Quick Fix: Truing a Wheel
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Truing a a bicycle wheels by Bicycling.com
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Roll straight and save your wheels with these 4 easy steps-and a bit of patience.
Riding with a warped wheel is like riding with your brakes on–but more dangerous. Not only are you slower (even if your rim isn’t rubbing against the brakes, its out-of-round profile causes more drag and friction), but the ride is rougher, you have less control, and you could end up on the ground if the wheel folds or a spoke breaks thanks to the pressure of uneven spoke tension. If you suspect your wheel is wobbling, don’t hesitate. The earlier you catch a small bend, the easier it will be to fix. A truing stand is the most accurate tool for the job, but you can get by using the brake pads on your caliper-brake bike. Follow these four simple steps to straighten your wheel and stop getting dragged down.
1. Even Out Tension
Place the offending wheel, tire off, in a truing stand (or remount it in your bike’s drops). Then, before you begin truing, check spoke tension by wiggling each spoke. Use a spoke wrench to tighten spokes that feel loose relative to the others–just so they’re about as snug as the two spokes closest to them; don’t crank down. If a spoke feels tighter than the others, pluck it. If it sounds shriller than its neighbors, loosen it until the tones match. Caution: On rear wheels, because the hub is offset by the gear cluster, spokes on the right side of the wheel are tighter than those on the left side. Don’t wreck this ratio; just adjust a spoke in relation to the others on its side.
2. Remove Rubs
True the wheel laterally (side to side) first. Using the gauge on the stand (or the brake pads if you’re truing on the bike), locate one spot on the rim that rubs. (For simplicity, work on only one spot at a time, even if there are multiple rubs.) To fix the rub, you need to pull the rim toward the opposite side. You accomplish this by tightening the one or two spokes that sit near the rub on the opposite side of the rim. Tighten them just a quarter-turn at a time. So, if the rim is warped to the left, tighten the right-side spokes. On the same side as the rub, find the spoke parallel to the one you tightened, and loosen it an equal amount. (This maintains equal tension radially, or up and down, so you don’t create a hop.) Spin the wheel and check for a rub in that same spot. Keep tightening and loosening sets of parallel spokes until that rub is eliminated, then move on to others if needed.
3. Stop Hops
Next, true the wheel radially by spinning it and looking for high and low spots against the gauge. (This is almost impossible to do without a truing stand, but you might try it by attaching a zip-tie around the brake arms, just a couple millimeters above the rim; this can give you a line to sight off of.) If the rim has a high spot, it will have a corresponding low spot directly across the diameter of the wheel. To remove the hop, loosen the spokes a quarter-turn at the low spot; and snug them a quarter-turn on the high spot. As before, work only in quarter-turns, then spin the wheel to check your adjustment, and do one hop at a time.
4. Dial It In
Once you’ve eliminated hops, your rim will be slightly out of true laterally from the adjustment. At this point you must alternate lateral and radial truing. Be patient. The worse off your wheel was, the more adjustments you’ll have to make, but each time you alternate, your wheel becomes closer to round–and closer to a smooth ride.
Spoke basics
Know Left from Right
Right-side spokes originate from the right side of the hub, left-side spokes from the left. At the rim, you’ll notice that left- and right-side spokes alternate and, on most wheels, are offset-left-side spokes to the left, and right-side to the right.
Work from Behind
To prevent yourself from loosening when you mean to tighten, always work from behind the wheel and twist by the old maxim: lefty loosely, righty tighty.
Mark the Wobble
If you have trouble keeping track of where the bend is, mark your wheel where the bend begins and ends with pieces of electrical tape. Then, you can move your tape markers closer together as the bend shrinks.
1. Check every spoke-a spoke’s tension should match its neighbors’.
2. Use a spoke wrench to tighten and loosen around a rub.
3. Use the gauge to locate lateral hops and low spots.
4. Alternate adjustments until the wheel is round.
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