How To Build Bicycle Wheels the Easy Way

one of the most satisfying things you can learn as a bicycle mechanic is how to build bicycle wheels I've taught building bicycle wheels in bicycle shops and I taught it at a university bicycle mechanics course and I've learned that just about anybody can learn how to build a bicycle wheel it's not that difficult if you have a little patience and you can follow a few steps basic steps so I wanted to show you how it's done I think even if you're viewing this on a small screen like on a phone you'll be able to see that I'm actually building this wheel with used components used to have used rim you spoke that's because I took apart an old wheel to get those parts I did that because they've got a lot of these used parts on hand and also because I think it's going to be easier for the camera to pick up the silver on silver modern a lot of modern wheels carbon wheels you have black rim black nipple black spokes black hub things tend to blend into each other and disappear and you can't see it as well and when you're lacing the wheel you have to pay an attention to where you're putting spokes cuz you're trying to put them in the right place the pattern has to match for each set of spokes you put in its I think it's going to be easier to show you that on the video with the silver rim and silver parts so I chose a used used wheel and that's what we're going to work with but speaking of used wheels if you can get a used wheel it's not too hard to find one you can pick them up at Goodwill stores some bike shops might have wheels that they're throw in a way that they would give you or a friend might have an old wheel you can find my flea marks and so on but if you have a used wheel you can take that wheel and use it to learn to build wheels you can study the wheel as it is when you get it to learn the pattern and look at it think about it and then you can take it apart and all the parts will fit for putting it back together again you'll have the right spokes to use the right nipples to use you'll have the right rim and all the hub and they all work so when you take it apart and you put it back together again you're not going to run into any difficulties you don't have to source certain spokes rims and as you do when you build a custom wheel from scratch so that's a good way to go and especially good for beginners who haven't built the wheel before to put the spokes in and build a bicycle wheel you mostly use your hands and a few simple tools you'll see that I'm going to use a little tool to feed the nipples in but you could make your own tool out of a spare spoke I mostly use your hand also have a nipple driver which spins the nipple in which is a cool tool by bicycle research and Park Tool makes one but you'll also need the rim you want to use the hub you want to use and the spokes that fit the wheel you're building you have to get the right length well once you have the right length spokes the hub in the rim you can put it together in about 15 minutes with a little practice and I'm going to show you the process of what they call lacing which is putting the spokes inside and turning these parts into a wheel if you're lacing at all hollow rim it's pretty easy to make the mistake of dropping a nipple inside the rim and then it can be hard to get out you have to shake the wheel until the nipple falls out of the valve hole to prevent this you can use one of the tools shown I use evey T's Mull finger you can see it at the top but a scribe or all or spoke works just fine for this too I'm showing you how to build the most common type of bicycle wheel which is called a cross spoke wheel because the spokes cross each other once you know how to do this pattern how to lace a wheel like this build a wheel like this it'll help you because you can build any kind of wheel you want to build if you want to build a small wheel for a portable bike like these little 17 inch wheels or if you wanted to build a wheel for a high wheel an antique bike those wheels use cross spoke lacing just like modern road bike wheels and mountain bike wheels once you know how to build a wheel like this you can build wheels for almost any bicycle alright we're almost ready to start lacing up the wheel but I want to explain some very simple wheel building math nothing too complicated but when you look at cross spoke wheels you see all the spokes going every which way it can be a little confusing to try to figure it out but it's a simple pattern all bicycle wheels this type of bicycle wheel that we're gonna build has four sets of spokes so I'm gonna show you it can be a 28 spoke wheel so there's four sets of spokes you divide by four you get seven in each set of spokes so what I've done here to show you is I've started with seven spokes in here just to show you you could see individual spokes it's not so complicated when you look at it like this all we're gonna do next is put in another seven on this side then we'll flip the wheel over and we'll complete the other side 7 7 7 and 7 now if you had a 32 spokes in a wheel before sets of 8 right 36 spoke wheel four sets of 9 and so on so that's the basic math in building a bicycle wheel and it's something that will make total sense as we proceed and I show you so I want to show you five basic tips for successful wheel building you want to set aside about an hour for your first wheel build it's important to focus on what you're doing you don't want distractions that can interrupts you have fun with it don't get frustrated and annoyed or get in a hurry just enjoy the process and if you make a mistake you can always rewind the video look at what the video shows and what you did wrong you can fix the mistake and you can continue also I replied of almost every comment so yeah if I have a question