Wheel truing!

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rivers

How far can I go?
Location
Bristol
So the rear wheel of my gravel bike needs a bit of truing. Is there anyone on the West side of Bristol who a) knows how to true a wheel, and b) fancies meeting up for a short tutorial and a coffee, and possibly an off-road bash?
 

Big John

Guru
If you have a spoke key (the right size for the spoke nipple you have) and the internet then providing it really is a simple truing job you'll find a thousand sources of useful information. The trouble is when a wheel goes out of true it's usually for a reason, a broken spoke for example. If you've whacked the wheel, and you know it, then it may not be a simple truing job. I've been given wheels to work on that I've been told just 'need a bit of truing' only to find it's been wrapped round a tree or run over by a truck. Contrary to popular belief wheel builders can't perform miracles, more's the pity.
 

Bristolian

Senior Member
Location
Bristol, UK
Remember that spokes can't tighten themselves, only loosen.

Ooh, flashback time ^_^

I used to work for a company that made vibration tables and one of our exhibition party tricks was to have several of our smaller shakers loaded with circuit boards, plastic propeller blades, etc., and a section of bicycle rim with three spokes attached. As we ran the shakers through the frequency range from 0 - 1000Hz & 1 - 10g you could watch screws loosening and tightening, the prop blade flexing and the spokes of the wheel tightening and loosening.

Happy days :okay:
 

Ian H

Ancient randonneur
Ooh, flashback time ^_^

I used to work for a company that made vibration tables and one of our exhibition party tricks was to have several of our smaller shakers loaded with circuit boards, plastic propeller blades, etc., and a section of bicycle rim with three spokes attached. As we ran the shakers through the frequency range from 0 - 1000Hz & 1 - 10g you could watch screws loosening and tightening, the prop blade flexing and the spokes of the wheel tightening and loosening.

Happy days :okay:

That is the tension increasing and decreasing, not the nipples turning on the spokes.
 

presta

Guru
Ooh, flashback time ^_^

I used to work for a company that made vibration tables and one of our exhibition party tricks was to have several of our smaller shakers loaded with circuit boards, plastic propeller blades, etc., and a section of bicycle rim with three spokes attached. As we ran the shakers through the frequency range from 0 - 1000Hz & 1 - 10g you could watch screws loosening and tightening, the prop blade flexing and the spokes of the wheel tightening and loosening.

Happy days :okay:

It's informative for anyone to watch something under vibration with a strobe light and see objects they thought were rigid flexing like lumps of jelly. Anyone unfamiliar with resonance won't appreciate that the acceleration at resonance can be a lot higher than the excitation acceleration.

Shock & bump test is completely the reverse though, a 20g test that sounds as if it's going to be horrendous is about as trivial as it gets, and looks it when you actually see it. People can be rather surprised to hear that tapping a pencil on the desk is around 1000g.
 
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