DIY Guide: How to True a Bike Wheel
Bicycle wheels are crucial for ensuring a smooth and safe riding experience. Over time, due to the impacts and stresses encountered during cycling, the wheels may become misaligned or deformed, leading to a decline in performance and safety. Learning how to true a bike wheel is a highly valuable skill. This article will provide a detailed guide on the steps, tools, and techniques for wheel truing, helping you keep your bike in optimal condition.
Bicycle Wheels and Tires
A bicycle wheel consists of several parts, including the rim, hub, spokes, and spoke nipples. The rim is the outer structure of the wheel that supports the tire and is connected to the hub at the center of the wheel through the spokes. The hub is the core part of the wheel, containing bearings that allow the wheel to rotate smoothly. The spokes are responsible for maintaining the strength and stability of the wheel, ensuring the rim remains true. The wheels are mounted on the front and rear of the bicycle and rotate to drive the bike forward.

Bicycle tires are mounted on the outer edge of the rim and make contact with the ground. Tires typically consist of an outer tire and an inner tube. The outer tire provides grip and protection, while the inner tube holds air. Tubeless systems are also becoming increasingly popular, offering better puncture resistance and reducing the risk of flats during rides. The width, tread pattern, and material of the tire affect grip, rolling resistance, and ride comfort. Wide tires are often used for off-road or mountain biking, while narrow tires are preferred for road bikes, providing higher speed and lower rolling resistance.
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What is wheel truing?
Wheel truing is the process of adjusting and repairing a bicycle wheel to ensure it remains in optimal balance and stability during use. First, centering the wheel is crucial. This step corrects any misalignment of the wheel’s center, preventing the wheel from bending or becoming warped. By balancing the tension of the spokes, the wheel rim is brought back to the correct center, ensuring smooth rotation.
Additionally, checking the rim’s roundness is important. This process ensures that the wheel remains in its ideal circular shape while rotating, avoiding any distortion that could affect comfort or safety while riding.
In addition to shape adjustments, spoken tension regulation is another key aspect of trying. By evenly balancing the tension of the spokes, wheel deformation is prevented while maintaining the wheel’s strength and stability.
Finally, radial and lateral dishing are also important elements to consider during the truing process. Radial dishing refers to the shift of the wheel’s center position, while lateral dishing involves distortion of the sides of the wheel. These misalignments can affect the balance and stability of the wheel, and adjustments to the spokes help eliminate these discrepancies.
Relevant guidelines:
- 650B vs 700C: Which Wheel Size Is Best for Your Riding Style
- A Comprehensive Guide to Bike Wheel Parts
- Freewheel vs Freehub: Which is Better?
- How to Measure Bike Wheel Size
- How Many Brake Pads Per Wheel Bike
How to Tell if a Wheel Needs Truing
There are several common methods to determine if a wheel needs truing:
- Visual inspection: Turn the bike upside down, spin the wheel, and observe whether the edge of the rim wobbles side-to-side or jumps up and down. Side-to-side wobbling indicates lateral misalignment, while up-and-down movement indicates radial misalignment.
- Brake test: Use the brake pads as a reference. Lightly apply the brakes and spin the wheel to see if the rim touches the brake pads unevenly. If the contact is inconsistent, the wheel has a misalignment.
- Truing stand: Using a professional truing stand allows for more precise detection of wheel misalignment. The indicators on the stand can show even the smallest deviations in the rim, helping you make accurate adjustments.
Essential Tools for Truing a Bike Wheel
To properly true a wheel, you’ll need a few key tools:
Truing Stand

This tool holds the wheel securely and accurately measures lateral and radial deviations. A truing stand ensures the wheel remains in a stable position, using gauges or rulers to detect slight wobbles. While it’s not essential for wheel truing, it significantly improves precision and makes the process much more efficient.
Spoke Wrench

Used to tighten or loosen the spokes on the wheel. Different wheels require different sizes of spoke wrenches, so it’s important to select the right one. By adjusting the tension of the spokes, the spoke wrench helps maintain the wheel’s balance and shape during truing.
Spoke Tension Meter

This tool measures the tension in the spokes to ensure they are evenly tightened. A tension meter is crucial for fine-tuning the spoke tension, which helps keep the wheel strong and balanced. While it isn’t required for every adjustment, it helps ensure the wheel’s long-term durability.
Dish Tool or Dishing Stick

