On Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 3:58:54 PM UTC-8, pH wrote:
On Saturday, February 8, 2020 at 12:46:15 PM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/8/2020 1:00 PM, pH wrote:
I note my non-drive side spokes are looser than I'd like and plan to give them a 1/4 turn.

I don't think it should affect my centering much, but, anyway,
since it's been a long time I'm planning to put a drop of transmission fluid on each nipple then heat it briefly w/ a propane torch, or maybe vice-versa, heat then oil, just so I can make sure they are not too bound up.

Good idea? Bad idea?
I'll hold off a day until some opinions roll in.

ph in Aptos


That will move your rim off center to the left so if that's
what you need, go right ahead.

I was hoping it would not be enough to be noticeable. The drive side are plenty tight enough.


Also, what did you use to lubricate the nipples when you
built it? Do you know that they do not turn easily now?

It was some sort of blue gunk in a small 'vaseline' style container that had an ammonia
odor to it and dried to a powdery solid. I forget what it's called w/o going out to my garage.

Heat seems a poor choice. Here, we detension the whole
wheel, lubricate with fresh linseed oil and then bring it
back to correct tension. Fighting sticky threads a few at a
time seems a poor use of time to me.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Okay, thanks for the comments, everybody. I often have the "If it's not broken, fix it until it is." experience when I get these ideas in my head. (Ask me about the time I decided I should clean the points in my Morris Minor's voltage regulator.)

pH

It is easy enough to tight one side a little and loosen the other side a little and maintain a centered wheel. If you have the wheel stand and a spoke wrench it is easy enough to play with until you have it correct. The wheels I get from China invariably have the spokes far too loose. So I have to tighten everything up. The nice thing about their newer wheels is that the nipples are fully enclose in the wheel and you have a special square nutdriver rather than a spoke wrench (though I assume you call them both spoke wrenches) Those "aero" spokes are so rigid that they cannot show their true tightness using a spoke tensiometer I think.

In any case you really do want to have the rim centered and especially so with box rims since they can flex a bit. If you're using the "normal" 25 mm tires few bikes allow much additional room.