Bicycle Mechanics - Wheel Dishing Tool

Howdy, Just Wondering If Anyone Knows Of A Good Wheel Dishing Tool. I Want The Best As Far As The Way It Mounts To The Hub. I Want The More Practical, Good For The Money Type. I Have Researched Park Wag-3,4 And Hozan. I Am A Beginner, But Still Want To Start With The Best!

Thanks,
Todd

The Park WAG4 is a pretty nice dishing tool. For the few dollars more than the WAG3, it's well worth it.
I use one of these:

http://www.biketoolsetc.com/index.cgi?id=683940932341&d=single&c=Tools&sc=Wheel-and-Rim&tc=Dishing-Tools&item_id=EV-TDT

at work and they are a really lovely tool to work with. But, at a pretty high cost.

The nice thing about the WAG4 is the sliding blocks that allow you to check the dish of the rim with the tires mounted. You can even check the rim dish while the wheel is on the bike (and, I believe this is the only dishing tool that you can do that with). The EVT tool is awesome as you can hold the wheel in one hand and place the tool AND adjust the caliper with the other hand - all in one step. But, EVT, as most other (all other ???) dishing tools requires the "naked" rim. For the money, the WAG4 is easily the best buy.

What ever tool you buy you just need to learn how to use what ever you buy well. I use the park tool but I once had a campagnolo tool that was THE BEST ever.

For certain things, like cable cutters, better quality tools are worth their weight in gold. It's a serious pain to cut all but one strand of a cable or to have the cable end fray as soon as you cut it.

For other things you can cheat a little on quality and never suffer any consequences. A wheel dish tool is one of those.

The First Thing You Should Research Is How To Properly Write English And How To Ask Questions That People Can Actually Answer.

I read this from Mike T's Wheelbuilding page (http://miketechinfo.com/new-tech-wheels-tires.htm). Tighten the wheel in the dropouts correctly. With inside calipers adjust from rim to blade or stay. I then measure this distance with dial calipers. Do this for the opposite side and compare. Start to dial rim in by loosening all spokes on closer side of hub by 1/4 turn and tightening the other side by the same. Continue until you get as close a tolerance possible.

I'm about to start truing my wheel with precision gauges from Morningstar Tools (http://morningstartools.com/R2OC_Tech.html). Check them out, they're sweet. You can easily see every spoke's influence on the rim. His site is limited but he can do about anything custom for you, email him.

The First Thing You Should Research Is How To Properly Write English And How To Ask Questions That People Can Actually Answer.

Now why go there?

Start to dial rim in by loosening all spokes on closer side of hub by 1/4 turn and tightening the other side by the same. Continue until you get as close a tolerance possible.



What's the conventional wisdom when 1/4 turn is too large of an increment? For whatever neurotic reason turning nipples less than 1/4 bothers me, so I've always got as close as 1/4 increments allow.

I have one of the basic dishing tools from park (wag 3). It works just fine, but I can tell you that it is a pain to have to take the wheel off the stand, and the skewer out the check the wheel.

I have one of the basic dishing tools from park (wag 3). It works just fine, but I can tell you that it is a pain to have to take the wheel off the stand, and the skewer out the check the wheel.

Yep, I agree. Pain in the butt.

And the one I have, the carriage bolt it came with didn't fit. Tried everything, but wound up having to use another carriage bolt from a hardware store. Would've cost too much time and money to complain to the company.

Would've cost too much time and money to complain to the company.

I just had a part fail in one of my Park repair stands. I sent them an email and four days later UPS delivered me the replacement part. The only cost was the two minutes it took me to send the email and the five minutes it took me to replace the broken part.

I think you'll find that most of these companies - especially Park - are very responsive to quality issues and, as in my case, will replace the parts for no charge.

One thing I see over and over on this forum is the willingness for people to badmouth bike and bike component companies without even giving them the chance to fix problems. That's just being lazy. It's not a perfect world and sometimes things need a little work to get them right.

IMO, the best dishing gauge ever made was the Kingsbridge. Anyone but me have one?

What's the conventional wisdom when 1/4 turn is too large of an increment? For whatever neurotic reason turning nipples less than 1/4 bothers me, so I've always got as close as 1/4 increments allow.

I'm not sure, I'm really just starting out myself, reading and trying to put it to practice.

Myself, I go down to 1/8 turns somewhat comfortably. While I do look, I just try to get a feel for it and do each spoke with as equal a hand motion as possible.

While you won't get them all perfectly even, you can straighten the rim during final truing. I'm excited to use my new precision gauge for this.

I tried very hard to thread all my spokes an even number of turns while lacing wheel and initial tensioning but I still had some hops that need work during truing.

I have the cheapest. I made one out of scraps from my woodshop in about 10 minutes. The factory edge on a nice sheet of plywood is extremely straight, so I cut it from that with the factory edge on the rim. The pointer in the middle is held firmly with a sprung piece of wood. No metal on the whole thing (just glued). It's even bowed a little to put the pointer between the edges, not off to the side by the thickness of the board.

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/3613/cimg6331br9.jpg

One thing I see over and over on this forum is the willingness for people to badmouth bike and bike component companies without even giving them the chance to fix problems. That's just being lazy. It's not a perfect world and sometimes things need a little work to get them right.

Ok, so I'll contact Park on your advice and see what happens because I think it's good advice. But I really don't appreciate being called lazy.