truing rims
 

How often do you commuters true your rims?

Had this bike for about 5 weeks now and did some derailleur and brake adjustments today and realized my rims are pretty bad. Especially the back one.

Wondering if this is normal, or if I need to just take it a bit easier. I don't jump off curbs or anything, but a lot of times I will slam an unexpected pothole, or ride through a terrible road where I am bouncing all over the place.

Thanks.

Many bikes come with machine built wheels that arn't really tensioned properly. it is normal for them to go out of wack, allthough not exactly a great experience. If it was a brand new bike you might be able to get the shop to do it for you for free on warranty.

+1 on that, especially if they are cheaper wheels. My entry level road bike has cheaper wheels on it, and I had to get them trued a few times immediately after I bought it. After a while they started staying pretty true. My LBS did it for free the first time.

Here in San Francisco we have huge potholes. They do serious damage to rims, however, I would only true my rims mabye once or twice a year whenever I was doing some maintenance like changing brake pads. They way I see it, if I don't notice the rim's wobble while riding and it doesn't affect the braking, who cares?

I think it is normal to bring your bike back to the LBS after a short period to make sure the wheels are still true. Great time to spend a little extra and get the spokes evenly tensioned. This will help the wheel last much longer.

Quality wheels should last years without more than an occasional brief check for true.

Thanks.

I'll just do it myself. Looks easy enough.

The rims are Mavic CXP22. Same rims and hubs that come on the entry level tarmac and roubaix. I'm sure they are nothing special, but probably not garbage.

The back one is pretty bad, that is why I had to redo my brake, I couldn't open it up enough to stop it from rubbing.

Only when I bend the rims which usually means rim replacement.

The last front went over ten years.

The last rear was replaced five years earlier when I let my large chain ring get too worn, it was ghost shifting when cross chained, and I crashed when I stood up to accelerate. It picked up a small bend when the front went out of true, probably from the same thing (perhaps insufficient pressure with a pot-hole).

Wheels at sufficiently high and uniform tension without spoke windup do not go out of true until you bend them.

Even when you drop off curbs with 23-25mm road bike tires (at 100+ PSI).

Machine built wheels may not be in that state.

The parts are fine. The build is not.

Rear non-drive side spokes with insufficient tension can have the non-drive-side nipples rotate and go slack.

You need to increase drive side tension to what it should be, set the non-drive side to center the wheel, make tension uniform, and stress relieve the wheels so you don't have broken spokes.

It's normal to need to re-true a new bike after a little break-in. Once dialed in, I never true. I try and take my bike in once a year for a tune-up, which it gets then, but that's about it. I'm pretty lazy about maintenance though, except for keeping the chain cleaned and well lubed.

I got my wheels from BWW and after 10 months of daily riding, including most of the Winter, often with heavy loads and on really bad pavement they're still perfectly true. BWW claims they build their wheels by hand and test them. I tend to believe their claims. I also had wheels build by my LBS that I rode for 2 years: same thing, perfectly true after all that time. My point is that well built wheels should last years before needing any service.

As mentioned above: machine built wheels that are made in factories are nowhere near as reliable as wheels built by hand by a good builder. The set of wheels I have on my commuter was $120 from BWW. Best $120 spent on that bike.

Find a good LBS and have your wheels rebuilt. Your rims are fine.

It is much easier to true them if they are not too out of true. It is best to not let them get too far off if you are going to do it yourself, especially if you don't have a truing stand or wheel dish measurement tool. Mine (also lower end Mavic Aksium) are getting off because of al lthe ruts on the paths I take.

An LBS near me loves to sell spoke wrenches. I asked why. He replied, "Becasue then I get to true a lot more wheels and replace a lot more spokes."

If you're still at the stage where you're wondering if it's normal for wheels to be out of true, you're probably not yet at the stage where you can true you own wheels.

I build my own wheels. The front almost never goes out of true. The rear usually needs a minor ( ~ 2mm ) tweaking once a year, but only because I beat the snot out of my wheels. On my previous build (which didn't see any harsh unpaved use) I wore down the braking surface of the rear before it needed a truing.

I just got a trek 520 this year. My LBS allows me to bring the bike back in for a year for anything, no cost. They ask to get the bike back 2 or 3 times to adjust for cable stretching and loose nuts and check the wheels. The wheels on the 520 are the same as the tandom bike.

Agreed. When my pet dog riding in my front basket tried to jump out unexpected, I crash and my rim became untrue. I bought two spoke wrench and tried trueing them for the first time. Two hours later after loosening all spoke from start and couple of strip nipples, I gave up. Went to LBS, $25 and one day later, they were perfectly true.

When I had factory built rims, they were going out of true and breaking spokes all the time.

Once I built my own wheels, and later when I bought a hand built wheel, no more problems. I've put 16000 miles on my own wheel (until the axle broke) and a further 6,000 miles on the purchased, hand-built one, and they're both dead true.

I ride 8 miles of gravel road daily so they don't exactly get babied either.

