[zdubyadubya]

Hey all,

This is for those who asked to see the DT stand in action. As you can see, it is a straightforward method and not complicated at all. Also, in reference to no ability to center it, if you watch your tension and remember how many turns you have put on your nipples, its not an issue. Builds perfect wheels everytime!

 

[lugnuts]

Will the TS-2 not measure dish? I'd like to avoid having to buy that if possible.

I'd say a dish tool is not absolutely necessary, especially not with a nice brandy spankin new, nicely centered truing stand. But as your stand gets worked over a bit it will slip out of center.

I'd worry more about the tension gauge and spoke prep!! Proper tension is key! Do yourself a favor and get both colors of spoke prep so you can easily identify the two diff length spokes on some builds. Spoke prep lubes, and loc-tites. It's a win-win.

And on the topic of handy little tools to have around (a la nipple driver) a good spoke ruler is also pretty handy. And the TS2 base often gets overlooked.

 

[?????]

I passed on the base for now. I ordered the Park TS-2 with the extensions and tension meter. That should hopefully be all that I need for now. At the moment, I only need it to true some I9 wheels, but I hate having to pay to let my wheels sit in the shop for a week whenever I need them trued up or tightened and I doubt they even check the tension. After my little fiasco with that this summer, I really wanted to be able to work on my own wheels. Eventually I'll get the rest of the stuff to work on my xc and road bike, g/f's, brother's, friends', and parent's bikes. I think it will have paid for it self in under a year.

For now though, my I-9 wheels are built, but my friend built them with some zip ties in my frame since that is all that we had and we left the tension low so I wouldn't have a repeat spoke failure.. They actually turned out pretty straight and I9's are incredibly easy to lace up. For spoke prep, we just used some teflon chain lube... it was what we had the night before the ride.

 

[lugnuts]

as far as I'm concerned, the night before a ride counts as "Anything Goes" territory.

 

[DirtyMike]

I passed on the base for now. I ordered the Park TS-2 with the extensions and tension meter. That should hopefully be all that I need for now. At the moment, I only need it to true some I9 wheels, but I hate having to pay to let my wheels sit in the shop for a week whenever I need them trued up or tightened and I doubt they even check the tension. After my little fiasco with that this summer, I really wanted to be able to work on my own wheels. Eventually I'll get the rest of the stuff to work on my xc and road bike, g/f's, brother's, friends', and parent's bikes. I think it will have paid for it self in under a year.

For now though, my I-9 wheels are built, but my friend built them with some zip ties in my frame since that is all that we had and we left the tension low so I wouldn't have a repeat spoke failure.. They actually turned out pretty straight and I9's are incredibly easy to lace up. For spoke prep, we just used some teflon chain lube... it was what we had the night before the ride.

Get yourself some spoke freeze, its basically a penetrating low strength loctite.

One small drip on the threads, it willhelp keep the spokes from rolling out. Personally, I use Phil wood tenatious oil on my spoke threads then use the spoke freeze after, I dont like spoke prep. The cool thing though about both spoke prep, and spoke freeze, they break loose easy enough when truing, then it relocks afterwords.

 

[?????]

Building wheels isn't too difficult when you have the right tools. So far, lateral truing was pretty simple and I got all of my spokes reading around 10% of each other with the Park tension meter. The Radial truing is taking me a bit though. I think part of the problem is that there are a few small flat spots that are messing me up.

Do you know if the dish on my wheels needs to be 0? I have a Fox 40 front fork and 150mm rear Socom.

 

[Brian HCM#1]

The Fox is Zero. I have the Park tension meter also, but rarely use it. I've been building wheels for almost 20 years and can get them pretty damn close to where they need to be just by feel.

 

[largeal]

about cost, yes it was expensive (it does come with a calibrated tensiometer) and no i dont have money to burn, but through a promo from dt my shop didn't pay full price, and i love it because it is heavy enough not to topple from a dh wheel without being bolted down but not hard to move around if need be.
.

The DT Truing Stand looks Very impressive and well made, I am curious if the The DT stand comes with some sort of Centering tool, since the arms are independently adjustable, how to you know where the Center is before you begin working on a wheel? Thanks! ..what is the US Cost if anyone knows?

 

[zdubyadubya]

The cost on the DT was around a couple hundred bucks I think, but it was around two years ago for us but we got it on a promo through DT. If you give them a call, they are really friendly and you might be able to work something out. It came with a calibrated tensiometer and a centering gauge. The dish gauge I don't like as well as Park's so I still use that one.

As far as knowing center, when you are truing a wheel, you have to use a dish tool for this stand, but when building a wheel for the first time, I just go by spoke threads showing through the nipples and then feel. Towards the end I will use the dish tool just to check, but if you tighten the nipples evenly and take out hops as you go, the wheel stays nicely centered for you.

The thing that I like about this stand is that if you have to build an offset wheel, you can keep the calipers close to the rim; others can correct me if I am wrong, but with the TS-2 it seems like the rim calipers are in-line with the center of the hub, which means that if the center of the rim doesnt line up with the center of the hub you are out of luck.... am I wrong?

 

[largeal]

thanks for the info - i was hoping there was a Centering function for the DT stand... it looks quite able to handle any wheel building chores though... and as far as the TS-2, it is also my understanding that the calipers can ONLY be centered, so building Off-set wheels would take a lot of flipping around to true them... I was looking for something more stable than my discontinued TS-3, it is a good stand but the results are NOT 100% repeatable as the clamping forces of the wheel causes Inconsistent positioning of the wheel in the stand, making it hard to rely on it for accurate and repeatable results, that being said, it still may be the best thing out there for the money.. if money was NO object, the "P&K LIE" German made stand appears to be about the Best there is, but cost is about $1000. (ouch)

 

[ChrisKring]

to build an offset wheel on a ts-2, you use only one side of the calipers to true it. It's not had. The other options are building a bushing for the axle or an adapter piece that clamps to the end of the caliper to extend one side. I tried all three of these options when building a team's worth of wheels for the 2002-2003 Giant DH. The method that works the best is the axle bushing. For just one wheel, I would use just one side of the caliper.