The wheel is one of the most important parts of the bike. This is what propels the movement. It requires care and maintenance to keep it functioning at its best. With this, one of the things that you need to learn is how to true a bike wheel, which is exactly what we’ll teach you in the rest of this brief post.
At its most basic, truing is all about keeping your bike’s wheel round and straight, allowing it to be in its perfect state. This necessitates the need to make sure that the spokes have equal tension. This affects not only how the bike performs but also a critical component of its safety.
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How to True a Bike Wheel
We do not mean to discourage you, but wheel truing is not a straightforward task. So, make sure to pack a lot of patience to do it right. It is easy to become frustrated if you are not aware of the steps that are involved.
Prepare the Bike
Before truing, perform a quick inspection of the bike to see any problem and to determine if there is indeed a need for truing. Specifically, pay attention to the presence of bent spokes. Check the spoke to make sure that they are tight. Ideally, the spokes should be tight. If not, look for the nipple of the spoke and adjust it accordingly to make it tighter. Next, turn it upside down. To make this easier, you need to have a bike stand to proceed to the next steps.
Check the Tension of the Spoke
This is important as it will determine if the wheels need truing. You also have to do this once you are done to be sure that the wheel is already true.
All that you need to do is to pluck the spoke and listen to the sound that it produces. For the front wheel, the spokes should produce the same sound on both sides. Meanwhile, on the rear wheels, there should be slightly different sounds. To make this task easier, it will be good to have a spoke tensiometer.
Perform Lateral Truing
Take note that there are different kinds of truing that a bike may need. One of the most common is known as lateral truing. This is performed if the wheel shows a side-to-side wobble as it spins. It requires to need to make side to side adjustments.
If it is high on the left or right, what you will need to do is to turn the spoke to make it tighter. Do this in increments of ¼. If the area that you need to tune involves four spokes, loosen all and tighten them at ¼ turn then loosen and tighten the two spokes at the middle by another ¼. Check the lateral alignment to be sure that it is already working perfectly. Otherwise, perform the needed adjustments accordingly.
Perform Radial Truing
This kind of truing needs to be performed when the wheel wobbles up and down instead of side to side. It may impact the placement of the brake pads, resulting in making your ride wobbly even if you are on a smooth surface.
Spin the wheel of the bike and find the high part. Tighten both the right and left spokes to correct the problem. If there is any low spot, on the other hand, loosen the spokes. Just like in lateral truing, you have to turn the spokes in an increment of ¼ if you want it to become tighter.
Wrap Up
With the steps mentioned above, we hope that you were enlightened on how to true a bike wheel. It is not easy, but that does not mean that you should bring your bike to the mechanic and spend money if it needs truing. Do this on your own and you will feel accomplished! It is an important part of your bike’s maintenance to guarantee its highest level of safety in every ride.