GhostRider62

I usually only check tension and trueness for the first couple rides after I built the wheel. A properly built and sufficiently tensioned wheel even if well thrashed should not lose tension. So, never?

Saudadeii

I check my wheel and tires (and cables, chain, etc.) before every ride. My "pre-flight" checklist. Generally, if the wheels spin true, they're good to go. You can also check tension by tapping on them with a tool (like a spoke wrench). You may not know what the tension is, but one that's way off (too loose or too tight) will be immediately noticeable.

Darth Lefty 

Regularly? No. Should you once? Yeah, or have someone do it, after the bike is a few hundred miles old. Especially if the bike has less expensive wheels with unbranded hubs and straight spokes.

You can use a guitar tuner app and see how close they are to one another, or especially if one is really flat. The +- 20% range allowed is about +-3 whole notes.ONE WHOLE TONE (edited) (One octave is 1/2 the frequency and 1/4 the tension) Probably people doing it by ear are getting closer than that. The A4 note sometimes mentioned is for double butted spokes on the drive side rear of a road bike wheel. Different length or gauge spokes will have different notes.

If the wheel is true you only need to do one side, the other will be fine.

urbanknight

Huh? A "whole note" is a duration and not an interval or pitch change.

Darth Lefty 

Whole tones. Thank you, sorry.

ThermionicScott 

Nah, I stand by what I said. Spokes should not lose tension unless the wheel was poorly built (improper spec can be a part of this.)

urbanknight

Got it, but that sounds too wide to me. 3 whole tones up or down is half an octave (tritone) which would be a 30% change in frequency (so 60% change in tension). Or am I doing the math incorrectly?

pdlamb

All this talk of properly tensioned wheels will never lose tension kind of reminds me of Harry Truman. Never say, never, because never is a he!1 of a long time.

Darth Lefty 

Man! I did +-20% on frequency and not tension last time I did this. +-20% tension ==> +-9.6% on frequency or nearly one whole tone up or down.

Thank you again for the checkup. Probably I ought to go back through all the posts I've made about this over the years and check them too

urbanknight

That sounds about right to me, but don't worry, I don't think anyone else is paying attention except me because the concept fascinates me as a musician.

davidad

24 spokes is not meant to used as a workhorse, it's a lightweight racing wheel. The spokes on the drive side should have at least 130 to 140kG. of tension.
I overhaul my hubs every 2500 miles and when the wheels are off the bike I will put them in the truing stand. I rarely have had to correct more than a few hundredths of a mm.
25 years ago I did a week long ride in East Texas. I carried about 25 pounds in the rear bags and I weighed about 180 at the time. The total vehicle weight was 240 lbs. The wheel was built with 36 double butted spokesAfter a few days I thought my rear tire was going flat. When I checked I found that the spokes had loosened to the point that the wheel was close to collapse and had to retension them. It happened once again. When I got home I rebuilt the wheel putting a plumber's thread compound on the spoke ends and I have not had that problem in a few hundred thousand miles nor have the people that I have built wheels for.
If you like to work on your bike and it's wheels you should find a cheap tensiometer to check tension.
A friend has Trek low spoke count wheels and Trek recommended the high tension of 130kG with the same low spoke count.

am8117

He mentioned 7kg max in panniers, some people riding that 24 spoke wheel would be more than 7kg heavier than the rider in question.

His/her wheels will have weight limit and max spoke tension written on them or specified by the manufacturer. It’s risky to give someone such high reference numbers as some rims may catastrophically fail under such value. Also some rear wheels are asymmetric especially for 11 speed freehubs so even giving drive non drive side ratios is very risky to someone who don’t have enough experience.

I wont comment on the thread locker part but I’m sure someone else will soon … something about insufficient original built tension I bet.

davidad

Let me know when you find a wheel with the load limit and spoke tension printed on it. If it is going to have only 24 spokes it requires more tension than a 36 or 32 spoked wheel and a rim heavy enough to take the load.
The wheel that lost tension had the spoke threads greased and were tensioned to 100kG.I would guess that someone weighing 15.4 pounds would not overload that wheel.

am8117

Some rims do, e.g. DT Swiss rims do have the max Nm habitually written on their decals, I have seen some Mavic rims that had half of French constitution written on them too.

I did not mean to argue, the OP does not have tension meter, he cannot check those values, but to give him an idea that wheels can fall apart just like that, especially after he has been told his wheels had been well built (and assuming ridden for at least a year), that's just plain wrong. We could argue what exactly was wrong with that 36 spoke built, but something was wrong, the word grease on threads raises an eyebrow, old fashioned builders would use linseed oil that e.g. dries out. There's spoke freeze products nowadays that are mostly for NON-drive side of rear wheels, but again the higher the tension the more likely it stays tensioned and if a spoke gets loose it's *one at a time* and so he will notice it going out of true on low-spoke wheel.

I made a few mistakes when building my first wheels too, not de-stressing them enough, etc. I know what I would not make anymore in the future and not ashamed to admit that. In short, well-built wheels do not start collapsing out of blue. Mine or anyone else's.

Koyote

Some of us ride well-built wheels.