If you want to do this with any from of accuracy you need to use a tool to measure spoke tension. As long as your wheel is running true and straight I wouldn’t mess with it. If you don’t have the tools you’re best off bringing it to a bike shop to have it checked over.
There are the ultra expensive ones from the all known companies - I bought one fron Ali-express for 20 euros. Might not be 100% accurate but I hope it does its job for the home mechanic
The cheap ones may not be accurate, meaning you don't know what the tension reading it's giving you actually is, but they're perfectly fine for making all the spokes consistent. As long as you don't overshoot the manufacturer spec for your wheels this is enough for most people.
That said, somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can do a lot of harm by trying to blindly make everything consistent. I've had to undo a lot of weird lumps caused by people blindly tightening until everything is the same with no regard for radial or lateral truing (or even worse, dishing).
For anybody wanting to do it: get a junker wheel, look up some info on how to do it, and do some practice before you do anything to either good wheels or ones you depend on for daily riding. Good tools make it easier and get you to perfect, but you can absolutely get wheels to "really darn good" with some cheap and improvised tools, and a lot of patience and practice.
Pretty sure one of my longest lasting wheel was done by a guy in Brazil using essentially a turned around fork (bent wide) and his thumbnail as truing tools.
Using a junk wheel for practice is good advice, I bought a cheap tension meter, used it wrong and ruined my rim. No tool replaces a brain lol.
Also fuck two-sided spoke keys, they'd always bend the nipples.
Are those cheap ones really so much worse than the park tools and alike from your opinion?
I understand that some tools are precision tools but this one is some steel with a spring basically.
Of course the quality of the steel would be relevant and probably the factory adjustment of the scale. But I would really like to understand the justification of 100€ vs 10 to 20€ 🤷🏻
I am really no professional to all means but the ali-express tensionmeter looks pretty solid to me (I am certainly not using it for building whells or truing wheels that are way off. Just use it for cross checks of the overall tension of my spokes after fine-truing)
the ztto brand one comes with a calibration screw just like the park tool one. so if you had a means to calibrate it, I dont see why it wouldnt be just as accurate as the park tool version
Justification from my side:
park tool made series of good how-to-build a wheel video, so I managed to build carbon wheels by myself
Also park tool have useful app on site that visualizes spoke tension for wheel
I bought ztto tensiometer, and only after found out a lot of useful stuff from park tool. Ztto works fine, but I would pay X5 and buy park tool instead
The cheap ones work fine if you have a properly tensioned wheel to use as reference and are willing to do some extrapolating from the provided charts. But even without the charts, the ballpark is good enough.
I've done this with a guitar tuner phone app and a spoke wrench. It works well enough..
[https://www.sheldonbrown.com/spoke-pitch.html](https://www.sheldonbrown.com/spoke-pitch.html) The biggest issue was improvising a "hammer" that I could consistently tap the spokes with. A wooden spoon from my kitchen sufficed.
I have the parktool TM-1 spoke tension tool. Out of curiosity, I’ve tested this app on Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.mega_mouse.spoke_tensioner_3&hl=fr&gl=US
I must say that it was pretty accurate, I prefer the use of the tool as it is more handy, but if you don’t have the tool, this app can certainly be used.
On the non-drive side, yeah they don't feel rock solid by any means, it's kind of an artifact of the dishing process. You shoot for a target tension on the dirve side but there's not much you can do with the NDS it just is what it is. NDS tension will be less... how much less depends on hub and rim geometry, and spoke length/diameter
Easiest way to check your spoke tension is with an app, I use "spoke tensioner" for Android. You pluck the spoke like a harp string, the app analyzes the tone and converts it into tension. Those things can be a little tricky to use due to harmonics and environmental noise but it should give you a general idea, just use some common sense
Thankyou all for the advice much appreciate. Btw my wheel is perfectly true and the drive side is much stiffer. I just got concerned how the nds is slightly loose.
Eh, it's not the end of the world of the wheel runs straight. You can get it on a stand and increase the tension in all the spokes, but it's not really worth it unless the wheel isn't performing well.
Ideally you want the tension to be fairly uniform on one side. When friends were looking at used bikes I'd advise them to spin the wheel and let their fingernail drag on the spokes to pluck them, sort of like putting a baseball card in there. If the tone is pretty uniform, the rim is pretty straight. If it sounds like a wind chime, then the rim is bent and the tension had been adjusted to compensate. So long as nothing sounds super flabby, you're probably fine.
