Originally Posted by
wants185s
Back to your wheels, there may be small changes in spoke tension from one condition to another as you describe due to the fact that your rims are aluminium or carbon and your spokes are steel (different coefficients of thermal expansion) plus the effect of tire pressure changes. But this is very small stuff. But more importantly if your spokes were properly tensioned last summer, regardless of the warming and cooling they experienced, they will come back to the same tension once you get back to the same temperatures this summer. Many of us have ridden through enough winters to confirm that the spoke tension change that may occur due to temperature change is so small that it has no effect on wheel performance. All that is not saying that something has not happened to your wheels. But if it has it was not because of temperature changes.
I do build my own wheels. I thought they were properly tensioned when I built them two years ago, in that the driveside spokes on the rear wheel were basically as tight as they could possibly be, but I'm also a heavier guy, so I wonder if that might be the reason for the looser spokes?
Come to think of it, I do end up doing a retensioning every now and again. Maybe once per year. So, well...shrug.