TIL a $10 spoke tension meter saved me from buying new wheels

Been building wheels for like 3 years just going by feel and plucking spokes like a guitar. Did a proper tension check on my last set and found the rear dish was way off - like 6 spokes were over 130kgf and 4 were under 80. No wonder that wheel kept going out of true after 2 rides. Grabbed the Park Tool TM-1 off a buddy for $10 and yeah it's basic but now all my wheels are holding up way better. Anyone else skip tension meters for too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

anderson.gavin2mo ago

Heard a wheelbuilder say you can't fix what you can't measure, and he wasn't wrong.

morgan5122mo ago

But what about stuff you COULD measure but just choose not to? @anderson.gavin that wheelbuilder was talking about trueness and tension and dish, sure. But there's a whole bunch of things riders ignore because they don't want to know the numbers. Like spoke stress relief - you can totally measure how much a spoke un-twists after it's been tensioned. Or even the roughness of the rim brake track with a basic file. People just skip those checks because they assume everything is fine. That mindset is probably why so many mid-range wheels sound like a maraca after 500 miles.

finleyl5513d ago

That 130kgf to 80kgf split sounds crazy, @anderson.gavin probably has a wheel like that sitting in his garage with a "do not touch" note on it. My buddy once spent an hour trying to true a wheel that was basically a pretzel because he refused to buy a tension meter, kept saying "it's just spoke math, bro." I finally lent him mine and he found three spokes that were literally loose enough to spin by hand. Now he checks tension first and actually listens when the meter tells him his wheel is trying to murder itself.