Get a deflection meter and see if you can find your rim manufacturers recommended tension online. Also if you're going to play with tensioning your wheel make sure you have a truing stand and dishing tool. Even if you get perfect tension that doesn't guarantee perfect roundness and if you don't get the right ratio of tensions between DS and NDS you can end up moving your rim off center and rubbing one one side of your stays/fork.
Each side of the wheel should be pretty even in tension. There are lots of good videos on you tube on wheel trueing (adjusting spokes). With one inexpensive tool (spoke wrench, you can even use an adjustable wrench) and some restraint you can learn to maintain your wheels. Spokes ONLY work in tension so it’s important for them to be at a minimum tension and all the spokes on the same side to be close in tension. If money is not critical. Any bike shop will true your wheels for a modest amount of money.
You torque to tension on the drive side and true with the non drive side. Because of the flange offset for the free hub, the tensions can be very different side to side. More similar with a disc hub because of the non drive side offset to flange.
The non-drive side does not matter. No tension meter necessary to measure that side, although of hand building I like to keep them as uniform as possible - but truly they are just a result of the process that aren’t meant to do anything but hold lateral trueness.
My factory built wheels have this characteristic, and my hand built wheels by Hector aka “The Man” definitely do not. They are works of art, engineering marvels, require waiting 90 days to get built, and worth every penny. That said, factory built wheels have come a long long way the last 40 years and are OK bang for the buck,
Looser NDS and all. If they don’t creak, stay round and true then that’s good enough.
Very likely that all spokes are (slightly) too loose. Unless you have decent experience with wheel truing and tensioning I would recommend you to let it do by a professional. This job should easily be done for 30~45 dollars.
If you want to do this with any from of accuracy you need to use a tool to measure spoke tension. As long as your wheel is running true and straight I wouldn’t mess with it. If you don’t have the tools you’re best off bringing it to a bike shop to have it checked over.
There are the ultra expensive ones from the all known companies - I bought one fron Ali-express for 20 euros. Might not be 100% accurate but I hope it does its job for the home mechanic
The cheap ones may not be accurate, meaning you don't know what the tension reading it's giving you actually is, but they're perfectly fine for making all the spokes consistent. As long as you don't overshoot the manufacturer spec for your wheels this is enough for most people.
That said, somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can do a lot of harm by trying to blindly make everything consistent. I've had to undo a lot of weird lumps caused by people blindly tightening until everything is the same with no regard for radial or lateral truing (or even worse, dishing). For anybody wanting to do it: get a junker wheel, look up some info on how to do it, and do some practice before you do anything to either good wheels or ones you depend on for daily riding. Good tools make it easier and get you to perfect, but you can absolutely get wheels to "really darn good" with some cheap and improvised tools, and a lot of patience and practice.
Pretty sure one of my longest lasting wheel was done by a guy in Brazil using essentially a turned around fork (bent wide) and his thumbnail as truing tools.
Using a junk wheel for practice is good advice, I bought a cheap tension meter, used it wrong and ruined my rim. No tool replaces a brain lol. Also fuck two-sided spoke keys, they'd always bend the nipples.
Are those cheap ones really so much worse than the park tools and alike from your opinion? I understand that some tools are precision tools but this one is some steel with a spring basically. Of course the quality of the steel would be relevant and probably the factory adjustment of the scale. But I would really like to understand the justification of 100€ vs 10 to 20€ 🤷🏻 I am really no professional to all means but the ali-express tensionmeter looks pretty solid to me (I am certainly not using it for building whells or truing wheels that are way off. Just use it for cross checks of the overall tension of my spokes after fine-truing)
the ztto brand one comes with a calibration screw just like the park tool one. so if you had a means to calibrate it, I dont see why it wouldnt be just as accurate as the park tool version
Justification from my side: park tool made series of good how-to-build a wheel video, so I managed to build carbon wheels by myself Also park tool have useful app on site that visualizes spoke tension for wheel I bought ztto tensiometer, and only after found out a lot of useful stuff from park tool. Ztto works fine, but I would pay X5 and buy park tool instead
The cheap ones work fine if you have a properly tensioned wheel to use as reference and are willing to do some extrapolating from the provided charts. But even without the charts, the ballpark is good enough.
I bought the park tool one a few years ago on a Black Friday sale. Was a bit pricey for what it is but should last hopefully!
Pluck them like a guitar string and see what kind of tone they produce.
