tonka.toy

I have a cheap bike and very nasty wheels, I've had about 4 spokes go on the rear drive side.

As the spokes fail I've replaced and done a DIY true with the bare wheel in the frame.

I never checked how true it was when I bought the bike but I have it down to 2mm side to side and about 1mm centre. Without a jig and a bit more experience I'm not going to get it perfect but what is normal / factory / handbuilt margin of error on wheels?

Will be chucking these soon so I might be able to spend some time playing with them. I'm getting some new Mavic Crossrides, before I mount the tyres I'll be checking the wheels for tueness.

Steev

Wheel adjustments using the bike as a stand and the brake calipers as a guide can be as good as a job done on the fanciest of truing stands, just takes more care.
Note that on an old wheel like that, it may never be very good.

Sixty Fiver

I generally true wheels to < 5/1000 lateral and will be a little more generous for the radial as correcting a small hop might not be worth throwing your spoke tensions way off... .03 inches or half a millimetre is acceptable.

If a rim has a bog hop it is probably damaged or defective (if new).

With really good parts I have built wheels to a tolerances of < 1/1000th... the rim quality is critical to doing this level of build and have had these wheels come back after much use to find they are still within that 1/1000th tolerance.

That 1/1000th is overkill and probably won't be attainable with a used wheel.

Sixty Fiver

Conversions...

5/1000 inch is .127 mm

2/1000 inch is .05 mm

1/1000 inch is .025

2/1000 inch is 1 mm

tradtimbo

On your everyday, run of the mill alloy rim, 1.0mm for lateral true is standard.

Bardleyrichard

Unless I am reading that wrong, you are off on one or some of those.

1/1000 =.025mm
2/1000=.05mm
5/1000=.127mm
1mm=38/1000
2mm=79/1000
5mm=197/1000

Approx.

operator

0.5mm is shop standard, for non high end, high performance wheels.

Panthers007

.5mm for just-built wheels from new rims - I can see. On a customer job who just rode it through every pothole in the city? Not likely. I check the tension (TM-1) and then set the Park truing-stand to what looks like a mm. off. And go from there until there is no deviation that I can perceive. What does a lateral-gauge that you can attach to a Park Tool TS-2 cost that can measure the play down to, say, .25mm?

eddy m

I have a Racelite manual that says 0.4 mm.
The Park website says 1/16" laterally and 1/32" radially. That's OK for road wheels, but it's overkill for fat tire wheels. The tires are probably worse than than that.
I can't see anything better than about 1 mm without a dial indicator. The guys who say they get down to 1/1000" are fooling themselves. The rim compresses that much at each spoke attachment when it's properly tensioned. (One of the benefits of using a dial indicator is that you can be sure you have enough tension when you see that.) In any event, even tension is more important than trueness once you get to 1/2 mm.

em

eddy m

You can get dial indicators at Harbor Freight for $15. I got 2 for $20 at a used tool store. An old fork with a dial is more accurate and better than any Park stand, although it takes longer to set up. I made a tensiometer with one of the dials as well. That's more theoretically more accurate than a Park or Wheelsmith gauge, but it's slower to use. I may try to calibrate it this winter.

em