First time wheel building question, almost finished

[PaulE]

Well I've just about finished building my first set of wheels. Dura Ace 7850 rear and 7800 front hubs, Velocity Aerohead and Aerohead OC rims, Sapim CX Ray spokes and Sapim Polyax brass nipples, 32 spokes 3x front and rear. I followed Lennard Zinn's wheelbuilding chapter in Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance and Sheldon Brown's online wheelbuilding article, with my trailing spokes on the outboard side of the hubs. The wheels came out better than I could have expected for a first attempt. The bladed spokes made it obvious to see if there was any spoke windup and how much to turn back to straighten it out. The spoke tension is fairly uniform, dishing is right on, and lateral and vertical trueness are very, very good, but not perfect. I don't have a dial indicator but I would say the lateral and vertical trueness are within a very few milimeters on both wheels. I also don't have any brand new factory wheels to put in the stand as a reference point. These wheels are probably as true as anything I'm riding right now.

Here's the question. Should I ride these wheels for a while, make sure they don't explode under me and after a while put them back in the truing stand, or should I spend more time perfecting the trueness first? My inclination is to stop any more truing at this point and ride them for a while. I would appreciate any input from anyone who has built some wheels. Thanks.

[Dude]

The wheels are never going to be "ridiculously" true. There will also be some variation. On most rims are perfect either so some of the movement you see might be in the actual rim.

my tolerances, given that tension is even, and high enough (velocitys are recommended at 120 Kgf) i do one more final round/true adjustment and then do some tension relief. Either place the hub on the counter and push firmly on the rim, rotate a few spokes and do it again until you go all the way aroudn the wheel. Flip it over and repeat, or if you are really confident in your skills, go ride it and it will accomplish the same thing. This essentially unloads rim/spokes so they can unwind a little. (bladed spokes are easy to tell but they will still unwind a little.)

For me, anything within .5mil is good. In the brake calipers with a tire on it, it's noticeable to the naked eye and it's not going to make you any slower or faster if you make it more true.

So, to answer your question, check the tension, make sure its good slap a tire on it and ride for an hour. It is easy enough to do touch-ups anyway because the nipple is exposed.

Oh yeah, make sure you use a spoke prep (not spoke freeze) it will make your life so much better long term.

[PaulE]

Thanks, I've used Spokeprep and I'll do the tension relief and mount 'em up.

Next wheelset I'm going to try some round spokes, they're a lot cheaper than the bladed ones!

[dvancleve]

A few years ago, I was told that Velocity's recommended range was 90-100KgF (by someone at Velocity). I didn't know about this and had a Razor crack at nearly every drive side spoke hole with something around 120KgF tension. I personally would double check with Velocity USA before going to 120, just to be sure...

Doug

my tolerances, given that tension is even, and high enough (velocitys are recommended at 120 Kgf) i do one more final round/true adjustment and then do some tension relief.

[Peter P.]

" The spoke tension is fairly uniform"
Then I assume you used a tension gauge?

"dishing is right on, and lateral and vertical trueness are very, very good, but not perfect."
I also assume you used a dishing tool and a truing stand vs. your frame?"

"I don't have a dial indicator but I would say the lateral and vertical trueness are within a very few milimeters on both wheels."
Not good. You should easily get your wheels to within a FRACTION of a millimeter. I hope this was just a grammatical error. The errors should be so small that you could only measure the deflection with a dial indicator, but a dial indicator is hardly necessary to build quality wheels.

Here's the question. Should I ride these wheels for a while, make sure they don't explode under me and after a while put them back in the truing stand, or should I spend more time perfecting the trueness first? My inclination is to stop any more truing at this point and ride them for a while.

They won't explode, otherwise Al Qaida members would be riding bicycles. You don't mention whether you pre-stressed the spokes during building. This is ABSOLUTELY PARAMOUNT to having wheels that stay true. You should have done this numerous times as the tension was increased in the wheel. The idea is to grasp the spokes in the wheel-either those nearly parallel on EACH side of the wheel or reach across and grasp one pair on one side and another pair from the other side-and squeeze firmly. The idea is to seat the spokes into the spoke holes so they assume the bend and position of a wheel that has already seen many miles. Removing this initial seating means you don't have to retrue the wheel after the first 100 miles or whatever point many suggest. I've built tons of wheels and they never have to come back for that touch up.

