Popped a spoke at the end of my ride several days ago, so after procuring some replacement spokes and nipples from the FLBS, I sat down and reviewed ERE and other wheel truing tutorials. Did this w/o a truing stand, just improvised with my bike on its seat and bars.
Spoke abbreviations:
DS == Drive Side (shorter spokes); NDS == Non-Drive Side (longer)
Nipple abbreviations:
QT == Quarter Turn; HT == Half Turn; FT == Full Turn
TxT == Tighten [Q/H] Turn; LxT == Loosen [Q/H] Turn
bicycletutor says that adjacent spoke adjustments should be at a 2:1 ratio DS:NDS -- I haven't taken the time to convince myself of that, but am rolling with it for now, also assuming that the wheel truing afficionados here will square me if that's not a good rule of thumb
I found myself rethinking and recalculating orientation depending on whether I was making a lateral or a radial adjustment, so as a way to confirm with the experts whether I understand roughly what I'm doing (for a wheel truing novice), here is what I did when....
radial high spot across 4 spokes:
outer DS spoke: THT (QT twice, due to 2:1 DS:NDS rule)
inner NDS spoke: THT (QT twice, due to inner spoke)
inner DS spoke: TFT (QT 4x, due to inner spoke and 2:1 rule)
outer NDS spoke: TQT
radial low spot across 4 spokes:
outer DS spoke: LHT (QT twice, due to 2:1 DS rule)
inner NDS spoke: LHT (QT twice, due to inner spoke)
inner DS spoke: LFT (QT 4x, due to inner spoke and 2:1 rule)
outer NDS spoke: LQT
lateral out spot toward DS across 4 spokes:
outer DS spoke: LHT (QT twice, due to 2:1 DS rule)
inner NDS spoke: THT (QT twice, due to inner spoke)
inner DS spoke: LFT (QT 4x, due to inner spoke and 2:1 rule)
outer NDS spoke: TQT
lateral out spot toward NDS across 4 spokes:
outer DS spoke: THT (QT twice, due to 2:1 DS rule)
inner NDS spoke: LHT (QT twice, due to inner spoke)
inner DS spoke: TFT (QT 4x, due to inner spoke and 2:1 rule)
outer NDS spoke: LQT
wouldn't mind some critical feedback on the above
other notes/questions:
* I didn't have a lot of confidence about making full spoke nipple turns on the inner spoke (of 4 adjacent) on the DS -- I suppose I was tentative about having never trued a wheel before, and concerned that I'd jack my rear wheel enough to have to take it to the FLBS
* how important is a spoke tensiometer to do reasonable truing jobs?
* after I had the correct hardware, I spent about 5 hrs researching and experimenting and refining the wheel's trueness
* I stumbled across an article or two about spoke (musical) tuning -- being a former amateur musician, I would like to note that NDS spokes were tuned approximately one major third above the DS spokes -- has anyone here noted the same relative pitch between rear wheel DS and NDS spokes?
AAR (After Action Report) on truing a rear wheel
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jacob
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There are three kinds of true: radial, dish, and lateral.
If you blew a single spoke, it's just lateral---unless it was a flimsy racing wheel and you were ... uh.. "optimistic" enough to ride it with a broken spoke which might have bent everything out of shape.
Usually, my simple algorithm for lateral adjustment is if you tighten one spoke, you gotta loosen the adjacent spoke. The reason is that tightening pulls the rim over, so you gotta loosen the spoke on the other side.
For radial adjustment, you tighten or loosen both spokes. Here you need to take the tire+tube+liner off.
Dishing is like lateral adjustment except you do the same thing for ALL the spokes for each adjustment, that is, tighten, loosen, tighten, ... all the way around.
If you do a no more than a quarter turn each time, it's hard to screw up. If you take the tire and the liner off so you can see what you're doing, the whole routine become more obvious---nothing like trying to figure out mentally which way a right-threaded screw is going if you're unscrewing it (its counterclockwise, your clockwise) away from yourself.
For a "reasonable" truing job, you don't need a tensiometer. I just feel by hand to see that everything is about equally tight---compare tension to the other wheel you have. This depends on how many spokes the wheel has. For a 16 spoke racing wheel, I'd worry more than with a 28 spoke touring wheel.