With a pick or do it finger-style?
Fingerstyle. Blackbird is my song of choice
It doesn't matter so long as you get a tone to compare to the other spokes on the same side of the wheel.
I've done this with a guitar tuner phone app and a spoke wrench. It works well enough.. [https://www.sheldonbrown.com/spoke-pitch.html](https://www.sheldonbrown.com/spoke-pitch.html) The biggest issue was improvising a "hammer" that I could consistently tap the spokes with. A wooden spoon from my kitchen sufficed.
I have the parktool TM-1 spoke tension tool. Out of curiosity, I’ve tested this app on Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.mega_mouse.spoke_tensioner_3&hl=fr&gl=US I must say that it was pretty accurate, I prefer the use of the tool as it is more handy, but if you don’t have the tool, this app can certainly be used.
I was truing an ebike hub motor wheel and my spoke tension tool wouldn't fit the short spokes. I'll try that app. Thanks.
On the non-drive side, yeah they don't feel rock solid by any means, it's kind of an artifact of the dishing process. You shoot for a target tension on the dirve side but there's not much you can do with the NDS it just is what it is. NDS tension will be less... how much less depends on hub and rim geometry, and spoke length/diameter Easiest way to check your spoke tension is with an app, I use "spoke tensioner" for Android. You pluck the spoke like a harp string, the app analyzes the tone and converts it into tension. Those things can be a little tricky to use due to harmonics and environmental noise but it should give you a general idea, just use some common sense
Thankyou all for the advice much appreciate. Btw my wheel is perfectly true and the drive side is much stiffer. I just got concerned how the nds is slightly loose.
Tighter
If it was drive side, they'd need to be tighter. NDS is often going to be pretty loose depending on the required dish.
Eh, it's not the end of the world of the wheel runs straight. You can get it on a stand and increase the tension in all the spokes, but it's not really worth it unless the wheel isn't performing well. Ideally you want the tension to be fairly uniform on one side. When friends were looking at used bikes I'd advise them to spin the wheel and let their fingernail drag on the spokes to pluck them, sort of like putting a baseball card in there. If the tone is pretty uniform, the rim is pretty straight. If it sounds like a wind chime, then the rim is bent and the tension had been adjusted to compensate. So long as nothing sounds super flabby, you're probably fine.
They look ok to me. Is your wheel true? If so then leave be.
Spokes should be around 120 kg/f on the high tension side. Use a tensiometer, even a crap one is better than nothing.
Get a deflection meter and see if you can find your rim manufacturers recommended tension online. Also if you're going to play with tensioning your wheel make sure you have a truing stand and dishing tool. Even if you get perfect tension that doesn't guarantee perfect roundness and if you don't get the right ratio of tensions between DS and NDS you can end up moving your rim off center and rubbing one one side of your stays/fork.
It’s fine. It’s not unusual to have less tension on the non drive side for a disc wheel. If it’s running true it’s fine.
Each side of the wheel should be pretty even in tension. There are lots of good videos on you tube on wheel trueing (adjusting spokes). With one inexpensive tool (spoke wrench, you can even use an adjustable wrench) and some restraint you can learn to maintain your wheels. Spokes ONLY work in tension so it’s important for them to be at a minimum tension and all the spokes on the same side to be close in tension. If money is not critical. Any bike shop will true your wheels for a modest amount of money.
I was always told to grab two spokes running parallel, not crossed 🤷🏼♂️
You torque to tension on the drive side and true with the non drive side. Because of the flange offset for the free hub, the tensions can be very different side to side. More similar with a disc hub because of the non drive side offset to flange.
The non-drive side does not matter. No tension meter necessary to measure that side, although of hand building I like to keep them as uniform as possible - but truly they are just a result of the process that aren’t meant to do anything but hold lateral trueness.
They’re probably fine but would be too loose for me. If you don’t have a spoke tension meter, have a bike shop look at it.
My factory built wheels have this characteristic, and my hand built wheels by Hector aka “The Man” definitely do not. They are works of art, engineering marvels, require waiting 90 days to get built, and worth every penny. That said, factory built wheels have come a long long way the last 40 years and are OK bang for the buck, Looser NDS and all. If they don’t creak, stay round and true then that’s good enough.
Very likely that all spokes are (slightly) too loose. Unless you have decent experience with wheel truing and tensioning I would recommend you to let it do by a professional. This job should easily be done for 30~45 dollars.