How To True A Bicycle Wheel

Bicycle wheels can buckle due to a crash or simply go out of true. Daniel Lloyd explains how to straighten your wheels.
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This is a video that we’ve had lots of viewer requests for: How To True A Bicycle Wheel.

Truing wheels is one of those maintenance jobs that is far easier than it sounds. Anyone can have a go at it with a couple of simple tools.

To true a bicycle wheel you will need:
Patience
A stand. This can be home-made, high-end, cheap, or even an upturned bike.
Spoke key. Make sure you get the correct size for your spokes and nipples. (hehe…)
More advanced wheel-truers (or builders) may want to use a dishing tool or spoke tensionmeter.

In this example Daniel used a high-end wheel truing stand. However, you don’t need one of these; if your wheel is slightly buckled, you may be able to true it to acceptable level by using your brake pads as a gauge. Obviously this will not be as accurate as the stand that Daniel is using but it will get you home or tide you over between trips to the bike shop.

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This is something we’ve had a lot of
requests for underneath our Maintenance Monday videos: how to true a wheel. Well,
luckily enough, here in the workshop we’ve got a high-end wheel truing stand in which
to do the job. You can get much cheaper ones which are perfectly adequate if
you’re just doing this job occasionally at home. The advantage of a wheel
truing stand is this point here. It allows you to very easily see and hear
exactly where the rim is warped. You can do the same thing with a wheel
inside the frame or forks, using the break pads, but of course it’s
much harder to be accurate and it’ll make the job overall a lot harder as well.
Tools you’re going to need for the job apart from the stand, well, of course
you’re going to need a spoke key. These come in different sizes so you’ll
need to make sure you’ve got the right one for the job. If you’ve got bladed or aero
spokes, you might also need a tool in order to keep them in the right position.
And finally, if you want to be extremely accurate, you can do with a wheel dishing
tool, which I’ll show you how to use now. What is the dish of a wheel,
I hear you ask. Well, effectively, it’s how central the rim is in comparison
to the hub. And of course, it’s very hard to do that by eye, which is
where this tool comes in useful. Effectively, just put the two ends of the
tool against the rim itself and you wind this part in until it meets the part of
the hub which meets the internal part of the fork or the frame on the bike. Once
you’ve got that, simply take it away. Do the same on the other side. Now as you
can see, the dish of our rim is correct, but if you find that your rim is one way
or the other, you’ll need to pull it over before you start truing the wheel. To do
this, you’ll need to use your spoke key and tighten the spokes on the side of the
wheel that you want to pull it over to. Start by the valve hole so that you know
that you’ve gone all the way around. Using your spoke key, just do each spoke
up half a turn, which means turning your spoke key anticlockwise. And then
recheck that it’s in the center, using your dishing tool. Before we begin
with this process, it’s a good idea to go round the spokes a little at a time,
feeling with your fingers to make sure there aren’t any that are really
overly loose. If there are, you can tighten them up using your spoke
key before you start truing your wheel. Now one of the first things to remember
is that to tighten a spoke, you need to turn this spoke key
anticlockwise. The second thing to remember is that as you tighten a spoke,
it will pull the rim towards the side of the hub that the spoke is attached.
And the other thing it’ll do, it will also pull the rim towards the hub,
from a radial point of view. Put your wheel into the truing stand. Spin
it gently and find a point where the rim is touching one side of the dishing
fingers or break pad, and then tighten the spoke which attaches to the hub on the
opposite side. If you’ve got a wheel truing stand which allows you
to see the radial true of the rim, i.e. , the distance away from the hub,
as well as the side to side true, then you can use the following method.
If the rim pulls over to one side and it moves slightly away from the hub in terms
of its radius, then tighten a spoke on the opposite side. If, however, the rim moves
to one side but also moves closer to the hub, then loosen the spoke on the same
side. Keep going around the rim until it no longer touches the dishing fingers. At
which point, you can wind these fingers in and start going around the rim again. You
can spend as much or as little time as you want going around the wheel, but of
course the longer you spend on it, the truer it will be, and the longer it
will remain in true. It’s a good idea every so often to remove the wheel from
the stand, place the hub on the floor, and put your weight on opposite sides of
the rim. Do this on both sides and make sure that everything is seated properly.
If you don’t do this, then you might well get your wheel very
true when it’s on the stand but it may well quickly buckle again when you start
riding it. Well, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on this now. I think this is about
as good as I’m going to get it. It’s accurate to within 0.1 of a
millimeter from side to side. Which, despite the fact that professional
mechanics who have been helping me have scoffed at that, I think it’s as good as
I’m going to get it. And it’s perfectly adequate for me to ride. Stay tuned
to GCN for more mechanical videos. But what can you expect to get from a
basic service? Well, that very much depends on how much you’re willing to pay,
what type of bike you’ve got, and what type of riding you do.