An old timer at the shop in Denver told me to always check spoke tension before truing a wheel

This guy named Rick who's been wrenching since the 80s said I was wasting time by just going straight to the spoke wrench. Tried it on a customer's rear wheel that had a nasty wobble, and sure enough two spokes were way loose. Took me maybe 15 minutes to fix instead of the hour I usually spend fighting with it. Any of you guys ever get a tip that just clicked after fighting with something for years?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannahs4528d ago

The guitar string trick is a game changer, right? Spent way too many years just diving in blind before someone showed me the pluck method. Makes you wonder what other simple shortcuts we've been missing all this time.

amy_murphy8524d ago

The pluck method works okay but I wonder how many people are actually consistent with it. Like when I'm doing a wheel that's been sitting in a shed for five years, the spoke tension is so uneven that plucking gives me a rough idea but not much more. For a wheel that's only a season old it's probably fine, but for neglected ones are you still relying on the pluck or do you switch to a tension meter once you get close? Because I've had wheels where half the spokes plucked about the same note but the dish was still way off.

emmaj3328d ago

Read this one time from some old forum post where a guy who raced back in the 90s said he'd pluck spokes like guitar strings before even looking at the wheel. Tried it out and you can seriously hear the difference between a tight and loose spoke, it's wild. Now I run my hand around the rim and tap each spoke with my fingernail before I even get the truing stand out. Saves so much time from going back and forth on tension later, especially on wheels that have been neglected for years.

-1