guy2600

The rear wheel is 105 hub, dt swiss comp spokes 2.0 drive side, 1.8 non drive side, open pro rim. I'm using a park tension meter. The drive side should be running higher tension than the rear, correct? The drive side should be close in tension and the non drive side should be what ever it needs to be for it to run true? That's what I've heard. Drive side currently measures 23-25, non drive side 15-20 with most of them 17.

Front wheel is 105 hub, dt comp 1.8's, open pro. Currently it runs about 19.

I bought these from BWW and after the first ride the rear ran out. Jut trying to get a feel for what I should be shooting for, first time doing it. Thanks in advance!

mrrabbit 

With the wheel dished...

1. Try to get the drive side closer to the 25 on average than the 24...i.e, try have mostly 24.5 on the dial as opposed to 24 even.

[That'll get you to the 110 - 115 kgf range...]


2. You will have to stress relieve...true...stress relieve...true....stress relieve...several times before it finally stays true after a FINAL stress relieve. Each stress relieve action should be two turns of the wheel each time. One turn releases...next turn settles...

3. Make sure you jiggle the tool up and down a tad using an underside resting finger tap BEFORE reading the tool each time. Else your readings will be inaccurate showing a higher tension than you really have.

4. As to the front - just get 'em up to 21.5 on average and you'll be fine.

[That'll get you somewhere past 100 kgf - approx. 103 to 105 kgf?...]



You are working with a very soft and lightweight rim...I bend over backward to stay away from using straight 14g (2.0) spokes on them - I prefer double-butted working downards in guage. 2.0/1.7/2.0 Ritchey Logic spokes from my experience seem to be a marriage made in heaven with these rims. If you can switch to those - I thnk you'll really like the result.



=8-)

Al1943

The non-drive side should be whatever it takes to center the rim between the dropouts (properly dished).

joejack951

And you should make at least an attempt to get even tension on the non-drive side just like the drive side. I would not be happy with tension ranging from 15-20 on my tensionmeter for the non-drive side.

blamp28

+1. If the rim is in good shape, you should be able to get all or most into a narrow band like 17-17.5. Many will say that tension is balanced when all spokes on a given side of a dished wheel or all spokes in a non dished wheel are within 20% I shoot for well under 10% especially realizing that the Park Tension meter is far from scientific and has some variability already. I downloaded a cool spoke tension excel spreadsheet from Park a few years ago that actually does a nice job of illustrating graphically your wheel tension. You may be able to find it on their site of PM me an email address and I'll send it to you.

guy2600

I want to thank you guys for the help. It took me 2 hours (first time) but I got the drive side 25 +/- .75 and the non drive side 20 +/- 1. It's not spot on perfect but pretty close and WAAYYY better than it was! I was thinking I'd have to get a new wheel. Thanks again!

operator

Stress relieve and untwist the spokes until it settles - also throw a tyre/tube on there for maximum truing effectiveness. Go ride it and true again. Tension will drop when a tyre is inflated onto the rim.

urbanknight

They really dropped with my Kinlin XR-200s! I shouldn't be surprised with such a soft rim, but wow.

dubes

Everything that operator says is true. But if I may clarify, most sources I have seen (including the folks at Park Tool and I vaguely recall Sheldon Brown) state that unless the rim manufacturer has specifically said otherwise, spoke tension is typically measured without the tire mounted (or at least inflated). Here is the quote from the Park Tool website that is linked above (about midway or so down the page; this is a simple cut-and-paste, so any typos / grammatical errors in this passage are courtesy of Park Tool):

Al1943

The final lateral true and dish need to be set with the tire and tube fully inflated to riding pressure. The dish can change by a measurable amount on a rear wheel due to the asymmetrical, left to right, spoke tension.

guy2600

The tension did drop about 1.5-2 on the meter once inflated. What about runout concentric to the spindle (not sure how to describe), not side to side runout or dish, runout along the bottom. Is this as important as the other 2? My rear wheel was so far out, I got everything else dialed in but this aspect was out a bit, maybe a 1/16" high to low. Is it as important to get this dialed in as well or should I not worry about it as much and just ride the thing...

mrrabbit 

With a naked eye...

Do a click here...a click there if necessary to ensure that the rim is centered betweent the pads such that any deviations can't be noticed unless you stick a toothpick alongside the seatstay as a reference.

If hops aren't noticeable more than a millimeter...go ride...

=8-)

operator

I've read that and I disagree.

What's the point of having proper tension on the wheel when that's not even the tension the wheel sees when it actually hits the pavement? Riddle me that. Not to mention some rim/spoke/hub combos will have unpredictable tension decreases. Sometimes a lot.

So unless I hear a better reason not to be more concerned with final spoke tension with tyre/tube inflated i'm going to stick by that. I read no justification whatsoever on that park page. Some rims will be able to handle significantly higher spoke tension than official rated spec.

Al1943

If you get the "radial true" as good as possible with the tire and tube off the wheel it will be good enough with the tire and tube on. It doesn't do any good to try to radial true the wheel with the tire on due to imperfections in the tire.

kmv2

Sorry to resurrect old threads..

Confused about spoke tension. Searching through old topics, people seem to recommend ~100kgf. Now maybe I'm being anal, but 100kg force = 100N, do they mean 100kg mass (where I'm sitting that equates to 980N)? The tensiometer I borrowed has charts to convert what is measured on the gauge to Newtons (force), and they all have a minimum of 300N.. why would the charts start at 3x the recommended tension?

mrrabbit 

100 kgf = 980 Newtons

Most tensionmeters for bicycle wheels start out at about 45-55 kgf on the charts - and go on to about 180kgf.

So the base of interpretation is about 1/4.

Of the 100 kgf about 1/2.

300N is about 1/3 of 980N.

...go poor vinegar down and ant hill and have some fun.

=8-)

Zef

100kgf does not equal 100N

1kgf equals approximately 9.8N.....if you are using a Park Tool tensionmeter and the chart that comes with it, Park uses an estimate of 1kgf=10N.

-j

kmv2

Oops. Yeah, makes sense.

Looigi

g whiz!

Drew Eckhardt 

I measured tension on the last two wheels I built using the Jobst Brandt method of alternately increasing tension and stress relieving until the wheel goes out of true in waves at which point you've reached the rim's elastic limit, back off half a turn, and re-true.

I like to stress relieve by twisting the spokes at their outer crossing using a brass drift although other objects softer than the spokes work like an old left crank arm or plastic screw-driver handle. Squeezing near parallel spokes in a side together works too.

The front with a Reflex clincher (the lighter Open Pro predecessor) averaged 105kgf without a tire outside the bent spot that had me replacing it.

The rear with an Open Pro measured 105 kgf drive side with a tire and should be a little higher without. Non-drive side was whatever it took.

More risks stress cracks.