you can leave a comment for me and I'll reply back first step in building the bicycle wheel is putting one spoke in the hub and then putting that spoke in the rim now there's lots of different types of rims and I don't know what type of rim you're working with if you're not sure what type room you have we're going to go over it here I recommend going on the Internet to the website of the company in the major rim and looking for instructions technical specifications on your rim because it'll tell you what you have and it'll tell you how to recommend to recommend it to be spoked to be laced up and once you have the directions it's easy to follow them if I love a pattern that I'm going to show you here basically there's two rim types out there today one is just a standard rim by standard rim it means that the the holes the pattern of the holes in the rim run around the center of the rim that's one type very common the other type that's pretty common today because they're used on bikes with disc brakes is an offset rim type and that basically means the spoke pattern is offset to one side of the rim that's so that the offset side it basically offsets the holes to equalize the tension in the rim so you can build a stronger as a disc wheel so those are the two types of rims that are out there so if you have an offset rim you started a little different than if you have a standard rim the other thing is that the spoke hole patterns there's basically two types of patterns the one we're working with is what's called an alternating pattern one spoke hole is on one side of the rim the other spoke causal on the other side of the rim there's also an on all - rating pattern non alternating holes and on that one the holes run the same all the way down the rim all the way around they don't stagger one one to one side one to the other went to the other side so figure out what you have before you start and and then you'll know where to put that for first spoke and I'll show you when we put the spoke in how I figure it out on this room to prepare the spokes for lacing the wheel it's a good idea to put some oil about the consistency of automobile motor oil on the outside of the nipples and on the spoke threads by doing this you'll prevent the nipples from binding in the rim when you're truing the wheel and lacing the wheel and you'll also make sure that when you tighten the spokes you can get them tight enough also the lubrication on the threads on the spokes will allow you to true the wheel down the road and not have to deal with corrosion even five or eight years after you built the wheel the first step is placing the rim flat on a workbench with the valve hole opposite you we're working with a standard rim with the alternating hole pattern if you're working with offset rims here's how they are oriented to begin lacing now begin lacing by inserting one the correct length spokes into any hole in the rear hubs cassette drive side flange you can put it in as shown what's called head out or the other way which is called head in looking at the two rim holes on either side of the valve hole determine which is offset toward the top push the spoke end into that hole and thread on a nipple on rims with centered rim holes the spoke can be placed on either hole next to the valve in the same direction you installed the first spoke place the rest of that set of spokes into the hub using every other hole on that side of the hub now one at a time place these spokes into every fifth rim hole counting from spoke to spoke and add nipples try to turn the nipples onto the spokes about the same amount make sure none are barely tightened or else they'll fall off when you're done you should have a hub and rim joined by seven spokes for 28 spoke wheels and eight spokes if you're working on a thirty-two spoke wheel must have parallel spokes at the valve to provide clearance for pump heads for this you twist the hub to wind the spokes in the proper direction before adding the second set determine which way to twist them from the location of the spoke near as the valve hole if it's on the Left twist the hub to the left counterclockwise if it's on the right twist to the right push the first spoke of the second set through any open hub hole right next to the other spokes but push it in from the opposite direction keeping the hub twisted lace the spoke over the first two spokes already in the rim and under the third then put it in the open rim hole that's centered between the two spokes on either side if you haven't already by this point you'll want to feed and turn the rest of the nipples from outside the rim with one of the tools I showed earlier finish lacing the first side of the wheel by placing the remaining six spokes 4:28 spoke wheels or seven 4:32 spoke wheels through the hub interlacing them and adding nipples be sure not to actually tighten any nipples or else it can make lacing the rest of the wheel more difficult just thread them on enough that they can't fall off new spokes can fit tightly in a new hub they need to be seated or bedded in or else they can have a bow in them that makes finishing the wheel much harder you want them to lay flat to seek the spokes in the hub you can press down on the heads in one with the palm of your hand or tap on them near the hub with a soft mallet to seat and flatten them the next spokes position is trickiest to locate and it's important to get it right here's my top trick to do that every time start by putting the wheel on the bench with the lace side down find the spoke that's in the second hole to the left of the valve hole down close to the hub put a piece of tape on that spoke to mark it looking through the open hub holes you'll see that they are offset from the ones with spokes in them the hole you want to put the spoke