This is used to check whether the wheel is centered on the hub. The dish tool ensures the wheel is symmetrical with the hub. While it may not be necessary for home mechanics, it adds extra precision when ensuring the wheel is perfectly aligned.
Things to Know Before Truing a Bike Wheel
Wheel truing involves three key steps:
1. Fixing the Wheel
When trying a bike wheel, it’s important to keep the wheel stable. It is recommended to use a truing stand, as it isolates the issues and makes the truing process easier and more efficient. If a truing stand isn’t available, you can secure the bike on a repair stand or simply turn it upside down, allowing the wheel to spin freely.
2. Tracking Deviations
To track lateral and radial deviations, a fixed indicator is needed. Most truing stands come with built-in indicator arms that can be adjusted from side to side or up and down to identify deviations easily. If you don’t have a truing stand, you can create makeshift indicators by attaching zip ties to the bike frame.
These indicators can be moved to show where the wheel wobbles as it spins. Depending on your bike setup, you might need to get creative with where you place the indicators.
3. Adjusting Spoke Tension
Adjusting the tension of the spokes is done by turning the spoke nipples or nuts in the spoke system. Using a spoke wrench allows you to precisely adjust the tension on each spoke, helping to achieve the ideal wheel truing.
How to true a bike wheel
Truing a bike wheel is essentially about balancing multiple variables: the wheel’s lateral true, radial true, dish (central alignment), and spoke tension. In this guide, we will focus on how to perform lateral and radial truing and explain each step in detail, including key things to watch out for.
1. Lateral Truing
Lateral training is about correcting any side-to-side wobble in the wheel. This adjustment eliminates lateral deviations, ensuring that the wheel does not sway left or right while riding. It is especially important for bikes with rim brakes since wobbling can lead to uneven brake pad wear or even brake failure.
Steps for Lateral Truing:
- Fix the Wheel: First, secure the wheel in a truing stand. If you don’t have one, you can flip your bike upside down and use the bike frame to stabilize the wheel so it spins freely.
- Check for Lateral Wobble: Slowly spin the wheel and gradually move the truing stand’s calipers closer to the rim. When the caliper makes contact with the rim, this indicates a lateral wobble.
- If the rim touches the left side, you either need to tighten the spokes on the right side or loosen the spokes on the left side.
- If the rim touches the right side, the opposite applies: tighten the left spokes or loosen the right spokes.
- Identify the Spokes to Adjust: Find the spokes closest to the wobble. You may need to adjust multiple spokes on one side. By turning the spoke nipple clockwise, you increase tension, and turning it counterclockwise decreases tension.
- Make small adjustments, turning the spokes by only a quarter turn or even an eighth turn at a time to keep the changes controlled.
- Recheck for Wobble: After adjusting a few spokes, spin the wheel again and observe the wobble. If the wobble decreases, continue fine-tuning until the lateral wobble is minimized or eliminated.
Important Tips:
- Small Adjustments: Always adjust the spokes in small increments to prevent overcorrecting and introducing new problems.
- Balanced Tension: Ensure the spoke tension remains balanced between both sides for optimal wheel strength.
2. Radial Truing
- Checking Radial Deviation: Move the caliper or indicator close to the bottom of the rim. Rotate the wheel and observe the rim’s up-and-down motion. If any part of the rim moves inward (towards the hub) or outward (away from the hub), this indicates radial deviation.
- Adjusting the Spokes:
- When part of the rim bulges outward, you need to loosen the spokes in that area. Find the two to three spokes closest to the bulging section, and gradually loosen them, turning each one a quarter turn at a time.
- When part of the rim is concave inward, tighten the spokes near that section. Similarly, find the nearby spokes and tighten them one by one, turning each a quarter turn.
- Rechecking Roundness: After adjusting a few spokes, rotate the wheel and observe the changes in the up-and-down motion. Continue adjusting as needed until the radial deviation is eliminated or significantly reduced.
Steps for Radial Truing:
Important Tips:
- Avoid Overcorrection: Make small spoke adjustments, turning them only a quarter turn at a time to avoid creating new issues.
- Even Adjustments: Maintain balanced spoke tension across multiple spokes to preserve the wheel’s overall structure.
3. Central Alignment (Dish)
Beyond lateral and radial truing, ensuring that the wheel is properly centered (dished) is also important. The dish refers to whether the rim is centered between the hub flanges. If the rim is not centered, the bike may pull to one side while riding.
Steps for Checking the Dish:
- Use a Dish Gauge: Place the dish gauge over the wheel to measure the distance between the rim and the hub flanges. If the rim is off-center, loosen the spokes on the side where the rim is too close and tighten the spokes on the opposite side to shift the rim into a centered position.
Notice: If the wheel is heavily deformed or difficult to fix on your own, it’s best to consult a professional mechanic.
How to True a Bike Wheel (Video)
The following video explains how to true a bicycle wheel, including steps on using a truing stand and a spoke wrench. The video emphasizes the importance of tools and details in the training process to ensure the accuracy and stability of the wheel.
Conclusion
Truing a bicycle wheel is a key step to ensuring a safe and smooth ride. Although it may seem complex, anyone can perform wheel truing with the right tools and techniques. Regularly checking the condition of your wheels, especially after long rides or bumpy roads, can effectively prevent issues caused by wheel deformation. If the wheel is severely deformed or cannot be tried properly, it’s recommended to seek professional repair services.