment and is still true.

1) Dish. Did you get a dishing gauge? If the rim is closer to one locknut than the other, loosen
every spoke leading to that side of the hub by half a turn and tighten every spoke leading to the
other side of the hub by half a turn. Check the dish again. You may need to repeat, or go down to
quarter turns for the final adjustment.

2) Out-of-round or "hop". Use the flat plate on your stand. Tighten the spokes leading to *both*
sides of the hub where the rim touches the plate, and loosen the spokes leading to both sides of
the hub where the rim pulls away from the plate. A quarter turn at a time is best. Try to tighten
roughly as many spokes as you loosen overall - don't only tighten or only loosen.

3) Side-to-side runout. Get both the feeler screws very close to the rim without touching it at any
point in its rotation. Now move one of them closer so the rim brushes it intermittently when spun
- make sure you know *which* screw is making contact or your attempts to correct it will make
things worse! Where the rim touches the screw, loosen the spokes leading to that side of the hub
by a quarter turn and tighten the spokes leading to the other side. A more advanced technique is
to make the adjustments larger (say half a turn) near the centre of the "wobble" and make
progressively smaller tweaks as you move outwards. You'll get a feel for this eventually. When
the rim no longer touches the screw on that side, move the screw in on the other side and repeat.
Keep going on both sides until you think you are within 0.5mm of perfection.

Finally, check that no spokes are unusually tight or loose by tapping them with an allen key - I'm
assuming you don't have a tensiometer - and re-check the dish.

A few gotchas to be aware of:

* Welded, unmachined rims will often splay or pinch slightly at the weld (where the label is). You
can't adjust this out so don't bother trying.

* Very light rims can require tiny, tiny adjustments to get them true because they're not
very stiff.

* If you have a mixture of spoke types (e.g. plain gauge and double-butted) from previous repairs,
the wheel will be "interesting" to true.

* A decent spoke key is essential. On old wheels with no lubricant on the spoke threads it's double-
essential, as you will otherwise round off all the nipples.

A useful final check on hop and side-to-side truth is to give the wheel a good hard spin and
stand back from the truing stand. If it's a good job the channel of the rim will hardly appear to
be moving.

Or ignore my waffling and buy Jobst's book ;-)

Quoted message said:

I recently purchased a Minoura truing stand but honestly don't have a clue how to do wheel truing.
Are there any web pages or such that someone can direct me to that may show me how to do it.
Thanks, John

You might invest in a copy of 'The Bicycle Wheel', or at least peruse it at your local library.

Essentially, you're able to pull a spoke tighter with your spoke wrench. Drawing a spoke tighter
bring the rim closer to that side and also closer to the hub.

Tightening a right side spoke, then,moves the rim to the right and towards the hub. Loosening an
adjacent left side spoke allows the rim to move to the right and also allows the rim to move farther
away from the hub. So you've got two motions to the right, one higher and one lower (the last two
will nearly cancel), the net effect being to move the rim to one side.

If you wanted to ameliorate a flat spot, that is, move the rim farther from the hub, you'd slack two
adjacent spokes, yielding a small motion to the right and another to the left (which would about
cancel each other) therefore a net movement away from the hub.

That's a crude oversimplification. One need also think about lubrication of the nipple threads,
watch the total amount of tension, note the requirement that the rim remain centered over the
locknuts. And you can't get good results unless you've removed any sideplay in the bearing and dealt
with any dents in the rim before picking up a spoke wrench. So get the book to understand all the
various subtleties beyond my simple description.
--
Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org Open every day since 1 April, 1971