Originally Posted by
asforme
Wheel truing is something you can do with moderate wrench skills? I was under the impression that it was something better left to the pros. Can you true as well using just the frame and not having having a wheel truing stand?
I have now built two wheels starting from zero experience, and both of them ran dead true for > 10,000 miles, on a commuting route where the factory wheel was breaking spokes once a week. It's not hard. I just bought the parts, printed out Sheldon's wheel building page, built a truing stand out of 2x4s, some shelf brackets and a couple of aluminum pieces that I drilled and filed to put the wheel into. They took me about 90 minutes each to make, while sitting on the living room floor watching TV.
The rear that I built was retired and replaced with a wheel purchased already built (found a good deal) after the axle broke (crappy freewheel factory hub), the front I built when I switched to disc brakes on the front and it's still running.
Just truing is pretty trivial, if the wheel is built OK to start with. If I had trouble pulling it true though I think given my experience I'd just loosen all the spokes up and retension from scratch.