Your drive side/non-drive side rule depends a lot of how much dish the wheel has, which depends on how fat the freewheel/casette is. When I did my single speed conversion, I has to correct for a 5 speed freewheel. Here the spokes were equally long and so they were tightened. Also, the rule doesn't apply to front wheels which are evenly dishes. Single speed rear wheels will also tend to be close to even.
Remember---it's not rocket science. If it rides well, it's okay.
If you blew a single spoke, it's just lateral---unless it was a flimsy racing wheel and you were ... uh.. "optimistic" enough to ride it with a broken spoke which might have bent everything out of shape.
Usually, my simple algorithm for lateral adjustment is if you tighten one spoke, you gotta loosen the adjacent spoke. The reason is that tightening pulls the rim over, so you gotta loosen the spoke on the other side.
For radial adjustment, you tighten or loosen both spokes. Here you need to take the tire+tube+liner off.
Dishing is like lateral adjustment except you do the same thing for ALL the spokes for each adjustment, that is, tighten, loosen, tighten, ... all the way around.
If you do a no more than a quarter turn each time, it's hard to screw up. If you take the tire and the liner off so you can see what you're doing, the whole routine become more obvious---nothing like trying to figure out mentally which way a right-threaded screw is going if you're unscrewing it (its counterclockwise, your clockwise) away from yourself.
For a "reasonable" truing job, you don't need a tensiometer. I just feel by hand to see that everything is about equally tight---compare tension to the other wheel you have. This depends on how many spokes the wheel has. For a 16 spoke racing wheel, I'd worry more than with a 28 spoke touring wheel.
Your drive side/non-drive side rule depends a lot of how much dish the wheel has, which depends on how fat the freewheel/casette is. When I did my single speed conversion, I has to correct for a 5 speed freewheel. Here the spokes were equally long and so they were tightened. Also, the rule doesn't apply to front wheels which are evenly dishes. Single speed rear wheels will also tend to be close to even.
Remember---it's not rocket science. If it rides well, it's okay.
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Steve Austin
- Posts: 177
- Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2010 12:17 am
Thanks for the comments. Not rocket science, but it is wheel science. 
Forgot to provide some info:
* the wheel has 32 spokes, a Bontrager Nebula 700x32C / 32-622
* I didn't realize I had popped a spoke until I dismounted and couldn't walk the bike freely due to contact between the rim and brake shoe at that spoke -- I believe that it happened about 200m from home base, I was decelerating and probably couldn't discriminate between sources of deceleration (or I was just weary and not paying attention), so I did ride on the rim very briefly
* I wasn't certain on initial tensioning how to approximate where I needed it to be (heard clicking and creaking, and I did oil both the nipple thread and the nipple contact surface), so it's possible that what I thought was radial untrue was just plain old spoke was not tight enough yet
* pretty sure that I had hit some road holes in the preceding 2 weeks that either fatigued or loosened some spokes -- do you check spoke tension when/if one of your wheels experiences hole trauma? I want to be preventative about this (feel free to insert joke about not hitting holes)
* does anyone here use spoke tuning?
http://www.bikexprt.com/bicycle/tension.htm
* the machine rides again, so I was just looking for any comments to improve my truing approach and speed next time
Forgot to provide some info:
* the wheel has 32 spokes, a Bontrager Nebula 700x32C / 32-622
* I didn't realize I had popped a spoke until I dismounted and couldn't walk the bike freely due to contact between the rim and brake shoe at that spoke -- I believe that it happened about 200m from home base, I was decelerating and probably couldn't discriminate between sources of deceleration (or I was just weary and not paying attention), so I did ride on the rim very briefly
* I wasn't certain on initial tensioning how to approximate where I needed it to be (heard clicking and creaking, and I did oil both the nipple thread and the nipple contact surface), so it's possible that what I thought was radial untrue was just plain old spoke was not tight enough yet
* pretty sure that I had hit some road holes in the preceding 2 weeks that either fatigued or loosened some spokes -- do you check spoke tension when/if one of your wheels experiences hole trauma? I want to be preventative about this (feel free to insert joke about not hitting holes)
* does anyone here use spoke tuning?
http://www.bikexprt.com/bicycle/tension.htm
* the machine rides again, so I was just looking for any comments to improve my truing approach and speed next time