Looks can be decieving... Truing wheels is simple, but not easy for a first-timer. If you intend to DIY this, read Shaldon Brown's article on wheelbuilding, particularly the part about Tensioning and Truing. Then be prepared to spend a very patient long afternoon on your back wheel, slightly less on the front wheel. It's is easy to make a total, frustrating mess of it if you rush it at all.

I don't know if my wheels need frequent truing because they are poorly built or because I am bad at truing them. I have had bad luck w/ handbuilt wheels (apparently they need to be built by hands attached to a brain). But I can keep 'em rolling anyway. Next time I'm building my own, can't be any worse off than I am now.

Frequent truing means that you've got misshaped tension distribution across the wheel. You can have a wheel that's dead-on true but effed up in the tension profile, which will lead to the wheel working its way out of true, so you tweak a few spokes here and there, further messing up the overall tension distribution, and over, and over...
That's why tension and de-stressing is a big deal on a new wheel. If it's properly de-stressed, tensioned, and trued, the wheel as a system* will not work its way out of spec.

* Think of a wheel not as a single item, but as a collection of individual spokes working in harmony to keep the hub balanced at the center of the rim. If you mess with one piece, if affects the entire system.

I had the same problem- i had to replace the rear stock wheel on my roubaix with a CXP22
the first ride out it came horribly out of true- i brought it back, it was repaired
the next ride out same thing. I took it back to bike shop- they said they hand tensioned all the spokes
and used lock tight on them- since then, no problems however i do have a new set of souls on the way

Could not have said it better. I make sure any wheel I ride is properly tensioned and stress relieved before riding it and I've never had to true any of my wheels, ever.

When you use enough tension sticky substances like Locktite, Spoke Prep, and boiled linseed oil are all unnecessary.

You want to avoid shops/builders that use them because

1. Wheels that are built with insufficient tension are weaker. Lateral support comes from spoke tension, so when you cause the spokes to go slack due to a big hit the lateral support goes away and the rim is free to move sideways. When the tension comes back it collapses into a taco/Pringle shape. With more tension the rim can bend farther before that happens.

2. Such substances increase torque on the nipples when you do need to true the wheels due to minor bends, making windup a bigger problem and rounded off alloy nipples more likely.

You need anti-seize for alloy nipples and rims without eyelets. For other situations you can do that or use oil.

yeah, I wouldn't put anything sticky on the threads. IMO if they're unscrewing themselves they're badly undertensioned.

I don't have any tension gauges or anything, I just took the advice of a friend who said "run the tension up evenly while keeping the wheel true and detensioning every round until you feel like if you go much tighter you're gonna strip something."

It worked great for me. The first wheel I ever built never went even a mm out of true, finally the axle broke at over 15000 miles.

Spent about an hour last night on this and brakes. Touched about 6 or 7 spokes. One of the tutorials I watched said to keep the tension even across the spokes. If you loosen 1, then tighten then 2 next to it each half of how much you moved it. Like tighten 1/2 a turn, then loosen the 2 1/4 of a turn. So pretty much what I did.

Wheel turned out great and the brake is super tight now. Happy with the results. Gonna pick up some new pads this weekend and redo the back, and do the front too. They didn't wear evenly.

But I totally get what you guys are saying about even if the wheel is 100% true, the tension could be crap. Wouldn't doubt that the wheel will be out of whack again in a few weeks. Need to research as much as I can about wheel building and really dig into it. But for today I'm happy with my rims and brakes.

Thanks for all the tips and replies.

Probably a better idea to get a wheel that you are using and practice on it. Otherwise, you could hunt down a mechanic at a bike kitchen, recruit a friend who knows what she's doing or just study a lot of the internet resources. When I got started, I pretty much did the latter and did it cautiously. And I have been doing it every since...

I tend to like something in there to help keep water out - water entry means galvanic corrosion. You're right, though, if a shop uses something like these to keep the nipples from moving, then the tension is so low that they've guaranteed that the wheel won't stay true, and they've made it a lot harder for whoever has to true it when it does go out of true.

Excellent point.

There are really four things you need to do with the wheel and truing is only one of them. The rim also has to be centered (called dishing), the spoke tension as even as you can (imperfections in the rim can make it impossible to get perfectly even tension, but you should be able to get close, if not time to replace the rim). The fourth thing is it has to be round. This is why when you true you tighten one spoke you loosen the spokes next to it - so the wheel stays round. However, in your case, when the wheel went out of true it probably also went out of round because the going out of true was cause by spokes loosening (and they didn't all loosen the same amount). This means that your loosening adjacent spokes when tightening a spoke is probably just perpetuating the out of round shape! What you really should do with the back wheel, which was way out of true, is to loosen all the spokes and tighten them back up evenly. Do this slowly and check the true, round and dish and tension as you go along and don't let any of these get too far out. Checking the round and dish can be tough without a truing stand but it can be done. Dish and be checked by turning the wheel around and putting it back in the frame - it should be in the same place it was before it was turned if it is in dish. To check round you need to remove the tire and rig up something to touch the outer edge of the rim. Tighten the spokes where it hits and loosen where it gets far away. It is really not that hard, just takes patience. The key is to control all four factors so that when you are adjusting one you don't knock one of the other factors out by too much.