So I have a bunch of wheels lying around and have never trued one before, but hey, how hard can it be. I surfed the internet and found some ideas for making your own stand, and what I made is heavily influenced by a guy who used a precision meter from Harbor freight.
What's DIFFERENT about this design from any other I've seen is that one of the upright is movable. The reason I did this is that I didn't want to sit around working out how to make decisions about how to make something that can work with a wide variety of rims ( standard axle, quick release, 700s etc) so I just wanted to build something that worked for anything. I also didn't want to have to use wheel nuts. I just wanted to bang the wheel in there and have it held very firmly.
.. and it works REALLY WELL. First wheel I trued, I got it down to 6/1000ths of an inch, and I think that's pretty damn good. I was disappointed seeing that needle sway back and forth, until I eyeballed the rim, and it looked absolutely perfect. 6 thousandths is nothing.
Good times.
If anyone wants any more details just let me know. I spent $25 on the gauge and magnetic mount and then had everything else lying around, but most people probably don't have the slider / T bar setup lying around unfortunately. I probably got this stuff at Rockler, and if you bought it you'd get the price up to $50, but still. I looked at the cheapo wheel tuner at Performance bike tonight for $70 and it's really not even close to the same quality.
Very happy with it. Here's a pic.
More pics, and explanations here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gnoshmepics/BikeProjects
K
What's DIFFERENT about this design from any other I've seen is that one of the upright is movable. The reason I did this is that I didn't want to sit around working out how to make decisions about how to make something that can work with a wide variety of rims ( standard axle, quick release, 700s etc) so I just wanted to build something that worked for anything. I also didn't want to have to use wheel nuts. I just wanted to bang the wheel in there and have it held very firmly.
.. and it works REALLY WELL. First wheel I trued, I got it down to 6/1000ths of an inch, and I think that's pretty damn good. I was disappointed seeing that needle sway back and forth, until I eyeballed the rim, and it looked absolutely perfect. 6 thousandths is nothing.
Good times.
If anyone wants any more details just let me know. I spent $25 on the gauge and magnetic mount and then had everything else lying around, but most people probably don't have the slider / T bar setup lying around unfortunately. I probably got this stuff at Rockler, and if you bought it you'd get the price up to $50, but still. I looked at the cheapo wheel tuner at Performance bike tonight for $70 and it's really not even close to the same quality.
Very happy with it. Here's a pic.
More pics, and explanations here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/gnoshmepics/BikeProjects
K
