2012-05-01

learning to tighten spokes on cheap wheels

4.13: proj.gear/bike#walmart/tighten spokes on both wheels:
. I have a great new Park Tool SW-42 Four Sided-Spoke
Wrench for Nipples of 1.36 Inch/ $8.40

. the front was easy, give each a 1/4 turn
and things were still ok;
but the rear had some seemingly loose ones,
and when trying to bring those to
the same tension as the others,
I got the rim so twisted it wouldn't turn!
so I had to completely loosen all of them and start over .
. tighten until not wobbly,
1/4 turn all around,
. check the rim areas hitting left brake pad,
(the range was identifiable
because I marked the rim like a clock
but it came out to 1..16)
. use pairs of loosening and tightening
to bend the rim back;
one thing I was surprised at was that
when you would fix one area like that
not only would another part
get bent out of shape,
but the reason for it was that
spoke tensions had increased,
so there was lot of hard torquing of right side,
and a lot of loosening on the left .
. the rim now clears the brake pads,
and it seemed from watching it spin compared to brake pads
that there was no radial diff's,
but the way it acted on the trike rollers
seemed to suggest I might be in for a bumpy ride now .
. the trike rollers make it easy to move the tire around
so that it you can keep your work area in the same location
and aren't confused about which way to turn the spoke nipple .

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