in is the one that is just ahead of the spoke you marked with tape the spoke in the photo here is in the correct hole notice how its end is just ahead of the taped spoke now that you know what hole to put the spoke in you can put it into the hub angle it slightly so it will fit through the spokes on the other side now pull the spoke up put it in the rim hole to the left of the valve hole and thread on a nipple you now have parallel spokes at the valve stem you add the next six or seven spokes of the third set of spokes filling every other hub hole start with the spoke next to the first one you put in and place it into the fifth rim hole counting from that first spoke screw on a nipple repeat this process until the whole third set is in place in the wheel finish lacing the wheel by installing the last seven or eight spokes put them through the hub in the opposite direction of the set you just installed they go into the hub easiest if you push them through the spokes so that they are aimed as straight as possible at their hole once they're in the hub laced them to the remaining rim holes being sure to interlace them passing each one over to and under one spoke as you lace the final few spokes feel proud that you now possess the knowledge and skill to assemble one of the lightest strongest most beautiful and most fun objects in the world as a last step give your work of art a final once-over and appreciate that you have parallel spokes at the valve stem and interlaced spokes you just like you did earlier hit the final spokes to flatten them that takes care of the spokes with the bend here the head down spokes but you want to also pull up the spokes with the heads up which are on the inside what you're trying to do is get all the spokes all the bend out of the spokes because you want the spokes to all be the same which helps when you're chewing and tensioning and also takes any stress from being built left inside the spokes in the wheel which affects it when you're chewing and tensioning another trick you can use is you take a little screwdriver and you slip it underneath the heads-up spoke and that leaves it on top of the heads-down spoke and if you push down you'll both pull up this spoke and flatten that spoke seating the spoke bend and pulling the head of the spoke into the rim and bedding the spoke in another good thing to do is to get the nipples seated in the rim pulling them in and to do that you grab parallel pairs of spokes so I'll grab this parallel pair here I'll grab this parallel pair here and I'll squeeze them towards each other that pulls the nipple into the rim it also helps seat the spokes see how the spokes get bent a little bit those two processes will help make it easier to true intention the wheel because the spokes will all be the same length of all or closer to the same leg because you take them to band out and seated them all when we started lacing I said to turn the nipple onto the spoke about four turns so if you were perfect you could do that but nobody's perfect and what tends to happen is as you can see you get some that are threaded down further than others so the first step in truing and tensioning the wheel and rounding the wheel is to set all the nipples at the same height on the spoke because the nipples are what are holding on to the rim and if you get their nipples all at about the same height you're going to start with the wheel a little rounder and a little truer than if you start with them all at a different height so to do that it's pretty easy if you have some basic tools you can either use a screwdriver these are slotted nipples and with slotted nipples you can use a screw driver which fits in the slot or if you have one like I mentioned before you can use a nipple driver which is a little tool that let you spin the they spoke in more quickly I'll show you how that works you just place it in the slot in the nipple you spin the tool and you watch and when each nipple let's say you decide that you want to go down I mean I would go down to maybe to expose two millimeters and stop there you can do the same with a screwdriver all this does is make it a little faster now there are some nipples that aren't slotted but have a square yet on the inside these tools won't work for that if you use something like as parks square Drive nipple screwdriver it has a square and that fits on the square dog nipples and you can do the same thing with this well I hope you liked lacing the wheel it's a fun process and as much as lacing is fun I think you'll find truing and finishing the wheel tensioning the spokes and getting a ready to ride equally fun if not more fun but you want to check your wheel one more time before you start truing and tensioning make sure that you have at the valve stem you came out with parallel spokes at the valve stem and then go around the wheel and look at each place that the final cross occurs on the spokes and make sure that at every cross the spoke is interlaced under two others over the third if it's cross three or the second if it's crossed two so you just go around and check on both sides you find one that isn't crossed just loosen the nipple take the spoke and put it under or over depending on which side what needs to happen so then to true the wheel you're gonna need a spoke wrench most of the wheels today most of the spokes and nipples you buy are going to use parks black spoke wrench but regardless of what brand made the spoke wrench you're going to just want to make sure it's a tight fit on the nipple you don't want any looseness so if you have an old smoked wrench you're not sure what size it is try it on the spoke and make sure it's a good fit the process of truing and tensioning the wheel making it round making it tight and making it laterally straight side-to-side