Wheel truing - what is a reasonable price?

How much would you expect to pay to have a wheel trued at your LBS?

Also, is this a common service for an LBS to perform?

This came up in a discussion with a friend. He reckons it would be
hard to find a shop nowadays which would do it, and they would charge
loads. I thought it was quite a simple operation and should be quite
cheap. I suppose I could just phone my LBS but it is night time and I
am too lazy

icogs wrote:
> How much would you expect to pay to have a wheel trued at your LBS?
>
> Also, is this a common service for an LBS to perform?
>
> This came up in a discussion with a friend. He reckons it would be
> hard to find a shop nowadays which would do it, and they would charge
> loads. I thought it was quite a simple operation and should be quite
> cheap. I suppose I could just phone my LBS but it is night time and I
> am too lazy

It's never simple. If you've ever tried doing it yourself, you'll know
that it can take up huge amounts of time if you let it. I've spent hours
spinning a wheel on the trueing jig, trying to tweak that last little
imperfection out of the wheel. You have to know when to say, "That's
close enough."

Try Googling for "wheel truing service". Prices seem to range from three
pounds to fifteen pounds per wheel - but the high end of the price
range is from specialist triathlon shops, and as we all know,
triathletes have money to burn.

Given that trueing a single wheel will probably take 10-15 minutes for
an expert, a fiver a wheel doesn't seem unreasonable.

Andy

----------
Try a Bicycle Beano cycling holiday www.bicycle-beano.co.uk

"icogs" <icogs@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1e3bb3c1-547c-4989-b10e-c4ba23878cfa@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com...
> How much would you expect to pay to have a wheel trued at your LBS?
>
> Also, is this a common service for an LBS to perform?
>
> This came up in a discussion with a friend. He reckons it would be
> hard to find a shop nowadays which would do it, and they would charge
> loads. I thought it was quite a simple operation and should be quite
> cheap. I suppose I could just phone my LBS but it is night time and I
> am too lazy

I pay a fiver a wheel, but the bloke who runs my LBS is worth his weight in
gold.

icogs wrote:
> How much would you expect to pay to have a wheel trued at your LBS?

IIRC it was of the order of a fiver last time I had one done.

> Also, is this a common service for an LBS to perform?

Both of the ones here will do it.

> This came up in a discussion with a friend. He reckons it would be
> hard to find a shop nowadays which would do it, and they would charge
> loads. I thought it was quite a simple operation and should be quite
> cheap.

It's quite simple /if you know what you're doing and are in practise at
doing it/. Otherwise it's something that will take a great deal of time
and trial and error (assuming you know what you're doing in theory). At
a gross £10/hour that's half an hour. Chances of me truing a wheel
properly and to the same standard as my LBS in half an hour (at about a
fiver a pop) is not unadjacent to "bugger all"...

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net p.j.clinch@dundee.ac.uk http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

"icogs" <icogs@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1e3bb3c1-547c-4989-b10e-c4ba23878cfa@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com...
> How much would you expect to pay to have a wheel trued at your LBS?
>
> Also, is this a common service for an LBS to perform?
>
> This came up in a discussion with a friend. He reckons it would be
> hard to find a shop nowadays which would do it, and they would charge
> loads. I thought it was quite a simple operation and should be quite
> cheap. I suppose I could just phone my LBS but it is night time and I
> am too lazy

It's not too tricky to do it yourself. It will take some time for the first
wheel because first you need to trawl the net for a copy of a book on
wheelbuilding by Jobst Brand. I was given a copy of the relevant pages. It
took best part of an evening to read and digest the info and then to build
my first wheel. Truing and tensioning being the last part of wheel building
is covered in the book.

It's also covered in this article by Shgeldon Brown
http://sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html
but I've not used Sheldon Brown's instructions to build a wheel - although
the guy has an excellent reputation and the article should be the goods.

I've only 1 tip - get a decent spoke key, one that fits the nipples
securely.

John

On Jun 25, 11:43 pm, icogs <ic...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> How much would you expect to pay to have a wheel trued at your LBS?
>
> Also, is this a common service for an LBS to perform?
>
> This came up in a discussion with a friend. He reckons it would be
> hard to find a shop nowadays which would do it, and they would charge
> loads. I thought it was quite a simple operation and should be quite
> cheap. I suppose I could just phone my LBS but it is night time and I
> am too lazy

I reckon any half decent bike shop ought to be able to do this. I
suspect a lot of new bikes come with machine built wheels that are
supposed to be tweaked up as part of the pre-delivery adjustments or
first service. I have a spoke key and although I can true up the rear
wheel on my MTB with some success, getting even tension on the spokes
seems to be the problem, they keep snapping or coming loose ! I find
that any wobble is not really noticeable when off road anyway,
although it can wear the tyres out quicker. My latest tyre to fail has
cracked and split at the sidewall, which could be due to the wobbly in
the wheel maybe ?

icogs writtificated

> How much would you expect to pay to have a wheel trued at your LBS?

