True Wheels of a Bicycle

Proper bicycle maintenance is critical for safe enjoyment of your bike, whether you commute on it daily or you just take it out a few times a year when the weather is nice. When people hear “bicycle maintenance,” they most likely think of brakes, gearing, and the chain; the wheels and tires only get attention when a tire goes flat. Keeping the wheels true, which means perfectly straight and round, requires equal tension from all the spokes, and it’s critical to bicycle safety and performance. A wheel out of true may wobble or rub on the brakes unevenly, potentially leading to a crash. The following steps will show you step by step how to true wheels.

Steps

Prepare to True Wheels

  1. Inspect your wheels for bent spokes.
  2. Check the tightness of your spokes using a spoke wrench. At the end of each spoke is a nipple that you can use to tighten or loosen the spoke, thus adjusting how much each individual spoke pulls on the rim. On a perfectly true wheel and rim, all the spokes are equally tight.
    • You may want to flag particularly tight ones or particularly loose ones. Some people use different colored tapes for this purpose.
  3. Turn your bike upside down so that it’s resting on its seat and handlebars. Bike shops use bike stands, but turning the bike upside down allows the wheels to turn freely, so you can eyeball them for wobble.

Check for Roundness

  1. Remove the tire and tube for best results. The shape of the rim is easier to ascertain without these on the bike. Reattach the rim to the bike for testing.
  2. Place or tape a ruler, pencil or other straight edge by the forks so that the tool almost touches the rim. This will allow you to see minor fluctuations where the rim is closer to, or further away from, the straight edge.
  3. Spin the wheel. The place on the wheel where that tool touches, or almost touches, the straight edge is out of true, and you’ll need to adjust it.
  4. Tighten the spokes underneath where the rim hits. Make sure to tighten each spoke equally and no more than a half a turn at a time. Also make sure that you tighten the spokes on either side or you’ll throw the wheel out of lateral true.
  5. Spin the wheel after each adjustment. Continue adjusting until the rim seems an equal distance away from the straight edge at all times.

True Wheels Laterally

  1. Spin the wheel and look to see whether the wheel is perfectly straight as it turns. If perfectly trued, every point on the rim will seem equidistant from the brake pad as you spin the wheel.
  2. Apply the brakes gradually and watch for the points that hit the brake first.
  3. Tighten the spokes on the side opposite where the brake pad hits to pull the rim back to the center. As with truing for roundness, work slowly and tighten gradually.
  4. Adjust and tighten the spokes by spinning it until there are no spots that touch the brake before any others.

Recheck the Spokes a Final Time

  1. Check the spokes you flagged at the beginning of the process. Most of the time, the adjustments you’ve made have corrected the tightness or looseness you originally encountered. If not, repeat the process.

Tips

  • Make sure that just the nipple turns when you tighten or loosen spokes to true wheels. The spoke should never turn; if it does, try using some oil to free it up. Never turn the nipple if the spoke is moving along with it.

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