I'm sick with a mancold so I decided it best not to go out to a cold garage tonight. So I stayed in and played with Rhonda's nipples!
Here's how you can check wheel true without a dial gauge.
Zip-tie a short piece of rod (aluminum gun cleaning rod works really well) to either your balancing stand, fork leg, or swingarm.
Get it close to the spokes to measure radial (up/down or "hop") runout
And close to the sides for lateral (side-to-side or "wobble").
True your wheel as you normally would. There are plenty of guides out there. Check here:
http://forums.sohc4.net/index.php/topic,368.0.htmlNow set your rod so it just barely touches (you should hear it when you rotate the wheel) on the closest point and then rotate your wheel to where it looks like it is the furthest from the rod (it should still be pretty close).
Honda spec for a true wheel is 0.5mm or better.
How can you measure this without a dial gauge? You could use a set of feeler gauges to measure this distance. But if you don't have those handy, you should certainly have some zip ties since you just used some to attach your measurement rod! Measure the tip of one, and see if it can slide into the gap.
When I slid this one (0.75mm) into the gap I had, there was noticeable movement of the rod
This would tell me that the gap is much less than the 0.25mm difference it would take to get me better than 0.5mm runout overall.
If you used smaller zipties, your measuring tool will be even smaller and you can get an even more precise result.
I prefer this method when truing wheels because I find staring at a dial gauge just makes me go crazy! The irregularities of a tire will make up all the difference anyway.
