Ok so it turns out hopping alot on a Monty Wheelset can eventually make the wheel not so true. Right now when I spin the wheel I can see that ist about 1/8" un ture. This did not used to be the case. Also it now creeks when somone heavier than myself rides it.
Now I am a poor college student and I would like to try fixing this on my won vr going to the bike shop every few months and paying them all my food money so I can ride.
I have no tools for turing my own wheel. is there anyway I can do it without buying a stand? like spinning the wheel on my frame upside down? Also what other tools are really necisarry besides a spoke wrench.
I use very high tech instruments… a ruler and a crayon. I have to concur with a previous poster that it’s best if the tire and cranks are removed, the wheel spins more accurately that way. Then, with the uni upside down, I hold the crayon against the fork, spin the wheel and gently move the crayon toward the rim until it makes contact. The mark will show me where the wobble is. Then, it’s a matter of either tightening the spokes on one side or loosening them on the other side. I usually go 1/4 turn for the spokes at the very ends of the crayon mark and up to a half turn adjustment for spokes in the middle of the crayon mark.
Remember lefty-loosey and righty-tighty, but be careful when working from inside the rim. You’ll be working from the backside of the clock so to speak.
For most applications though, I don’t know that I would worry about 1/8" out of true unless you have a precise braking system installed or have a series of very loose spokes as Nathan an I have found on our Coker Deluxe unis.
Wheel truing and building really is a knack and if you are serious about fiddling with spokes on your unicycle it may be worth finding an old bike wheel at the rubbish dump and playing with that first.
I have only ever seriously played with truing my wheel when it has exhibited serious kinks out on the trail. If it is a long walk back to civilisation I’ll fiddle with the spokes to get it rideable again. I also tend to retension things when I replace a broken spoke (about once a month)
My limited experience on “first aid” wheel truing is as follows (note that I am not even remotely an expert):
Place your finger against the frame, almost touching the rim and spin the wheel, observe how far the wheel is out of true and tackle the most obviously out spots first. Check the spoke tension by squeezing pairs of spokes together. The amount of flex gives you an idea which spokes are over tight and which are loose. (It can be worth going around the entire wheel to see if just one or two spokes are different from all the rest) Fix things by a combination of tightening and loosening. Tightening spokes pulls the rim towards the side of the wheel the spoke meets the hub at. Loosening the spokes on the opposite side will also accomplish the same thing.
Only give half turns or so of spokes when tightening and loosening.
Try and find a good wheel builder to watch, you’ll get a much better idea of how to do it by watching someone who knows what they are doing.
Then get your wheel, tighten your spokes (turning only 1/2 turn at a time)
until they all have equal tension - feel or sound works.
Then get your crayon and mark the wheel there it swings out of true. Pull
the rim true but adding tension to pull the rim away from the crayon mark,
but… if you tension 1/2 turn you untension the spoke on each side by 1/4
turn to keep equal tension.
>
> Ok so it turns out hopping alot on a Monty Wheelset can eventually make
> the wheel not so true. Right now when I spin the wheel I can see that
> ist about 1/8" un ture. This did not used to be the case. Also it now
> creeks when somone heavier than myself rides it.
>
> Now I am a poor college student and I would like to try fixing this on
> my won vr going to the bike shop every few months and paying them all my
> food money so I can ride.
>
> I have looked at http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html for how to
> true a wheel. It seems rather confusing at first glance.
>
> I have no tools for turing my own wheel. is there anyway I can do it
> without buying a stand? like spinning the wheel on my frame upside down?
> Also what other tools are really necisarry besides a spoke wrench.
>
> Chex
>
>
> –
> Checkernuts - Me Fail English? That’s Unpossible
>
> No one said it was gonna be easy and I’m not afraid to try, with the
> odds stacked up against me I will have to fight, One Life One Wheel got
> to do it right. H20
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Checkernuts’s Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/801
> View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/20809
>
>
take the tyre off and also the cranks or at least pedals.
This is important, because if the wheel is unbalanced by the cranks or by a
badly mounted tyre it may wobble around a bit giving you the idea that it
isn’t true when it’s actually fine. I’ve been caught out by this once and it
had me stumped until I realised that the wheel was consistently leaning one
way at one pedal position and the other way 180 degrees round…