kyle halleman

I Learned How to True a Bike Wheel and it Wasn’t so Bad

July 21, 2022

My wife got me an early birthday gift, a Priority Classic Plus carbon belt drive bicycle. And I love it. It arrived in a damaged box, but the bike seemed fine. I followed their assembly instructions closely, minus the part about getting it professionally inspected. My thinking was: I’m a bike guy now, I should figure out how to inspect and maintain this myself.

My first problem was a brake pad getting pretty close to a rim. Thankfully they had a video on solutions to that. Those adjustments worked well enough initially. In that video, they also mentioned a wheel being out of true—whatever that meant.

After riding a little bit I did notice the front wheel would wobble side to side slightly. My wheel was not true! I contemplated bringing it in to the local bike shop to fix, but the Internet told me it actually wasn’t that hard to do yourself. And—sure enough—it wasn’t.

I found this article on Bicycling.com particularly helpful. I was scared off at first when it said I’d need a truing stand—sounds expensive. But they also said you could do it on the bike if you had rim brakes, which I do. Just throw it in a bike repair stand (also expensive 😒).

Trying to keep costs at a minimum, I purchased a triple spoke wrench because I didn’t know the size of my spoke nipples (they’re 3.45mm, by the way). That’s it. I have my bike hanging on a horizontal rack in the garage, which is basically like a bike repair stand, right?

While that Bicycling.com article was useful to know the theory and tools I’d need, I wanted to see someone actually do it. Thankfully, YouTube exists. And there’s plenty of truing videos. I found this tutorial helpful. I liked the guy’s explanation of finding the start and finish of where the brake would touch, and using a marker to mark the rim. In just a little while my front wheel was looking much better. Success: I’m a bike guy now.

But there was still the back wheel, which was not accessible while on the bike hanger. I briefly contemplated just lifting the bike off the ground and spinning the wheel until I found the spots to loosen and tighten, but then decided it’d make more sense to flip the bike upside down. Truing this wheel was more difficult since reaching the brake on the handlebars and keeping an eye on the brake pads touching the rims required some interesting neck-craning skills. But I did it. And now I have two wheels that are mostly true.

This feels like a recipe blog where there’s this long story no one cares about until you get to the actual recipe. Here’s the bullet points about truing your bike wheel:

Not-Actually-Pro Tips for Truing a Bike Wheel

It sounds scary, but it really wasn’t too bad and you can’t do permanent damage to your wheel if you mess it up. This all assumes you have rim brakes.

Tools actually needed

Steps

  1. If you don’t have a bike repair stand, flip your bike upside down on a flat surface.
  2. Pick a wheel. Start spinning it slowly. Slowly press down on the brake level until one side of the wheel starts touching the rim. Using an erasable marker, make a mark. Keep spinning until the brake stops touching the rim. Make another mark.
  3. Find the center between those two marks. Make another mark! This is where you’ll use your spoke wrench.
  4. On the side opposite where the brake touched, find the closest spoke to your center mark. Using your wrench, turn the nipple a quarter to a half turn counter clockwise. This tightens the spoke. To make sure your wheel doesn’t get overtightened, adjust the two closest spokes on the side of the wheel where the brake touched, turning them a quarter to a half turn clockwise to loosen them.
  5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 until your wheel looks good.