From: IAN MOORCRAFT(UK)[email protected]
Date: 25 Feb 2001
Time: 21:22:48
Remote Name: 62.7.15.40
Hi David, You are right it is not difficult to true A7 wheels, with my usual desire not to pay anyone to do something that I could do myself I thought that I would build up my wheels from scratch with all new spokes, I made up a simple jig out of wood to get the initial relationship between the hub and rim and also the correct offset, I will give more details if you want. Back to your problem, If you are trying to reset an original wheel you may find that the nipples are rusted solid and the small square on the nipple will round off straight away, so a respoke may be the only way out, but if you are resetting a more recently rebuilt wheel you should have no problems. Start off by trying the wheel on the three positions on the hub and note at which position you have the least runout,you may be surprised how much off a difference this will show up, and also explain why wheels trued up on a jig will not run true on the car, the hub doesn`t need to be out by much on a large diameter wheel to show a 1/4" runout on the tyre, mark the position so that you always put the wheel in the same relative position to the hub,Tap all of the spokes with the handle of a screwdriver and note the tone, you may have to hold some spokes apart to get the single tone tighten up any that make a flat tone to sound the same as the others,fit the wheel on the hub in the marked position and make up some means of holding a piece of chalk against the rim as you spin it,over the distance marked tighten the short spokes to pull the rim in or the long spokes to pull the rim out, If you feel that they are to tight you can loosen the opposing spokes in the area that you are working,again tap the spokes that you have adjusted, if they have a higher tone than others around the wheel you can just loosen the apposing spokes in the area you are working on only, only a very small amount is necessary to change the tone considerably.Provided you use the correct spoke key you need not worry about pulling the rim egg shape as you could on a bike wheel it is far to stiff for that to happen.when you have the rim running true go once again around the wheel tapping each spoke,you may have to tighten or loosen an individual spoke or two to make the tone match.After many years of use my wheels are still running true and have only ever had one spoke break which shows that they must all be taking a similar strain using the above method,you will soon get the "feel" it will be obvious to you if you are over or undertightening, have a go regards Ian