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Hot take: truing a wheel with the spokes still on the bike actually works fine
Everyone I see online swears you have to put the wheel in a truing stand or flip the bike upside down. I tried doing it with my commuter bike right on the ground, just spinning the wheel and eyeballing it against the brake pads. Saved me 20 minutes of hauling the stand out of the basement. I used a 5mm hex key to tighten a loose spoke on the drive side, fixed a wobble that was rubbing my rim brake. It ain't perfect but my wheel rolls true enough for the potholes on Broadway in Denver. Why do folks act like you need a professional shop for a basic spoke adjustment? Has anyone else just eyeballed it and called it good enough?
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emeryp235mo ago
Whole lot of things in life are like that. People love turning simple jobs into some big production when good enough gets the job done just fine.
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barbara_butler5mo ago
About 70% of the spoke tension I've measured on wheels I've done this way was actually too loose on the non-drive side. @emeryp23 makes a good point about keeping it simple though. I find that with a barrel adjuster on the brake caliper you can get close enough to see if a spoke is way off. But for a full true, you really need the wheel out of the bike because the frame flexes and the axle moves around when you tighten spokes under load.
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