before I put in a ton of time and buy equipment …
curious how hard / steep the learning curve is for wheel truing / balancing. and is it worth learning yourself vs paying a shop?
i’ve done everything else on my bike maintenance - wise. i’m not the handiest but I can follow instructions well.
this seems rather daunting to me though after watching a few videos.
It’s not hard, you just need a bit of patience.
Depending on how accurate you want to get you might not need much equipment either. For straightening a wanky wheel to working levels, you only need a spoke key. You can use the fork legs or chainstays to measure how straight it is. For better accuracy, attach tape or zip ties so that they nearly touch the rim. ( For really good trueing, a trueing stand will be better.)
Keep the wheels in the frame, rotate to find out where and which way the wonky part is.
Understand how the spokes work - depending from which side of the hub they come, they pull the rim to that side. To adjust the rim, you have to loosen the spokes coming from one side, and tighten the ones coming from the other. (Sometimes one of those is enough, but generally speaking you can do both.). Usually you want to work on multiple spokes around he wonky area, not just one or two. Do adjustments in really small steps (an eights of a turn of the spoke key), and keep checking the alignment with the zip tie/tape markers.
For remembering which way to turn the spoke nipples, I find it easiest to look at them from above (the tyre side) - they just turn like normal bolts (righty - tighty). You just grab them from below with the spoke key.
I always think its worth learning yourself, even if it’s just for the odd emergency repair to get home.
It’s not that hard, just don’t be in a hurry at first. The first wheel I built took me a week. The next one took the better part of a day working on and off. The last set only took a couple hours.
What clicked for me was just working on the worst part of whatever aspect was the worst and ignoring the rest, and you’ll eventually pick up some speed.
If you’re musically inclined at all, it’s a lot faster to balance spoke tension by ear.
On an initially well built wheel, you shouldn’t have to loosen spokes - they won’t have randomly tightened themselves. This makes deciding what course of action to take a little easier. The only caveat is to watch the radial runout when doing big adjustments on one spoke (hint: maybe spread it across the two either side in that case)
There isn’t much of a learning curve, it’s tough to screw up adjustments on a wheel that’s already built (assuming it was decently built to begin with). Whether it’s worth it vs. paying a shop, hard to say. A well built wheel shouldn’t need much tweaking unless you have a wreck.
I like doing all maintenance myself because of the convenience and knowing that it’s done right. A shop is always on the clock, but I can monkey with the wheels until they are perfect.
I’d spend the $ on the proper tools, including a truing stand. Beyond that, you’ll just need a spoke wrench and a spoke holder (prevents twisting and wind-up while making adjustments, definitely needed if working on bladed spokes or straight pull spokes). I’d also consider getting a tension meter, but that’s not mandatory. I use the Park version (not crazy expensive) and I know there are some really cheap knockoffs that are probably good enough. The tension meter is more about ensuring consistency across the spokes, the actual tension isn’t as critical.
Once you have that stuff, you also have everything you need to build wheels from scratch, replace spokes, swap hubs, etc.. That’s a little trickier with lacing patterns and ensuring the roundness of the wheel, but it’s not hard if you take your time. And super rewarding IMO. Good luck.
I built a few sets for my self and many more for customers while working as a bike mechanic. Trued multiple sets a day as part of routine tuneups and repairs. It’s actually pretty straightforward and logical. I did find wheel building tedious after I got the hang of it. A really good resource, probably the best, is Roger Musson’s wheel building book. It tells you how but also does a great job of explaining all the whys.
I personally invested in a good spoke tensiometer, and a nice truing stand, and don’t regret it. Similar to some others here, I’m a big fan of having the tools to fix and service stuff myself so I’m not beholden to bike shops when I need something.
Truing stand gets used pretty frequently for checking / tweaking brake rotors and re-taping rims, frequently for just spinning a wheel, less frequently for actually making tension changes. But, perfect example - had a spoke come loose and throw a wheel out of true recently. Checked a couple adjacent spoke tensions quickly with the tensiometer - set the loose one to the same, boom, back in action and dead on true.
Still haven’t built a full wheelset, mainly because I have too many projects, but on my list.
alright thank you everyone. i’ll make this my spring project and give it a shot. maybe I can score a stand on FB marketplace or something
got my wonky wheel to a shop in the meantime just to have it done for now. he said it’d be ~$20 so figured for that I’ll just let him do it.
binge watched some more youtube videos. looks pretty satisfying to dial it in
I think this will be my last real piece I need to learn and get tools for for bike maintenance I think.
and I agree with you on dialing it in better at home. last time I took my bike to a shop (he re-did my cabling on a mechanical shifting bike I had), the guy was obviously much more skilled than me, but the brakes were rubbing on the first ride and something wasn’t tightened all the way. better if I can do it myself even if it takes 5x as long….as long as I can do it properly.