is a trial and error process even the best wheel builders in the world are doing it by a trial and error they have a lot of experience because they've done it many times but they still make small adjustments and keep trying little by little to bring the wheel into true the most of the time the turns that you're making on the nipples to true the wheel and round the wheel are approximately a half a turn almost never would you crank the nipple many many turns a little bit is all it takes there's two mistakes that most beginners make one mistake is turning the wrong nipple in other words trying to tighten or loosen the wrong spoke it's easy to get confused if you constantly look at the nipples up here you could pick this spoke when you met to turn this spoke pretty easily when you meant to tighten or loosen this spoke the way to avoid that is if you know that you're going to move the wheat you're trying to move the wheel to the to this side you want to turn a spoke on this side and to find it you could just check and make sure that that spoke that you want to turn is on this side of the hub and then follow the spoke up to the rim and then you'll be sure to turn the right spoke and tighten or loosen the one you wanted to that's one mistake so you have to pay attention when you're truing the wheel if you're not able to focus then put it put it away and come back to it later when you can focus on what you're doing and don't be in a hurry just be patient take your time enjoy the process I can be frustrating at first but once you get the hang of it it's it's a lot of fun the other common mistake people make is they turn the spoke nipple the wrong way instead of tightening they loosen or instead of loosening they tighten that's an easy mistake to make if you if you turn the nipple when it's at different positions on the wheel the way to think of it is if you're looking from outside the rim down at the nipple clockwise turns turning to the right just like any nut and bolt tightens the spoke counterclockwise turns loosen the spoke so if you turn to the left you loosen turn to the right you tighten and if you're always thinking about the nipple as if you're looking down from the outside of the rim onto the top of the spoke top of the nipple you won't get it wrong but you do have to think about it every now and then and you might find yourself turning the nipple the wrong way and catch yourself and that's okay you just go back and turn it the other way the good thing when you're true in the wheels you can actually see what you're doing you'll have an indicator showing if you turn the the rim to smoke the wrong way the rim will move the wrong way when you spin the wheel and check your results you'll see that it's out so what we're going to do now is I'm going to put the wheel in the truing stand and I'm going to show you the wobble the first what we'll do is we'll fix side to side that's that's lateral adjustments to get the wheel true and take out the wobble the side-to-side Wolper and then what we'll do is we'll check for hops up and down deviations roundness issues and we'll fix those then that'll knock it out side to side again so we'll check that and then we'll go back to roundness again and slowly but surely we'll get it to where the wheel is where we like it at that point we'll tension the spokes get all the spokes tight because they need to be very tight in order to be able to ride the wheel and have it hold up out on the road you can actually spend as much time as you want true in a wheel you can go for absolutely perfect so perfect that when you spin the wheel you can't see any side-to-side deviation or any up and but you don't need to go that perfect either it only needs to be perfect enough to ride down the road stay straight and operate within the brakes if you're using caliper brakes on the rim it needs to be better than if you were using disc brakes at the hub but still even if it was slightly out of true like a couple millimeters one way or the other slightly out of round you'd never feel it riding down the road but ideally you try to get it as good as you can get it by eye and at that point you can stop ride it see how it does you will know pretty quick if the wheel is good if you finish the job or not because the wheel that isn't tight will tend to loosen and you've got a true when you're riding the bike if that happens though with the skills that you've developed practicing your truing and tensioning you learn how to true it more quickly and then you learn how to get it tight enough so it doesn't come out of true but wheel is coming out of true it just the spokes just need to be tighter it's almost impossible to get the spokes too tight so when you tension the wheel get it good and tight it should be difficult to turn the spoke nipples now we're going to talk about more of this as I go along and show you how it's done the do things you fix when you're truing a wheel is side-to-side or wobble or lateral and up and down which is roundness or vertical or sometimes they call it hop for side to side wobbles you're working with the spokes on either side of the rim so it's pretty easy to think about it if you want it to move the rim in this direction you can tighten the spokes on this side and loosen the spokes on this side and the rim will move in this direction vice versa if you want to go in that direction so that's how you take out side-to-side wobbles if it's a short wobble just over three or four spokes you just work with 3 or 4 spokes if it's a big one you would work with more spokes and slowly the rim will move right over and get nice and round it can take a lot of time if it's there are a lot of wobbles but basically you work on one wobble at a time until the whole rim is nice side to side nice and true [Music] you now