Front Wheel Maintenance | Bülk Velomobile Maintenance
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Hi, I'm Jan from VelomobileWorld.com and we shoot here a maintenance video, so have fun.
So in today's video I want to show you how to verify your front wheel, this is a new wheel, so I can show you like, you hear very equal tension, you can have also like and then... then you know this spoke is really low in tension.
I want to go in the workshop and show you how I verify a wheel and even how a spoke needs to be replaced, how I would do it.
So we are now in the workshop, it's a bit noisy, but in case you're like, okay I can't change a spoke or I can't tune it, you can go to your local bike shop, it's just a standard wheel you need only this tool, if you are an ambassador you have this as standard in your tool package (toolkit) and otherwise you have to order a special tool package, you will get at a couple of tools and I will make a separate video which tools you're all going to get, so I put them in here and I check if the rim is... if the wheel is round, I check if I have spokes that are very loose, I have here, which is also a tool you get as an Ambassador or if you have ordered the extra toolkit, you can tighten this one and tune it, probably this will be more for your local bike shop to do or if you're good you can do it yourself, but this is starting to become a delicate job. In case of a broken spoke, then the first step is to take off the tire.
So as you can see there's a rim tape, this tape needs to be taken off also, often you can't really put it back again, so you need to make sure before you do this that you bought some rim tape. As you can see we add it in double layer, so you need to have two layers on top of each other and unfortunately it broke, so that's a bit of a bummer, especially if you put it on a video, you always want that the things goes smooth, like there's very very easy, but unfortunately things are not always going easily. So for example if this spoke is broken now I have to untighten this spoke and take this spoke out for the video, but in my case it's not broken. In the extra toolkit you also receive some extra spokes.
I take now a screwdriver. So what I do, I take out the broken spoke, which in this case is not broken and I quickly check which length I have, yeah, so as I said you'll have some spokes if you took the extra toolkit, if you didn't choose it, on the website there is for every wheel which spoke lenghts we used, so you can buy them locally; it's a bit of a challenge to get spokes locally for these short wheels, so it's better to order them before you break them.
If you put a new spoke you always have to put a little bit of Loctite or maybe some old paint, that will work also, I have here some Loctite 243 and we diluted it a bit with acetone to make it thinner because otherwise we get too much, too much on it and what I do, I put a little tape here around, so on the moment I'm gonna tune it, I know still which spoke was broken, so I know on which spoke I need to put some special tension, otherwise on the moment you've tighten the whole spoke it's hard to find back the spoke and most of the time because that one broke, often you just tighten it as much as the other ones are and your wheel is already straight and I'm a little bit checking if... I think I'm already... yeah I'm thinking I'm already on the right spoke tension.
This you can do of course also on the bike or you put a front suspension in and you just hold it there, in case you don't have a tuning (truing) stand, which I assume the majority doesn't have. Yeah, so I need to tighten still a little bit this one, yeah I'm done, job done.
We have here also a nice tool to measure the tension between every spoke... it's more important that the tension of the spokes is equal, than the movement of the wheel is perfect perfect. If you have like, let's say, a half millimeter or until like a millimeter play like this, that's less worse than having tension difference, because of tension difference spokes will break and that's very annoying because you have to take out the wheel completely and replace the spokes. I will make a short video about putting back the rim tape, but there are plenty of videos available on internet, so probably these are better, which you've seen on the internet, I will do it, but if you want just have a look also on internet how to do it.
So I cut it 45 degrees, then I start at the hole of the ventil/valve like four centimeters, make sure when you have started the roll that you have enough on it, this is the second video we make, in the first video I did not have enough on the roll, so I had to take it off again. So now I go with the second round and as you can see I put a pretty much pressure on it, so I don't have wrinkles, now I have to see where's the opening for the ventil/valve... There it is... I cut it off again at 45 degrees, push on it, check it, then I put back the tire, first I need to make a hole with a sharp object for the ventil/valve to go through. Don't punch with the ventil/valve because you might damage the ventil/valve and you need to throw away the ventil/valve, because I did it once and then every time that the tire was leaking some air through the ventil/valve, which is very annoying of course.
So check here if the inner tire is not between the outer tire and the rim, that's very important, then the second side of the tire, I start with pushing the ventil/valve in, check again if there's no inner tire between the tire, you could use also some talc powder to make rolling resistance a bit lower, I didn't do it in this case. I will put air back in, on the moment we put in the front suspension back in, because the space is very tight/limited and we better do it without air in the tires.
I hope you enjoyed the videos about maintenance, if you have still some ideas, please let them in the comments, but before you put/post the comments, have a look to the other videos maybe we uploaded your question already, don't forget to subscribe and have fun, see you next time.
