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How to true a bike wheel?

Although wheel truing is an activity that takes time and practice to master, some basic wheel truing is possible for the casual biker. If you have a wheel that’s so out of true that it needs to be rebuilt, you probably should leave the job to your local bike shop. But if the wheel just has a slight wobble and needs a little tweaking, you may want to consider doing it yourself.

If the rim is bent, simple truing won’t suffice — the rim will have to be repaired.

Here are the steps for truing a wheel when there are only minor imperfections in the wheel:

1. Remove the tire, tube, and rim strip from the rim. For some truing stands, you can leave the tire, tube, and rim strip on the rim, although we find that we get the best results when working only with the rim.

2. Secure the wheel in a truing stand if you have one; otherwise, you can keep the wheel on the bike. If you have to true the wheel while it’s attached to the bike, use a bike stand to support the bike. Other options are to hang the bike from the ceiling or to turn the bike upside down on its handlebars.

3. Before you begin spinning the wheel, check it for loose or damaged spokes.

4. Make sure the wheel rim is 1/4 inch away from the calipers in the truing stand or the brakes on the bike.

5. Give the wheel a gentle spin and keep your eye on the calipers (or brakes). You’ll be able to identify wobbles in the rim by where the wheel comes close to or comes in contact with the brakes.

6. If the rim comes in contact on one side, use a spoke wrench to tighten the nipples of the spokes that come from the opposite hub and loosen those that come from the hub on the same side. Loosen and tighten in small increments, around a quarter of a turn each time. Start in the middle of each wobble and work your way outwards from the center. Decrease the amount for each turn the farther away you move from the center. Spoke nipples come in various sizes. Be sure to check the size of your spokes before you buy a spoke wrench.To tighten a spoke at the bottom of the wheel, turn the nipple in a counterclockwise direction. When the spoke is at the top of the wheel, the change of position makes it appear as if it’s in a clockwise direction.

7. After the wobble has been reduced, you can tighten the calipers to find any smaller wobbles. As the wobbles become smaller, reduce the amount by which you turn the spoke wrench. Don’t worry about eliminating all the wobble of a rim. It’s more important to have evenly tensioned spokes than to have a rim without a wobble. If you can’ t get the rim perfectly straight, loosen and adjust your brakes to make them farther away from the rim so they don’t rub. If these brakes are no longer satisfactorily strong, however, you may need to replace the rim/wheel.

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