unterhausen

if you really want to showboat, you can go for a Mikrokator, which comes in a version with .2 micron divisions

supafast213

Randy, Would you mind posting some pics of your dish tool?

photogravity

That's about the only explanation that makes sense! I guess those of us that are most interested in old English steeds simply aren't as demanding as the go-fast crowd that rides Italian steel.

In any case, I reiterate that 1/8" is plenty good for the average rider. On the ride I did Saturday on my old Peugeot PX-8 with rhm, TimmyT and ilikenoise I managed to hit speeds of over 25mph and the wheels I built performed without any issues whatsoever. They were in the 1/8" range and were the first set of wheels I ever built, a set of CR-18's laced to Sturmey X-RD8(w) and X-FDD hubs.

Sixty Fiver

I recently built of some NOS Mavic 650A rims for a Raleigh Sports... these are beautifully made rims and building them up was a delight and they built up to some beautiful tolerances.

It will never be a go fast bicycle but it sure has some awesome wheels under it which should make it a little faster than your average Raleigh Sports due to the weight savings over the stock steel rims and with the stock brakes and Kool Stops the braking is splendid.

yellowjeep

Sixy Fiver, at the risk of sounding dense when you say 5/5 and 0/0 are you talking about radial and lateral run out?

Sixty Fiver

Yep.

5/5 is what I aim for in building wheels from high quality parts... 0/0 is what my partner called his old wheels although they may have been out by 1-2 thousandths of an inch but were virtually perfect.

I was given a set of these wheels and they tested out to 2/2 which is such a small measure as to be impossible to measure with an unaided eye.

Captain Blight

I can get 'em within 1mm radial and lateral without too much hassle pretty quickly, given a decent rim to start with. On my own bike or for a customer who I know will care, I get them within 1/2 mm. That usually takes twice as long as it took to get them within a mm. Getting them to within a couple thou would be a total waste of time, that is ten times a finer tolerance than half an mm (.020 vs. .002). I would never feel the difference and honestly, I don't have the patience for it.

neurocop

Of course you can use a dial indicator to measure rim run-out while truing (even better, you could use two indicators--one on each side of the rim to measure lateral run out)...if you really think measuring run-out down to <0.1mm is necessary. I think it's overkill.

wahoonc

I still have the first set of wheels I ever built...way back around 1976, they are a set of 27" wheels. Wolber 58's with LePree hubs, after a trans continental ride and several thousands of general riding miles they are still with in my tolerance levels. I have long contended that a hand built wheel done with even middle of the road components is better than anything cranked out by machine. Once you hit a certain point in components going with more expensive/lighter parts results in rapidly diminishing returns. I like my CR-18's, just ordered up couple more for yet another set of wheels.

I also agree that the best thing you can do to the old Raleighs is alloy rims and Kool stops, changes a good bike into a great bike.

Aaron

Michael Angelo 

You can get one of these.... Park TS-3

randyjawa 

I have listened to many opinions about how true a wheel set should be. For me, there are different bikes that require different levels of true. A department store, entry level bicycle that will service the commuting needs of a university student does not have to have wheels that are perfect. For wheels like that, close is more than good enough and, as someone else pointed out, a couple of thousands of an inch hop or wobble is insignificant. However...

When I am building wheels for a top of the line vintage racing bicycles, I seek perfection. In fact, I seek mechanical perfection throughout the complete build. My goal is to make the bicycle work as perfectly as I can. And it takes a lot of effort and knowledge to get a racing bicycle race ready, in my opinion. And a bicycle with hop and wobble built into the wheel set is anything but race ready, in my opinion.

And, I use dial indicators because that is all I have. Today, however, at the B4H (Bicycles for Humanity) shop, I have access to another truing stand, but I still prefer the one I use all the time, dial indicators and all. I suppose that that is an indication or indicator preference.

Someone wanted to see more pics of my dishing tool...

55 Traveler

Thanks for all the responses, guys, and good to see that there are some very nice dial indicator setups out there. I'm thinking I need to get out some wood and angle iron and make a "proper" truing stand.

I played around a bit more last night and this morning and would offer some additional comments:

A total runout of 10 thou (+- .005") may sound obsesive but it is a slight but still visible wobble. We can all aim for whatever tolerance we want but I think +-5 looks like a reasonable and obtainable goal.

The flatness and roundness of the unspoked rim is critical to the final result. There has been much discussion about truing with equal tension, but if you rim doesn't start round you won't have a true wheel and equal tension at the same time. I confirmed this again by trying to equalize the "plinked" pitch of every spoke, the wobble was getting pretty good by the time I gave up. It might make sense to equalize the tensions as a starting point and then undo what you need to to true things up.

Kinks and higher order wiggles will probably not be trued out. This is a corollary to the previous rule: the end result is determined by the starting point of rim condition. (With 36 spokes we can only adjust to the 18th radial harmonic!) Aim to get the broad wobble out and don't loose sleep over the minor kinks.

I had a wheel that had done some curb hopping. I could get it roughly true but wasn't fully happy with the result. I finally unspoked it and took it to the kitchen. Our polished marble island top is a pretty decent flatness table. Lie it on the surface. If you see a bulge on both sides of some point on the rim, then curb hopping has damaged it. I found that a Jorgensen clamp was pretty good at squeezing the sides back together. Squeezing them back together (presumably) helped the hop as well. The same rim also had a slight warp in it (a gentle bit of the pringle shape, maybe by an 1/8 of an inch)). I ended up putting a 2 x 4 under one of the lowest points and putting all my weight on the mid points. It took a lot of weight to get this unspoked rim to bend to flat. The end result wasn't perfect but the respoked wheel is pretty good and the eveness of tension is much better.

Your mileage may vary.

David

busdriver1959

You hit on a good point. If you start with a straight rim and even out the tension before you even think about truing it, when you put it in the stand the first time you will have a wheel that is very close to being done. A tweak here and there will finish it up and you will have a very durable wheel that will stay true for a long, long time.

Captain Blight

Theoretically if all your spokes are exactly the right length and if the tension is exactly equal, your wheel will be true.



Theoretically.

mechBgon

Had one, eBayed it... it didn't like 29er wheels, and whether I like them or not, they're not going away. I also needed the optional disc-rotor truing function of the TS-2.2.

Serial #1013, it's out there somewhere