Speaker 1: The wheels are a fundamental part of your bike, and they're the link between you
and the road that you're riding on. They have a tough time dealing with
a wide range of forces that occur from braking, accelerating, turning,
and even the bumps and holes that you ride through on the road surface. Over time,
your wheels can go out-of-true or develop a buckle. Don't worry though because in this
video we're going to show you how to get your wheels running true in no time at all.
The process of truing a wheel can seem like a bit of a daunting task but follow the steps in
this video and I'm sure you'll get it done in no time at all and it might even save
you a trip to the bike shop. To true your wheel, you are going to need a few tools
to enable you to do the job properly. We're going to use a wheel stand like we've got here today,
but you don't have to have that, you can just use your bike and keep the
wheel in its place or use anything that you can support the wheeling correctly.
As well as this, you're also going to need a spoke key that fits the relevant wheels that you've got.
If you've got bladed spokes like this wheel has, you are going to need a bladed spoke holder,
or seeing as we haven't got one today, you can improvise and use an adjustable spanner like this
and just hold the spoke in place nice and straight.
With a wide range of wheels out there, it's worth taking the time beforehand
to research what kind of spokes and spoke nipples your wheel has to make sure that you've got
the correct tool to get the job done. Otherwise, you could find yourself struggling by not using
the correct tools and doing a pretty poor job at it. Some wheels, also, particularly, aero wheels,
tend to feature hidden spoke nipples where the spoke nipple is hidden inside the rim. To gain
access to those, you're going to have to remove your tires and the rim tape too
and access that from the inside of the wheel. The wheel we're using today you can see it has
got external spoke nipples, so we've got nice easy access to gain those and then carry on with the
job. With the wheel removed from the bike, it's a fairly simple process of attaching the wheel into
the truing stand. The wheel we've got today, we'll just use this thru-axle adapter. Slide that in
and we'll slide the other part on, and then once you've got the wheel into the truing stand,
you can then start to assess and find where the buckled area of the wheel is.
If you don't have a truing stand like I mentioned earlier, you can just drop your
wheel back into the bike and use that as a bit of a stand itself and follow
the same truing process. One of the first steps we need to do is to set the truing stand correctly
so that we can use it to accurately see where the wheel is buckled. One of the first things we need
to do is move the part here so it sits up a little bit closer to where the edge of the wheel rim is.
The next step is to adjust this to make these calipers come in nice and close to the rim surface
so that when we spin the wheel, we can use these as our reference points to be able to see where
the wheel is buckled. By spinning it round, moving these in closer until like that they make contact.
You can see here, it's where this wheel starts to make contact with this, so we know
that the buckled area is around here. That's the area we need to start to work on next
and assess what we need to do. Having identified the area of the wheel that
has got the buckled piece, we can then look to check that the spokes in that area aren't damaged
or particularly loose already. We can also check that the rim is not damaged as well because
if there's any of these components that need replacing, we're going to have to
go ahead and replace those before we can try and make the wheel true. Otherwise,
we're going to be chasing it round and round and really going to struggle to make it perfect.
Now that we've got this area identified on the wheel, is where we can start to take our spoke key
and actually make some adjustments to the spoke tension to try and reduce this buckle and move
the rim back across in line to where it needs to be to make the wheel perfectly true again. What
we're going to need to do as I've said is starting at this area. Identify the start point of where
the buckle is which is around this area here. We're going to be looking at this spoke first,
and then we need to assess which direction we need to move the wheel rim across to make it true.
When I'm looking at this here, I can see that the rim needs to move across to this side here,
so the break-in surface side. This is a disc brake wheel. What we're going to need to do is use this
side of the spokes that attach to this side of the hub, and then we're going to have to add
some tension to this spoke to enable it to pull the rim across inline to where we want it to be.
It's important to remember when we're adding spoke tension to one side of the wheel,
that we need to also remove a little bit of tension from the opposite side so that we don't
add a whole load of tension into the wheel which could result in uneven spoke tension throughout
the wheel and a wheel that would buckle very easily and not be ideal for what you need.
It's also important to work in sort of even amounts on this wheel. We're trying to use
the spoke area here where our buckle is, one second.
There, we're trying to work on pairs is quite often a common phrase used in truing a wheel.
You work on a pair of spokes at a time, and then assess the wheel as you go in,
only making small changes to make sure you don't do anything that you don't need to do.
To add and remove tension to the spokes, you're going to need to turn the spoke nipple itself.
This works because it's got a threaded interface between the spoke and the spoke nipple itself.
By turning the spoke nipple anti-clockwise, you can reduce the tension on the spoke
and by turning the spoke nipple clockwise, you can add tension to that spoke. By adding tension,
you're going to move the wheel rim across to the side where the spoke attaches to the hub.
Now that you've got a basic understanding of the principles of the spokes and how adjusting them
will true the wheel, we can go in with our spoke nipple key and start making some adjustments,
making sure that we regularly check our progress to see how straight we're getting the wheel to
make sure we don't do any unnecessary changes. We can go in here, find our first buckled area.
Then use this to keep the spokes straight. We'll start here, hold that straight
because this side needs to move across, I'm going to add some attention to this side,
turning this clockwise this side, and then opposite side,
remove some tension. It's a bit of a trial and error process. Any adjustments you make should
be done in small stages at a time over this area that we've identified as the buckled area.
It's a good process to use a quarter to half a turn on each spoke nipple at a time,
and then check your progress as you go. Having made the necessary adjustments to
your wheel, it should just be a case of a final check over to make sure that you're happy with
everything and the wheel is running nice and true. Then you can remove the wheel from the truing
stand, refit your tire that you removed earlier, and then reinstall the wheel onto the bike.
It's important to note that if you are struggling to get that wheel nice and true,
it could be caused by a different reason that you're not too sure of
so it might be worth heading down to your local bike shop and getting them to give the wheel a
once-over just for peace of mind to make sure you're not riding any dangerous equipment.
There you have it, how to fix a buckled wheel at home enabling you to spend more time riding your
bike and having fun. I hope you've enjoyed this video and if you have, please do give
it a big thumbs up. If you've got any questions, get them down in the comment section down below.
Thanks very much. See you later. [00:07:01] [END OF AUDIO]