when you're working on up and down it's a different process when you work on up and down or what you could call hops like an egg shape you find the high spots and you tighten the spokes you don't worry about side-to-side too much side-to-side too much you just worry about removing the egg shape so if the rim has a high spot right here all I need to do is tighten the spokes right there and it'll pull the rim down at the same time it pulls the rim down it pushes the rim out in other areas where it has the ability to move because the spokes aren't very tight there so we're going to do these steps on the wheel in the touring stance so you can see the rim hopefully you'll be able to see how it changes adjustment as I make these adjustments with the spoke nipples it's fun I think you'll enjoy it as you get the hang of it and become a good at it without too much practice you I'm going to truant just built wheel and a Turing stand because chunks and has these nice indicators down here on either side of the rim and I can come down here and get real close and I can should be able to see what I'm working on with the spokes and the indicators and see the changes in the side-to-side and the up and down the room as we true but if you don't have a truing stand you could also put the wheel in the frame of the bicycle you're actually building the wheel for you can see what I've done here is pretty simple I just put the seat on the edge of the garage door which lifts the rear wheel off the ground and holds it there and then I can sit here and spin the wheel and make adjustments use the frame of the bicycle it works just like a truing stand I can use the brake blocks as indicators to watch side to side and up and down in the rim and make adjustments with the spokes and one of the advantages here is that when you're working on the wheel in the bike frame you know that you can Center it to the frame you don't need special tools you'll see when I show you truing in the wheel truing stand that there's a special tool called a disengage I use and there's another way to do it if you don't have a dish engaged but if you work in the frame you can Center to the frame of your bike as you're truing and rounding the wheel which is a nice way to do it you don't have a garage door you could put the bike in a trainer that's another way to get the rear wheel off the ground for the front wheel of course you could just raise the bike higher up to get it off to get the front wheel off the ground if you're building the front wheel so I've got the wheel in the truing stand I'm going to come in tight with the camera so that you can see what we're doing first we'll start with the side-to-side truing for that use these two indicators and you position them up and down until you have them right next to the rim now when you spin the wheel you can see the wobbles in the wheel remember this is a brand new wheel spokes are kind of loose well very loose still and we're don't expected to be perfect after we just laced it up so right now I'm going to work on fixing the side-to-side wobble you can see that it's coming over and hitting the right indicator so if I want to move it away from that indicator you loosen the spokes on the right-hand side and you tighten the spokes on the left-hand side so we'll start with this first wobble there aren't very many wobbles in this rim so we'll start with the first one back here there it's rubbing now if I loosen this spoke which is on the left this side of the hop tighten the nipple half a turn at a time and I give it a spin that's slight adjustment right there completely fix the problem so now we'll bring the caliper a little closer and we find the next wobble if the wheel was perfectly centered in this drawing stand it would be right between the two indicators so I'm going to so I know that because it's rubbing here it needs to move this way a little bit so again I'm going to loosen the spokes on this side of the rim and I'm going to tighten the spoke on the other side I had actually loosened two on this side I tightened one on this side let's see what effect it had much better so now we can bring the indicator in see how it's getting smaller and smaller now we're going to tighten these spokes on the left side a little bit in half-turn increments loosen this side a little bit look again as you tighten in one spot make adjustments and change it in one spots it's common for the wobble to move so sometimes you have to chase it around the rim a little bit so again I'm loosening spokes on the right tightening spokes on the left over the section of the wobble you can see that it's what I said a trial and error process you go little by little use your indicator and keep improving it as it gets closer to straight you often have to make a lot of little adjustments or you're moving a lot of little wobbles and guests it tends to get as it gets closer to perfect it can seem like it's harder to true but it's not really harder it's just that you have to look more closely to see the wobbles and makes lighter adjustments go more gradually now we've got it almost centered because we tightened those other spokes made the adjustments that we made we've knocked it out the other way so we go to that section and now we're gonna loosen the smoke on the left tighten the smoke on the right two spokes see how we did it's getting better [Music] you just have to take your time make small adjustments check what's happening and you'll keep getting better and better when you have it side to side pretty close you're pretty happy with how it is then it's time to check up and down because the to influence each other the true for roundness to adjust the vertical on the wheel you move the indicators the caliper down below the rim because we're going to cite the gap between