Adjusting Your Spokes

Every bike needs regular adjusting to keep the spokes tight. Using the proper technique will keep your wheel true, while keeping a uniform tightness of all of the spokes. You can't just start at one point of the wheel and tighten each spoke down the line, without giving your wheel a serious wobble. It's best to have a spoke torque wrench, but not everyone will have one of those.

Start at the spoke next to the rim-lock (good reference point). Tighten the spoke to moderate tightness, but never more than one turn. Now skip two spokes and go to the third spoke that pulls on the other side of the hub. Tighten that spoke to the same moderate tightness. Sometimes the spoke will be tight, or too tight. You may want to back it off to the same moderate torque as the other spokes. Continue on until you come back to the rim lock spoke that you started with. Now tighten the next spoke past the rim-lock spoke. Do the same procedure until you have made 3 full revolutions of the wheel, all off the spoke should have been tightened with hopefully the same torque on all of the spokes.

Next you need to check the run-out of the rim or how true the wheel is. Take a pencil or dry-erase pen, brace it up against a solid part like the fork or swingarm with the tip close to the rim. Spin the wheel and slowly move the pen closer until it touches. If you are trying to true an old wheel, there may be some sharp bends or dents in the rim that you might not be able to fix. We are trying to minimize the overall side to side wobble. To true the rim you must loosen spokes on one side and then tighten the spokes on the other side. So loosen 2 or 3 spokes about a half of a turn on the side with the pen mark on it, then tighten 2 or 3 spokes on the other side to pull the rim to the center. Spin the wheel again and repeat the truing process. Once it is relatively true, you may want to go over the 3 revolution tightening process again to find if you have any loose spokes.

Once again, the goal is to have all of the spokes with the same torque while your rim is true.