Originally Posted by
Kontact
People can sometimes sense phenomena that are hard to measure. But if they are that hard to measure, how can they matter for something as utilitarian as a bicycle? We don't have an equivalent of audiophiles. Most of us ascribe the wrong things as positives, like frame stiffness.
Very good point ! But if you compare the low end Walmart free spirit bike against the top of the line Specialized Aeros with DI2 shifting, you'd have to agree that the fancy bike is "better", right ? and yet any effort to characterize what the differences were would inevitably result in clamping the frame into a deflectometer rig to analyze "stiffness".
I enjoyed
Trakhak 's comments and I am glad a musician responded on the thread. In music (and in bikes) there definitely are some aspects of the hobby that defy conventonal measurement and for that reason there is an industry that caters to enthusiasts who have refined tastes and are willing to pay large sums of money for stuff they believe is "better". For whatever reason.
and that was my point. I believe some things defy measurement. But as this thread shows, not all people see it that way ! Heck why run the Indy 500 with cars on a track. Just put 33 engines on 33 dynamometers. Same thing, right ? right ?
returning to the topic of truing stands (which was the original point of the discussion) there's no question that a "good" wheel can be built with a very ordinary truing stand. The great Spence Wolf built with a homemade truing stand made out of angle iron and some adjustable brass pointers. In my opinion any truing stand that is "better" than a Park TS2 is going into the realm of marginal diminishing returns, and in that region it is the skill of the builder, not the stand, that makes the difference in the finished result.
having said that, the PK Lie stand really does have something special to offer. I'm a pretty experienced wheel builder, maybe not expert, but have been coached by experts, and I can say that "according to my opinion" (ATMO) the PK Lie stand cuts my build time by about 25-30 % over the Park and VAR stands that I also have in my shop. I attribute that time savings to the following:
- on inital build, it takes mucb less time to get the wheel to initial uniform tension, so you can start adding tension sooner, in no more than 2 steps rather than 3 or 4
- the builder is better able to identify the tension outliers and adjust them earlier in the build process, resulting in in a much more uniformly tensioned wheel with a reduced range of spoke to spoke tension deviations and
- the final truing process is really fast. When you're done you're done. The deflection dials give the builder much better feedback than "light gap" truing stands like the park. Nothing wrong with the park - but the PK Lie is better.
Again, all in my opinion after building about 70 wheels on the PK Lie. I can see why Enve wheels uses them ! And by the way the dials are NOT dial indicators ! they are non-linear deflection guages with resolution down to 0.25 mm for final truing.
Like a Strad, its a real nice instrument. Bada-boom.
/markp