the bottom of the rim and the tip of the indicator the calipers here so we bring them together like this look at this gap right here and we'll give the wheel a spin you should be able to see that it's got a hop a high spot as they bring the caliper and it becomes more apparent see how it hits on every revolution so the wheel actually is not round it has a high spot in it so our job is to remove that high spot so to do that we find that we stop it at the caliper where it's hitting and then we tightened the spokes in this area which pulls that part of the rim up that's hitting right here so let's try half a turn half a turn half a turn give it a spin [Music] already it's a little better so let's get it back to hitting there it's still hitting another half a turn tighter half a turn tighter half a turn tighter now if you didn't have a truing stand and you're working in your bike frame like I showed you'll have a brake caliper on either side of the rim and you can actually put a pencil across the brick blocks and create this line that you cite to for finding hop let's get a little better each time it's still rubbing a little bit they've moved a little bit it was over here and now it's moved over here half a turn half turn quarter turn maybe half a turn let's try it again number I said you chase it around but we're getting closer with each little adjustment we just take our time [Music] [Music] [Music] notice that all I've done is tighten spokes you don't have to worry about left and right spokes you're tightening each spoke another situation you can run into when you're rounding a wheels you can have a dip in the wheel and see how the wheel comes around and there's actually a low spot in the wheel usually working with the high spots because as a new wheel just being laced up the spokes are all relatively loose but sometimes there might be a bad part of the rim that's a little low like on this rim you can see that low spot that's coming around to fix this is actually kind of fun and it's just a matter of finding that low spot and looking at it and figuring out well how wide is it how many spokes does it span so in this case the low spot is close to the valve stem hole you can't see that we can kind of see it and it's worst over about 4 spokes 1 2 3 4 to get this out of there what we're going to do is we're going to loosen those 4 spokes and we know that this wheel has 28 spokes in it so if I loosen those 4 spokes this part of the rim will go down once I tighten the other 24 spokes around the rim so let's give that a try we'll come back to that spot we'll loosen these the low spots pretty big and you can I can feel this nipple is really tight here times I am doing it a half a turn at a time to try to feel how loose the spoke is these two weren't that tight so it was mainly these two here so let's give it a spin and see if just loosening helped it it did we still have a little a little low spot still here so let's go around see if we can't bring that out to do it I'm just going to go around and tighten all the way around 24 spokes till we get back to that low spot again by tightening these spokes I'm pulling down on the rim all around the rim because I pull down on the rim all around the rim it forces the rim to pop out at that low spot about halfway around now just do it a half turn at a time keep going almost there [Music] now we're back to the area we were working on before let's see how we did so that's a technique for getting a low spot up now you know how to get their high spots out and the low spots out and I think it's a lot one of the funner parts of drawing you can get a wheel perfectly round there's a lot of satisfaction in that and it's not hard to do it just takes a little time and patience just keep going until it's as round as you want to get it you can get it so round most rims anyway and get so round that when you spin the wheel you can't see any deviation by eye which is a which is a very satisfying thing it to this point you go back and work on side to side again and then you continue you come back you work on round again and you keep going until you're really happy with both side to side is where you like it and roundness is where you like it when you satisfied with how sure you've got it side to side and up and down and you're pretty happy you want to check centering the centering of the rim over the hub that makes sure that when you put the wheel in the frame it'll be centered in the frame and not off to one side of the other the some truing stands like this Park truing stand automatically shows me where Center is so I just true to the indicators the caliper on the trowing stand if you have a truing stand that doesn't do that a trick is to simply flip the wheel in the truing stand and just check one side you look at the caliper the indicator next to the rim and if the same distance between the tip of the indicator and the rim whether it's in put in this way or this way and you know that the rim is centered that's a quick way to do it there are also tools called Dish engages which is a tool that provides three points there's a point in the center and each end is a foot so you put this tool on the rim and you adjust the center foot see how I've adjusted it and now the two ends are not touching and you adjust it so that all three points touch on this side and if the wheel is perfectly centered all three points will touch on this side and this side if you have a situation where it's a big gap on one side and it's touching on the other side it tells you that the rim needs to move halfway in between so a dishing tool is a nice way to go but you don't need it if you have a truing stand you can flip the wheel around and if you're working in the frame of your bicycle you can go by the stage the tubes on the bicycle and