MiniLance

I need help with truing a wheel.
I don't have a truing stand and don't really want to have to get one.
What's the best way to get my wheels trued without one?

phantomcow2

put your bike on the fork. Use brake pads as indicators. Use your thumbnail to measure radial bumps or "valleys". If you plan to do this often i can tell you the 35dollar Spin Doctor stand is worth all 3,500 pennies.

MiniLance

Okay Thank you I'm thinking about doing this twice a week so i guess going with a truing stand is the way to go.

Chongo

I can second phantomcow's opinion about the Spindoctor stand. You can also check out Park Tools website on how to true wheels, and build them if you get ambitious.

ivan_yulaev

Place bike upside down, squeeze brake levers to move them together closer, spin. Find the wobble, correct, spin. Repeat until wheel is true to +-1mm.

Just don't forget to put the bike on a blanket or something, to not scratch up the levers. Also, this doesn't work with disk brakes.

fogrider

better yet, put it on a workstand and use toe clip straps (do you still remember these?) or use an adjustable zip tie (they usually supply these with lanudry strainers the one attaches to the end of washing machine's discharge) on the brake lever to close the brake caliper to hit the wobbles. a workstand will allow you to get the wheel to the right height so you will not have to bend over too much...if you true many wheels, your back will thank you for this.

bostontrevor

My personal method--stop me if you've heard this one--is to use an ankle strap to strap a spoke bent in an 'L' shape to the stay/blade (this may require rotating brakes 180 degrees to get them out of the way, but it's not too hard and I prefer the results this method gives). Put an additional U-shaped bend at the end of the spoke that will will be contacting the rim.

Now you have a feeler that can be rotated to be arbitrarily near the rim with very little effort as well as raised and rotated over the rim to check radial true.

Dirtbike

Why would you be truing your wheel twice a week?!

phantomcow2

well, either hes running really really low spoke tensions, going off 20 foot drops 100x a day, or doing this for somebody else?

phantomcow2

well the most difficult, in the fact that it takes a lot of practice but the owner of my LBS can do it (after 40+ years of building) is your thumbnails. THat guy sometimes trues customers wheels while its still on the bike. But again, the spin doctor is a really nice buy. I cant say its sturdy at all, but its very precise. the TS-7 is total crap