Trueing a wheel.

[gavroche]

This morning, I took the front wheel of my Specialized Roubaix Elite to the small LBS I usually go to for trueing up. It is run by a woman on her own and she is very good and not expensive. She would normally charge me 7 pounds for it but she couldn't do this one as she doesn't have the right jig for it so I went to the Evolution shop on the sea front and they can't do it till September 13th. Their charge is 25 pounds.
Whilst I was there, I looked at their charges for a full service and it would cost me 128 pounds !! My small LBS does it for 35 pounds when she did my Cube a few weeks ago.

 

[Grant Fondo]

This morning, I took the front wheel of my Specialized Roubaix Elite to the small LBS I usually go to for trueing up. It is run by a woman on her own and she is very good and not expensive. She would normally charge me 7 pounds for it but she couldn't do this one as she doesn't have the right jig for it so I went to the Evolution shop on the sea front and they can't do it till September 13th. Their charge is 25 pounds.
Whilst I was there, I looked at their charges for a full service and it would cost me 128 pounds !! My small LBS does it for 35 pounds when she did my Cube a few weeks ago.

That's expensive. Is that strip back to frame and rebuild? Halfords start at £100 for this, as an iffy benchmark.

 

[Cycleops]

Use your LBS. Why don't you try to true the wheel yourself? Plenty of videos on YouTube using your frame and a cable tie.

 

[Big John]

I work as a volunteer at a bike charity as a mechanic. We charge £55 for a full service, which has gone up from £40 due to increasing overheads (ours is a big place and must cost a fortune to run). Your usual £35 sounds a good deal. Our typical service includes new brake pads and new gear/brake cables. If it's a simple wheel truing job we charge about £10 I think. Our waiting time for a job is about a week at the moment due to a mountain of bikes booked in for servicing.

 

[gavroche]

I am very pleased to give my business to my small LBS. If you take your bike early in the morning, she will have ready by closing time. Can't beat that.

 

[fossyant]

It's a doddle to do yourself and can be done on the bike. Rules are qurter turn at a time, but always adjust an adjacent spoke too. Eg. tighten one and loosen the other, this keeps the wheel round. Take your time, and don't forget to de-tension if you've adjusted a number of spokes. Pop wheel on floor, and press down on opposite sides of rim, rotate and do again, flip wheel and do again.

 

[fossyant]

@gavroche Where is the small LBS - worth noting for me if needing parts. The only place I've been to is Bike Hub in Rhyl for bar tape.

 

[gavroche]

@gavroche Where is the small LBS - worth noting for me if needing parts. The only place I've been to is Bike Hub in Rhyl for bar tape.

Colwyn Bay. It is called East End Cycle, opposite Stermat. It is very small and she doesn't carry many spares but she can order them, She is also closed on Mondays.
When I had my Cube serviced, she also fitted a new Shimano 11-34 cassette and the bill came to 58 pounds.

 

[sleuthey]

The only thing I use to true a wheel is a spoke spanner. No masking tape or cable ties etc. Wheel stays on bike. The brake pads tell me where the buckle is.

 

[fossyant]

The only thing I use to true a wheel is a spoke spanner. No masking tape or cable ties etc. Wheel stays on bike. The brake pads tell me where the buckle is.

Same here 99.9 percent. I've even built some wheels in the bike frame. Although it's much nicer using the jig.

 

[Vantage]

Never understood the ¼ turn rule. I've built a few wheels and none have failed having been built using full turns of the nipple. Old wives tale.

 

[Andy in Germany]

The only thing I use to true a wheel is a spoke spanner. No masking tape or cable ties etc. Wheel stays on bike. The brake pads tell me where the buckle is.

This rather simple solution only occurred to me recently. I had a badly bucked wheel today and it took a while, but it's now straight and running true.

It's a doddle to do yourself and can be done on the bike. Rules are qurter turn at a time, but always adjust an adjacent spoke too. Eg. tighten one and loosen the other, this keeps the wheel round. Take your time, and don't forget to de-tension if you've adjusted a number of spokes. Pop wheel on floor, and press down on opposite sides of rim, rotate and do again, flip wheel and do again.

Will bear this in miind for future reference, thanks.

 

[andrew_s]

I would guess that the reason the LBS doesn't have a jig is because it's a disc brake / thru-axle wheel.
This will also mean that using the brake blocks to align the rim to won't work, because there aren't any.

That said, a frame is still OK, provided that you can arrange a suitable pointer which both remains accurately in place and adjusts over small increments easily. I'd use a small hard-ish bit of rubber on the seatstay/fork blade, with a small (2-3 mm) allen key held against it by a rubber band looped round the back of the stay/blade. Even better would be a small block of wood with an allen key sized hole drilled through it.
Pointers are better if metal rather than plastic or wood - you get better scraping noises to listen for when spinning the wheel.
The most accurate wheel I ever built was done using an old frame clamped in a B&D Workmate by the BB shell, and using a can of beans as the pointer.

When adjusting the spokes...
a) check for rim deflections by gradually moving the pointer closer to the rim, spinning the wheel slowly as you do so. You are looking for the worst deflection. If you find that this is away from the pointer, move the pointer to the other side of the wheel (or turn the wheel round).
b) tighten the spoke that goes to the other side of the hub than the side the rim bulge is.
c) keep tension even by tighening the spoke by the bulge (half a turn) and slacking off the spokes either side of it (quarter turn).
d) when adjusting the spokes try to avoid just twisting the spokes by turning further than necessary, then turning back to the desired amount of turn, so to tighten by half a turn, you may tighten by 3/4 of a turn, then turn back by 1/4 turn. Judging how far to over turn is either a matter of feel/practice, or you could put a bit of black (marker pen) on one side of each spoke, and check it's back on the same side after.

Note that sometimes it's only one spoke that's gone slack, so feel whether the spoke by the rim bulge is much slacker than all the others. In this case, just tighten it so it feels much the same as the others, then tighten or slacken further as required until the rim is straight.