Narhay

I've built a front wheel 26" sun rhyno lite rim with 2.0 straight gauge spokes and a m730 xt front hub. My park meter is reading between 25 and 26 on the spokes (120-135 KGF). Recommended spoke tension is 110. I've heard a few sides to this...some recommend going and tight as you can without damaging the rim, others use the suggested max as something that should never be exceeded.

Ideally I keep the wheel as is. The rim is trued nicely the way it sits. What are your thoughts?

FBinNY 

There's no reason to ever build fronts with that much tension, since you don't have the Hi/Lo spread problem as you might on a dished wheel. I typically build 32h fronts to about 90kgf or so.

That said, what's done is done, and you might as well leave bad enough alone.

chriskmurray

I am with FB, no reason to go that high on fronts ever but the Rhyno Lite is a VERY strong rim and should be able to handle it just fine.

Dream Cyclery

How much do you weigh? what type of riding this wheel is going to do? If this is just a regular commuter wheel, I'll do 100kgf.

bobbyl1966

How hard is the wheel build. And what is the correct way to truing wheel. I truing wheels but no have truing stant yet i use the brakes as guide but i cant do prefect truing. When the rim touch example the right brake shoe need tight the left spoke? Why i see online say some times need losen spokes too not just tight

awfulwaffle 

Built up my first wheelset using 700c/29" RhynoLites with 2.0mm straight gauge spokes for my commuter a while back. I'm no expert on wheelbuilding, mind you, so I can only offer evidence based on limited personal experience. I built up the rear with about the same tension you've mentioned on the drive side (25-26 on Park meter). The wheels have seen the better part of 1000 miles so far with nary an issue, with 205-230 lbs of me, 30lbs of bike and another 30lbs of stuff in the pannier going over crappy roads at speed on a daily basis.

From an engineering standpoint, the 110kgf max specced by Sun's website is most certainly not the failure limit of the rim. Given that it is a critical structural component, I wouldn't be surprised if the actual failure limit was several times higher by design (factor of safety). Fatigue is another factor to consider, but I would think the rim design (especially the eyelets at the rim holes designed to reduce stress concentrations) would have been done to account for this failure mode as well. The gist being if the rim design was done well, it should be considerably overbuilt (especially given its intended purpose) and overshooting the recommended spoke tension by a bit shouldn't be a huge issue.

Narhay

I loosened each spoke by a quarter turn and a few tweaks later the tension was lower and the wheel remains true.

cny-bikeman

[QUOTE=bobbyl1966;16978528]1. How hard is the wheel build. And what is the correct way to truing wheel. I truing wheels but no have truing stant yet i use the brakes as guide but i cant do prefect truing. When the rim touch example the right brake shoe need tight the left spoke? 2. Why do I see online that sometimes you need to loosen spokes too, not just tighten[/QUOTES]

1. You should not try a wheel build until you understand a lot more about wheel truing,

2. Spokes pull more toward the hub than toward one side, so if you only tighten you will not only increase overall tension (sometimes too far) but may also create a flat/low spot on the rim.

I hope English is your 2nd language.

mbrraleigh

I'll throw something out here that may surprise some folks. I would make sure the Park meter is accurate before doing anything. My new Park meter was reading too high when brand new which was fairly obvious the first time I put it to use. I then had the meter checked at various LBS's and they came to the same conclusion. The Park folks were great and took it right back for calibration but it still ended up reading too high which was hard to believe at the time. There are no other reports like this on the internet so who knows what was going on. In the long run I simply calibrated it myself in an indirect fashion by taking readings across a number of wheels and spoke types, and comparing those to an accurate meter in a LBS (I actually adjusted the meter rather than generating a new calibration table). All throughout I had a set of wheels I could use as a general reference since they were done by a local wheel builder. Once calibrated, the meter has been a very useful tool.

bobbyl1966

Thank you for your answer and your opinion. Yes english is my second language

Bill Kapaun

Apparently you haven't been reading this forum and seen mrrabbits comments about calibrating the meter.

mbrraleigh

Yes, I do check out the forum fairly regularly and seem to remember discussions about how to calibrate a spoke tension meter but don't remember seeing any mention of there being an issue with a new Park meter. Indeed, I do take special note in reading mrrabbits comments about wheel building so thanks for pointing out that I may have missed a relevant discussion.