July 2, 2026

Goal for today: true the rear wheel on my commuter after it started rubbing the brake pad on the drive side — about 1.2 mm of lateral hop that had been there for weeks and finally got annoying enough to fix.

Pulled the wheel, mounted it in the truing stand, and went through the process in order:

1. Checked dish first with the dishing tool. Rim was sitting 2 mm toward the non-drive side — not catastrophic, but worth correcting before chasing the hop.
2. Adjusted dish by loosening non-drive spokes a half turn each, then tightening drive-side spokes a matching half turn. Three passes around.
3. Marked the hop with a rubber band on the stay and worked inward from the endpoints — tightening the two spokes nearest the high point by a quarter turn each, loosening the one at the peak.
4. Tension check by feel and by plucking: drive-side spokes should ring higher than non-drive, which they did. No deadeners — good sign.
5. Stress-relieved by pressing down on crossed pairs with both thumbs. Got two small pings. Normal.

The failure was on step 3. I over-corrected on the first pass — tightened too aggressively, about three-quarters of a turn instead of a quarter, and introduced a new 0.8 mm hop 90 degrees away. As it turned out, I'd been counting spokes wrong in low light. Put on the shop lamp after that. The correction took two more passes and added about twenty minutes I hadn't planned for.

What got me unstuck was slowing down and marking each adjusted spoke with a small piece of blue painter's tape so I wasn't guessing which ones I'd touched. Simple fix, obvious in retrospect.

Lateral runout ended at about 0.3 mm, which is fine for a commuter wheel with 28 mm tires. Not show-room, but good enough for daily use and a year of riding before it'll want attention again.

Next time I'd set the shop lamp up before starting, not after the first mistake. Twenty minutes is a cheap lesson but I've paid it twice now.

#workshop #bikemechanic #wheeltruing #diy