I almost ordered the Park Tool Home Mechanic TS-8 Truing Stand, but then read quite a few reviews blasting it as a piece of crap.

Are there any stands up to the job of building a decent wheel that comes in under $100, or should I pony up the serious $$$ for a better stand?

I have had my park TS-2 for 18 years. It has worked extremely well for me and is a fixture on my workbench. I couldn't recommend a better tool. It is expensive but it will be the only truing stand you will ever need to buy, AND you will not regret the purchase like you might if you bought a stand of lesser quality. I will add that a truing stand is not absolutely necessary for building and truing wheels but it sure is very convenient.

-j

Go to any bike-shop that trues/builds wheels. Now peek behind the curtain. It's not the Wizard of Oz - it's a Park TS-2 in over 90% of them (or several).

I love mine.

It depends how many wheels you plan on building and how serious you want to get. If you want an actualy stand, get the TS-2. Otherwise the lo-fi option is an upturned fork and a zip-tie.

Plus you can buy a TS-2 off eBay or Craigslist far cheaper than new. They don't wear out, so used is fine.

I've got a TS-2 and just ordered a set of Morningstar Dial gauges.

If you are just building a few wheels here and there, what you have is more than plenty. I work at a shop so always use the TS-2. So I ponied up the cash and just bought a TS-2 for home.

The TS-2 is a solid tool. It will never wear out to the point of no repair. Park sells rebuild kits if they ever get sloppy and my shop just rebuilt one after probably 20 years in service. A TS-2 is a lifetime purchase. If you like to buy new, just buy a new one and you wont have to worry about it. If you want to save some money, buy it used, there will probably be little wrong with it

yep, they are nice! and cheaper when ordered directly from Paul.

You'll be fine.

At the end of the day, the ONLY thing that a trueing stand does is to give you a stable place to measure from. The more expensive stands have some features that might make wheelbuilding a bit more convenient and a bit faster but you can build perfectly good wheels on just about anything.

Thats what I'm doing

If you plan on doing any amount of wheel building, I think you should pony up for something better, but for occasional use the "crappy" stand you've just bought will do fine.

A truing stand device does a simple job - It provides a hub support and rim feelers as references to align the rim by. While the TS-8 isn't fancy or built heavy duty, it does these two jobs well enough. More money will get you a more durable tool, but won't get the wheels any straighter.

enjoy! oops, too big!

your stand will be fine for occasional home use - if you are going to start cranking out lots of wheels- then upgrade. I have the el cheapo type stand I got from Performance 8 years ago and it does fine. I've built maybe 15 to 20 wheels on it with no troubles at all.
Just follow Sheldon's advice on building wheels and print his instructions out in color.

I've found that a fork works as least as well as any stand I could afford to buy. I use a straight edge held tangent to the rim for radial truing, and move it to perpendicular to the rim for lateral truing. I often use a dial indicator as well, mostly for the initial truing before I bring the wheel up to tension, and again to measure the finished wheel so that I can always remeasure to determine if the wheel is stable.
I also don't like that the TS-2 doesn't center perfectly. According to the park website, you still need to use a disk stick for "precision work."
The straight edges and the dial are easier for me to read and faster than the caliper on the Park, but the biggest advantage of using a fork is that you can easily push the rim sideways to take tension off the spoke while you are doing adjustments. I don't think you can do that with a Park, or any of the other cheap stands.
I made my whole wheelbuilding set up, including a dish stick that works with the wheel on my stand and an accurate tension gauge, for about $40. Of course, that is only possible because I was able to scrounge a couple of forks and other materials. I can't easily build wheels with oversize axles (which is not important to me), but otherwise my tools are as accurate and easy to use as anything that's commonly available.

em

I have a Minoura Pro that I picked up for under $50 at Nashbar. I've built my brevet wheels and my fixed gear wheels, along with a few others I built while teaching people how to build wheels.

It's not the best stand out there, but I have no reason to upgrade it. It's performed well so far, and my wheels don't collapse under my weight or fly out of true in the first 5 miles. Actually, my brevet wheels got a tension/true check at 300 miles and they've been perfect for thousands of miles beyond that without a single tweaking.

Get the TS2. If you find you like building wheels, the TS2 will be a joy to use and last forever. If you find you don't like building wheels, you can sell it and get most of your money back.

