Truing wheels?
 

So I have an older bike that I bought.....an '87 Schwinn Traveler with Weinmann 416 Alloy Wheels, 27 x 1 1/14, made in Belgium.

I have some new tires and tubes coming for it, as it had the original tires still on it....and they were pretty much gone.(At least the front one was)

So I was out checking the bike over tonight some more, and noticed that some of the spokes on the wheels were a tad loose. Not much.......just was able to move them more than I would think is reasonable.

I don't have any sort of shop or wheel truing type of gear......

Can I tighten those loose spokes somewhat and eyeball the true? Or is that next to impossible?

Can I make a jig that would work somewhat for truing the wheels?

I certainly can take them to the lbs for truing, but I would like to be able to do most of my bike maintenance on my own.....

Any recommendations and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

well a truing stand is a nice thing for anyone who is working on wheels on a regular basis.
but iff'n you don;t want to spend the dosh, then the bike can be made to do a pretty good job.
Hard part is making sure the wheel is properly centered in the drops and that the wheel rim stays in 'round'.
1. take the rubber off the wheel
2. once centered properly in drops, measure across the chainstays and find a spot on the rim where it is properly 'centered'.
3. swing that spot around and adjust the brake pads inward so that they are barely off the rim surface, both sides.
4. If you have the Brake pads set at a good height, you can rubberband/twistytie a popsicle/wood coffee stirrer horizontal across the pads, so that it is barely (1/32", at most 1mm) off the top of the rim - this assures you keep the wheel in round when making spoke adjsutments.
now you can go around the wheel and in small increments, make your adjustments.
worthwhile to release adjustment tensions, by taking wheel off again and rolling the wheel with some substantial 'weight' on the axles; then put back onto bike and continue spoke adjustments until wheel remains true.

Thanks, Cycle.

And make sure you have the correct size spoke wrench. It should be a nice tight fit on the nipple, or else you will round off the nipples & have to replace them

One other thought to consider. While uniform tension is highly desirable, it doesn't mean that all the spokes will have the same tension.

On a front wheel, which is symmetrical, all the spokes will have similar tensions. But rear wheels are not symmetrical.

While the rim in in the center, rear flanges are different distances from center, so the wheel is "dished" with right side spokes laying flatter to the wheel's plane than those on the left. Maintaining that asymmetry requires lower tension on left side spokes, typically 60% or so of those on the right. If you tighten those spokes just because they seem loose, you'll move the rim to the left, and off the correct centerline.

Lots of us have trued our wheels on the bike using nothing but the gap where it passes through the brake pads as the indicators for getting the wheels running true enough. If you're the sort that only has one or two bikes and you certainly don't NEED a truing stand. Even if you build a wheel or replace a rim it's not that bad a job to tension, stress relieve and true a new build on the bike it'll be used on if it'll only be a once every few years sort of deal.

The best thing is get some GOOD spoke wrenches. Don't skimp on them. Good ones will last a lifetime. Bad ones will last half a wheel up to when you toss it across the garage and into the garbage after it rounds off the second or third nipple.

Some will say that you MUST have a tension gauge. This is nice if you're doing a lot of bikes and really want things dead on right. Others, myself included, will say that you can do OK without one. You'll need better judgement to tension and true without one but it can be done and your wheels will live long lives and need low maintanence once you get the hang of it. And even if you're close they'll live long enough that occasional checks will show that they are not staying true and tensioned so you can modify your technique as you go and bring the wheels up to the tension needed to stay in tune as you learn to trust your skill and judgement.

If you go to this virtual flash piano http://method-behind-the-music.com/piano tapping the spokes on the front wheels with a pen or screwdriver handle of my road bikes produced tones that varied between the G and B keys that are closest to the left side of the keyboard. A mountain bike 26 inch wheel with butted spokes is up around the B and C keys on the left. The non drive side spokes on a 700 are down around the first F or G on the left with the drive side being up around the C to B. Non drive and drive side for a 26inch MTB wheel with butted spokes is roughly C and E. Tensioning up to tones of this sort and trying to balance the wheel so that all the spoke tones for each side are roughly equal can produce pretty decent wheels and the tones will give you a good idea that you're up to a good tension. Note that the longer and thicker the spokes the lower the tone will be. Thinner butted spokes that are shorter will "sing" with a higher pitch. And certainly any spokes with a dull toneless "thud" are WAY too loose.

Happy trueing!

Thanks for all the great advice and tips!!! I love this forum!!! :thumb:

That's all I've ever done for 40 years was just use the caliper pad gap, though I've never removed a tire to do it just let the air out so you don't poke a tube with a spoke end. The one thing you do is you close the caliper down so it's just barely missing the rim equally on both sides.

Here's more detail on this: http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/skills/spokes.htm
And here's a video: http://www.graspr.com/videos/Bicycle...ntenance-Video

By the way, you don't want to just tighten because you could over tighten, they should be snug. If you finding that you "need" to over tighten then actually you need to loosen the opposing spoke instead. But read and listen to the video carefully there are important tips that you could miss.