Center between them and that'll work fine too you want to check centering after each step and you definitely want to check when you think you're all done with the wheel as one final last step because you don't want to end up with a wheel that's too close to one side of the frame or the other when you check for centering if you find that the wheel is off-center out of position not right in the middle then what you need to do is move the rim in the direction needs to go you do that by working on only one side of the spokes so you go to the valve stem hole start there so you know where you started and then if you want it to move the rim this direction go around and turn all these nipples every nipple on the right side the same distance a quarter turn if you want to move it a tiny bit half turn if you want to move it a little more then you check the centering and keep doing that until you get the rim right where you want it another important step when building a wheel is to what they call stress relieve which is to put a little pressure on the spokes sort of simulate what's going to happen when you ride the wheel down the road and that seats the nipples in the rim and it seats the spokes in the hub and it takes any stress out as you tighten the nipples things get wound up and by squeezing stress releasing relieving what I'll show you just makes the wheel settle in and means that when it's all done and you're out riding you're much less likely to have problems with it going out of true to do that you just use your hands I bring the rim oh they'll spin the rim around until the valve stem hole is in front of me and then put my left hand on the parallel spokes and my right hand on the parallel spokes on the right and then I squeeze with authority might not look like I'm squeezing it very hard but I am actually pulling pretty hard on the spokes trying to seat them and if they're not seated correctly the pressure will pull them into place and if any of the spokes are wound or the nipples are wound it will help them relax I go around the rim squeezing parallel pairs of spokes [Music] until I'm back at the valve stem hole and I'll do that maybe three times in the course of a wheel build definitely at the end just to make sure that all the stress is out of the wheel the final step of your wheel build is tensioning the wheel I've spoken about this a couple of times now important it is to get the spokes uniformly tight so that the wheel holds up when you're out riding it to tension the wheel at this point just to go over what we've accomplished the wheel is as true as we can get it side to side it's as round as we can get it up and down and it's centered now what we're going to do is we're going to uniformly tighten the spokes a little by a little and not lose the true or the up-and-down and keep it on center - to do that is sort of a precision process it's not difficult but you want to pay attention to what you're doing and what you do is you start at the valve stem hole again and you go around the rim turning each Sippel 1/2 turn at a time just a half turn at a time you go around the wheel doing that you do it once and then you check you see if it came out of true you see if it came out of round and you make sure it's centered still centered if anything changed fine-tune it stress relieved gently on the spokes then go around start back at the valve stem half turn at a time all the way around again you'll have to do this approximately six to eight times depending on how tight your spokes were when you finished ruing and rounding and centering the wheel sometimes it'll be fairly tight but when you get done with the tensioning the spokes should be very tight now if you're not sure how tight is right go to another bicycle you have of the same type the wheel you're building it has on it and then squeeze the spokes on that with your hands like when you stress relieve the wheel you're building feel the spokes on the wheel you have and compare it to the wheel that you're building and you can get a feel for it you can also pluck the spokes and listen to the tone that they may and then compare the tight wheel on a bike that's riding well and the wheels are good your wheel wants to be as tight as those books so this takes a little practice and a little experience but you can get it high enough tension to ride it no problem and remember if the wheel is going out of true when you're actually riding your new wheel you just get it tighter again well if you made it all the way to the end of this video good job hopefully you now have the skills and the knowledge to take a crack at building wheels and maybe you'll end up becoming a wheel building fool like yours truly it's a lot of fun it's very satisfying and when you can build your own wheels if you do decide to go on a long trip on a bicycle a broken wheel or a bent rim won't won't slow you down you'll just get the parts you need and you can fix it on the road which is or you can help your friend if somebody's riding or you have a friend with a bike so it's a great skill to have earlier in the video I mentioned that if you get stuck or you have a question you want some help if you leave me a comment I'll reply back and help you out with however I can just remember that fun process it takes a little practice to master take your time learn from your mistakes be patient about it and good luck [Music]

Channel: Jim Langley

Views: 439,641

Rating: 4.9108357 out of 5

Keywords: Jim Langley, bicycles, bikes, bicycle mechanics, bicycle repair, bicycling, wheel building, Park Tools, how to, do it yourself, fixing bicycles, bicycle spoke, wheel truing, wheel lacing, spoke tensioning, spoke wrench, EVT Mulfinger

Id: XUqul03hbZ8

Length: 59min 29sec (3569 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020