It's good you used aero spokes and recognized and released the wind up which can be present in newly built wheels. This the the second most common cause of new wheels going out of true. With this knowledge you're already ahead of the game in building good wheels. When building wheels with round spokes, you should grasp the spoke with your free fingers to maintain a sense of how much they are winding up when you turn the spoke wrench and you can compensate with a little tweak of the wrench, as well as squeezing the spoke to help resist wind up.

[PaulE]

" The spoke tension is fairly uniform"
Then I assume you used a tension gauge?

"dishing is right on, and lateral and vertical trueness are very, very good, but not perfect."
I also assume you used a dishing tool and a truing stand vs. your frame?"

"I don't have a dial indicator but I would say the lateral and vertical trueness are within a very few milimeters on both wheels."
Not good. You should easily get your wheels to within a FRACTION of a millimeter. I hope this was just a grammatical error. The errors should be so small that you could only measure the deflection with a dial indicator, but a dial indicator is hardly necessary to build quality wheels.

Here's the question. Should I ride these wheels for a while, make sure they don't explode under me and after a while put them back in the truing stand, or should I spend more time perfecting the trueness first? My inclination is to stop any more truing at this point and ride them for a while.

They won't explode, otherwise Al Qaida members would be riding bicycles. You don't mention whether you pre-stressed the spokes during building. This is ABSOLUTELY PARAMOUNT to having wheels that stay true. You should have done this numerous times as the tension was increased in the wheel. The idea is to grasp the spokes in the wheel-either those nearly parallel on EACH side of the wheel or reach across and grasp one pair on one side and another pair from the other side-and squeeze firmly. The idea is to seat the spokes into the spoke holes so they assume the bend and position of a wheel that has already seen many miles. Removing this initial seating means you don't have to retrue the wheel after the first 100 miles or whatever point many suggest. I've built tons of wheels and they never have to come back for that touch up.

It's good you used aero spokes and recognized and released the wind up which can be present in newly built wheels. This the the second most common cause of new wheels going out of true. With this knowledge you're already ahead of the game in building good wheels. When building wheels with round spokes, you should grasp the spoke with your free fingers to maintain a sense of how much they are winding up when you turn the spoke wrench and you can compensate with a little tweak of the wrench, as well as squeezing the spoke to help resist wind up.

Yes I used a Park spoke tension meter and wheel alignment gauge dishing tool. I also pre-stressed the spokes a few times. The exploding comment was tongue in cheek, I plan to ride them easy to make sure they work for a while.

I can visually see some very minor lateral out of true. On the vertical, the front wheel looks like it has a bit of a flat spot at the rim seam area, the rim dips in a bit there. I've tried loosening the spokes in that area of the wheel but I don't want the tension to go down to much there.

[Peter P.]

"I can visually see some very minor lateral out of true. On the vertical, the front wheel looks like it has a bit of a flat spot at the rim seam area, the rim dips in a bit there. I've tried loosening the spokes in that area of the wheel but I don't want the tension to go down to much there."

The flat spot is usually due to minute misalignment of the seam. It appears as a little "blip" as the seam passes the truing stand indicator. Sometimes people get overzealous in trying to remove it from the seam and wind up with a flat spot.

A good test of whether you've done your prestressing job right is to ride the wheels. If, within the first 100yds. or so you hear a lot of spokes pinging, then they were wound up and your stress relieving job wasn't thorough. If you hear one or two or none, then it's a good job.

[PaulE]

I rode them today for 31 miles. Smooth as can be and quiet, no noise whatsoever from the minute I left my house. Next project will be to replace Open Pro's on a a pair of Ultegra 6500 hubs and I may try some round spokes. After that I may try a pair of tubular rims for another set of wheels with Ultegra 6500 hubs that I have.