Locally everyone seems to charge £7 to true a wheel. I'd happily pay up to
£10.

> Also, is this a common service for an LBS to perform?

Very. Wheels out of true are as common as colds in winter.

> This came up in a discussion with a friend. He reckons it would be
> hard to find a shop nowadays which would do it, and they would charge
> loads. I thought it was quite a simple operation and should be quite
> cheap. I suppose I could just phone my LBS but it is night time and I
> am too lazy

Yeah, once you know what you're doing it's easy to do an okay job without
taking the wheel out of the frame. However, doing a *proper* job -getting
even tension in the spokes, getting everything 'just right'- is very time
consuming unless you're a pro.

On Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:33:58 +0100, "eatmorepies"
<jspamno@lineone.net> wrote:

>It's also covered in this article by Shgeldon Brown
>http://sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html
>but I've not used Sheldon Brown's instructions to build a wheel - although
>the guy has an excellent reputation and the article should be the goods.

I used his instructions without any problems the first time I built a
wheel. I didn't bother with his description of a dishing tool, as I
found that just taping a rod or two to the fork leg and using that as
a guide was perfectly adequate.

But yes, trueing a wheel shouldn't be that difficult for a novice to
pick up from these instructions.


--
Ace in Alsace

icogs wrote:

> How much would you expect to pay to have a wheel trued at your LBS?
>
> Also, is this a common service for an LBS to perform?
>
> This came up in a discussion with a friend. He reckons it would be
> hard to find a shop nowadays which would do it, and they would charge
> loads. I thought it was quite a simple operation and should be quite
> cheap. I suppose I could just phone my LBS but it is night time and I
> am too lazy
The prices given elsewhere seem about right. Take in the whole bike
(rather than just the wheels, witout tyres) then they might want to
charge more.
Especially if your bike has a complete chainguard, dynohub, and rod brakes.
Roger Thorpe

On Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:33:58 +0100, "eatmorepies"
<jspamno@lineone.net> wrote:

>It
>took best part of an evening to read and digest the info and then to build
>my first wheel. Truing and tensioning being the last part of wheel building
>is covered in the book.
>
>It's also covered in this article by Shgeldon Brown
>http://sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html
>but I've not used Sheldon Brown's instructions to build a wheel - although
>the guy has an excellent reputation and the article should be the goods.
>
>I've only 1 tip - get a decent spoke key, one that fits the nipples
>securely.


Further to the decent spoke key advice - I recently found a Park Tools
spoke key is imensly better than what I thought was a good spoke key -
I would add the preference for *brass* spoke nipples, when building a
new wheel - I live near the sea, and 2 years after I had a wheel
built, I can not turn any of its aluminum nipples anymore :-(

A truly good spoke key will also be found valuable at avoiding
rounding nipples, after which you won't be able to turn the nipple
anymore.

Regards,
Jose

Thanks all for the info. It seems that the cost is in line with my
expectation and I think really quite reasonable, bearing in mind that
for most of us it is not something which needs to be done often enough
to be worth spending too much time acquiring the skills oneself -
though I do keep promising myself I will learn how to do it one day,
as much for personal satisfaction as anything else.

eatmorepies wrote:
>
> It's not too tricky to do it yourself. It will take some time for the first
> wheel because first you need to trawl the net for a copy of a book on
> wheelbuilding by Jobst Brand. I was given a copy of the relevant pages. It
> took best part of an evening to read and digest the info and then to build
> my first wheel. Truing and tensioning being the last part of wheel building
> is covered in the book.
>
> It's also covered in this article by Shgeldon Brown
> http://sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html
> but I've not used Sheldon Brown's instructions to build a wheel - although
> the guy has an excellent reputation and the article should be the goods.

I have not read Jobst's book, but have used Sheldon's instructions to
build 3 wheels. Highly recommended.

--
Don Whybrow

Sequi Bonum Non Time

"Lord, please make me the kind of person my dog thinks I am."

"Jose" <go.spam@somewhere.else> wrote in message
news:486474fb.7150468@news20.forteinc.com...
> On Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:33:58 +0100, "eatmorepies"
> <jspamno@lineone.net> wrote:
>
>
> Further to the decent spoke key advice - I recently found a Park Tools
> spoke key is imensly better than what I thought was a good spoke key -
> I would add the preference for *brass* spoke nipples, when building a
> new wheel - I live near the sea, and 2 years after I had a wheel
> built, I can not turn any of its aluminum nipples anymore :-(


I've had the same problem, and now I always grease the threads before
assembly, never had a problem since.