Topic: spoke tensioning

[Dakotarider]

I would like to retighten my spokes on the wheels.  When tapping them with a wrench some of them sound dead.
I've watched some videos on relacing a wheel but I am wondering if I can re-tension them without removing the tires.
Additionally another bike of mine, 1980 XL500, was in a minor collision and the front wheel has some wobble at the rim side to side, about 1/4" total.  All of the spokes are "dead" sounding.  It still round and has no visual damage.  How should I best proceed to true that up?  Can I just start evenly tightening around the rim and true it up?

[Don R]

 It's a feel kind of thing, but yes you can tighten them up.

[pjlogue]

If you have a few spokes that are "dead" you can tighten them a little and it will not affect the run out much but it's best to check.  If they are all in one area of the wheel then it may indicate a bent rim.  Best to check with a dial gage for hop and run out after any adjusting of spokes.  I always re-tune a wheel after the tire is mounted so yes you can true your wheel without taking the tire off.

For the wheel that was in a collision you can try to true it but if the rim is bent you are probably going to have to replace the rim.  If your rim is a steel rolled rim there is a weld spot where they weld the rim together.  That spot usually shows up as a blip in a dial gage when measuring hop and is confined to a short section of the wheel.  You should not see it when measuring wobble.  You can ignore the weld hop.

-P.

 

[Dakotarider]

Good to hear on the CB

The XL rim is aluminum and has no wheel hop just a wobble side to side.  Would it be logical to try to evenly tighten them by sound?  I've seen videos where they used a hammer to fix the physically bent rim and were able to true it up again.  My rim is not visibly bent.  without a spoke torque wrench my best guess to evenly tighten the spokes from here is the sound from each when tapped.  Higher pitch = tighter spoke.

[pjlogue]

The best way to true a wheel is with a dial gauge.  If you don't have one you can use a wire pointer and back light it to see the variance of pointer gap better.  I would not rely on spoke torque or pitch as a truing method. It will not work because you can have equal torque (tension) on all the spokes and still have the rim out of round.   

In an ideal setting, yes all spokes will have the same tension but that is seldom the case in real life.  You just want to be sure the spokes are under tension and all about equal where the "tone" of each spoke when tapped with a wrench is close to all others.   The main thing is there is no wobble or hop of the rim.   

-P. 

[Dakotarider]

Awesome, that's a relief that I don't need to buy a new rim+.
The collision was a "whiskey throttle" incident like you would find on any youtube fail video. 
I learned lessons on who and who-not to let on my bike.  I assumed common sense when there was none.

[Thomas]

i used a Guitar tuning App on my phone with a spanner, trued with a dial test indicator then went round starting at the valve hole with a small spanner till they all hit the same note, downloaded the App for free