Category: cycling

After getting home from Danielle’s house (and listening to one episode of This American Life each direction) I spent some time finishing off my rear wheel. Once it was dished to my satisfaction, trued, and reassembled I fitted it to my bike and went for a series of test rides. The tire was the Continental TravelContact at 55psi, which is what was on the bike when the last two nipples broke.

The first was a rather uneventful jaunt around the neighborhood using the Winwood Decksters, so then I decided to go for a bit longer ride. After donning a headlight I took off on the ~15 mile local loop, up to (and through) River Bends, back down 21 Mile, through a neighborhood, then over to my house. Along this entire route I made a point of keeping my weight over the rear wheel as much as possible, especially when going up sidewalk aprons, over large cracks in the pavement, roots, sticks, etc. Basically, I was trying to put a bit more than normal (for me) force on the wheels.

Half-way through the ride, in River Bends, a quick check showed that the wheel was just as true as when I’d left the house. Even better, I wasn’t hearing any of the occasional spoke-twang sounds from that wheel. They were still occasionally there from the front (especially when cornering hard), but the rear was spot-on.

I’ll definitely be rebuilding the front wheel in the same way quite soon. Hopefully that will be the last time I touch them.

After four and a half hours (or so) of work, all of the alloy nipples in my geared bike’s rear wheel have been replaced. While the wheel is pretty true (maybe 0.5mm out at the largest spot) the dishing is still about 5mm off, so I’ll have to do more playing another day.

Also, that image above shows one of the feeler gauges recommended in the Wheelpro Book. It seems to work pretty well, although I do need to get better at using it. I imagine that will take quite some time.

(I also must fix the damned Park SW-40 spoke wrench. Its got a nice head on it, but the curved handle part bends too far over the head, so when the spoke comes off of the nipple at a slight angle the tool gets stuck in place.)

Having had some wheel problems lately I’ve been wanting to build a truing stand. Well, tonight I did.

The stand above is based on the one in the Wheelpro Wheel Building Book, except made with 3/4″ plywood and unfinished. I still have to make some alignment tools and get another 1/4-20 machine screw for the base. Here is a photo another Wheelpro stand with some tools, built by a cabinet maker and with a melamine finish, originally from this page.

I think that I probably spent five or six hours building the stand, but as it only cost about $32 and I enjoyed making it, I think it’s worthwhile. An hour and a half or so was spent working the steel for the dropouts, but as I don’t have any real metal working tools it was a bit difficult. I also had a problem with a bit of tear out on the plywood, which is likely because I wasn’t paying attention to the direction of cut versus top layer grain, and had a multi-purpose blade on my saw. I’m also not great at woodworking, and hadn’t done anything with a table saw in at least two years.

It could have been a lot cheaper too, but being a Sunday when I went to purchase parts I ended up buying everything at Lowes. This meant $4.66 for four flat-head machine screws, $7.67 for the steel used for the dropouts, and $6.27 for the 2′ x 2′ piece of birch plywood. There was also the $4.35 countersink that I bought, then stupidly tried to use on steel, completely ruining it, relegating it to the trash can. Yes, I had to buy steel because I did not have any scrap pieces sitting around the house. At least now I do…

It also would have been possible for me to build a simpler stand, but this one seemed to do everything I wanted. The right dropout slides to accommodate different width hubs, it works fine with 26″ or 700c (29er) wheels, and it’s quite sturdy. This week I’ll have to order some replacement nipples for my wheels and find some time to make the alignment tools, then actually figure out how to tension a wheel after undoing it. That is, actually use the stand.