"Spoke on the Go" BikemanforU Show Episode 3

Spoke and word, anyone? To thine own wheels be true?  The Bikemanforu Show tackles a popular topic in the world of bike maintenance on this week's episode -  no, not Shakespeare, spoke replacement and truing up a wheel to spin properly!

The situation is familiar; a dirty old beach bike, cobbled together with more mismatched parts than Frankenstein, that all sorta works together. 

A stretched-out chain, and a replacement wheel with an 8-speed freehub after-market fitted to a 7-speed cassette are equally cringe-worthy. This bicycle is not pretty. 

The customer wants his ride "fixed" at little or no cost. The focus is on replacing a broken spoke and truing a badly warped rear wheel. 

Getting down to action after a snappy Monty Python-esque musical break, the episode focuses on measuring, installing and adjusting spokes.  A key point is made about how spokes follow a "lace pattern" over and under adjacent spokes. 

This pattern lesson is further re-inforced when we see how another spoke of a mismatched color had been installed incorrectly.

Once the spokes are in, the wheel is spun. It's still warped, or  "out of true."  Method is applied to BikemanforU madness, as the Maestro of Repair demonstrates how to fine tune those spokes to get the wheel spinning straight again. 

Viewers get to see how and where to apply the spoke wrench to tighten things and true up the wheel.  By the end of the show, that wheel is spinning like a DJ's turntable! 

Bookmark this episode for the next time you hit a curb or pothole a little too hard! The BikemanforU Show uploads weekly to our channel on YouTube.

--JPorter