Ulitmate TRS 80R Pro Truing Stand.

Cervelo Test team truing stand used in the Giro 2009:
https://velonews.com/photo/92085

The article:
https://velonews.com/article/92080/to...tour-mechanics

Personally I just true and/or dish the wheels on the bike. A couple of binder spring clips on the fork or chain stays to find the spots that need adjusting and you can do lateral and radial truing quite easily and accurately. A truing stand is nice to have, but you don't have to spend a lot to get good results. A spoke tension meter is really all I need.

I love my TS-2, which I have outfitted with a dial-gauge to measure lateral-true down to fractions of a millimeter. A spoke-tension meter is a very good investment. With them now available from Park for around $55 (shop around), there is every reason to get one. I use the FSA model which is designed by Jobst Brandt - who wrote the seminal "The Bicycle Wheel." He's professional engineer by trade.

Thanks for all the responses.
I'm going in to REI tomarrow to look at the Minoura Workman Pro. They have it on their site for $89.00.
If I don't get it there...I'll probably dish out (no pun intended) the $$$ for the TS-2. (then try to justify the spendiness to the spousal unit)

Using a fork for a true stand awesome but what about the rear wheel. Will it fit in the fork isnt the rear wheel wider than the fork?

For a low buck stand, get a wheel fork for a roof rack. They fit fronts and rears, either with two slots in an inflexible mount, or a springy mount that spreads easily.

If you get Yakima forks, drill holes in the sides, tap them, and use bolts for "truing", it should work pretty well.

You can also get a trashed frame (bonus for cool frames like a nice carbon frame), cut off the top/down tubes, and rig something up using that. Wrap around clamps (like for fenders and such) with a bolt with two nuts (so you can adjust how far in or out it sits in the clamp) on the seatstays would work.

(We used to get trashed frames, cut the top/down tube off, put on a huge exercise bike seat on the seatpost - they never sold - spread the chainstays until they were say 18 inches apart, and voila - a shop stool.)

I would not waste money on buying anything below a TS-2. Make your own or buy a good one. I am not being snobby about this - I've owned pretty much every *** truing stand made before the Ultimate folks got started, and they are all POSs. I bought them for home/portable use, but it's about as good as truing a wheel using the brake blocks for guidance (which I think is easier than schlepping around a *** stand).

I get just as frustrated using brake blocks or a homemade device as a *** truing stand. So save the money and don't buy the *** stand.

My TS-2 dates back about 20 years, but it was used extensively for only 9. After that it was just odd wheels here and there, or gluing tubulars.

A TS-2 is great if in a big, heavy, secure vise (40# for me). If not, cut a piece of plywood long enough to reach out to the adjusting knobs on the arm - it'll keep it from tilting back and ultimately bending the bolt to adjust for different rim diameters. Mine is like this now because I couldn't set up my vise for a long time. I'm leaving my vise for now.

cdr

Use 2 forks. Spread one and file out the dropouts for a rear wheel.

em

Well I went out scrounging and found a really crappy 90's chinesse Schwinn ATB bike. The fork works great, and I cut up the frame for a stool. Thanks for all the info.

If you - or anyone - gets the TS-2, getting the optional base is a must have. This will hold the TS-2 upright on a table or bench. And give really convenient places to stow your spoke-wrenches, nipples, and anything else you can think of needing. Within limits. A lover won't fit in one. I tried.

https://www.parktool.com/products/det...=16&item=TSB-2

I have the truing stand that came as part of a package deal with my Wrench Force (aka Ultimate) repair stand.

This thing is about as simple and crude as they come. It's pretty much just a U-shaped piece of Aluminum flat stock with notches cut in the top of each leg to hold the axle ends and a clamp at the other end that goes around the repair stand's upright. The "feelers" are a pair of pivoted aluminum flat stock pieces with threaded bolts as the adjustable clearance gauges. You even have to flex the uprights to compensate for front and rear wheel OLD differences as there is no width adjustment. Compared to it, the TS-8 is really sophisticated.

That said, it's perfectly functional. I've built a couple of wheels from scratch and trued many others using it along with a low cost Minoura dishing tool.

If I were building wheels with regularity or as a business, I'd certainly get something more solid and elegant but, for occasional use it's been fine.