Recent wheel truing issues with my 29-er Nimbus have been excarbated by two things: -
- my own inexperience with wheel truing
- what I thought was either an ill-fitting spoke key or worn spoke nipples
1 is improving all the time as I’ve now spent a fair bit of time messing around with tightening and loosening spokes in an effort to ensure the tyre (2.1 notos) doesn’t rub against the 28" round Nimbus frame- it’s quite a tight fit.
I’ve been hampered by the keys inability to tighten certain spokes. It’s a round key with various size holes, ‘14’ is the one that fits the nipples, but it’s a loose fit that I’m sure has worn them to some extent, and with some there’s no possibility of tightening.
In a recent session I have tried removing the tyre and accessing the screw tips with a screwdriver, but, for some reason they seem fragile and, again on the tight ones, the slot tends to give way.
I got round it by purchasing some replacement nipples, which turn out to be '15’s, but which are a good fit to the ‘15’ on the spoke key.
The plot thickened two days ago when I found the ‘15’ hole on the key seemed to fit all the spoke nipples on my Nimbus. A mystery as previously it hadn’t, but a happy one as it looked like I could now do a proper truing.
However, trying it again later the ‘15’ would no longer fit!?
It was then that I took a good close look at my key and found that, opposite the ‘15’ hole, was another ‘15’ hole; furthermore, the other ‘15’ was not the exact same size- one hole fits the nipples of my Nimbus, the other doesn’t.
(Also, it has two ‘14’ holes).
Today I went to the LBS the buy some more spoke nipples, it turns out that the shops key says my Nimbus is size ‘14’, however, with my round spoke key the best fit is the second of the '15’s.
Happily, I seem to be sorted now, as I know the source of the problem and I now have 36 new spoke nipples so, if necessary I can replace all the worn and ill fitting ones on my wheel.
But I’m just wondering if anyone can explain why my key has two different size '15’s, and also as a warning to anyone else with one of these multi-size keys to have a good look at it before embarking on a wheel truing session.