Building & Truing a Wheel With a Shimano Alfine Hub

[IanHoll]

Does anyone know which truing stand I suitable when building and truing a wheel with a Shimano Alfine hub? The axle is fixed to the Alfine and only spins one-way, so I'm wondering what truing stand is suitable for this wheel build. I have a DRC wheel truing stand, but given the axle is fixed on the Shimano Alfine I cannot think of a way to adapt it.

Regards,

Ian

 

[hsdrggr]

If you have the bike that the wheel is going into you can build and true it with out a truing stand. Just start by mounting it up and sighting the rear cog parallel with front chainring. Then as it’s tensioned set the front of the rim evenly spaced in between the chain stays behind the BB. Use scotch tape to run across the stays to set out of round limit. And a spacer between rim and chainstay for lateral runout. Once you get it close to final tension flip the bike over and sight from center of rim edge to the underside of the fork crown to see if rim is tracking straight in the frame. In my early days I worked at 5 different bike shops one being a pro shop with a frame builder on site. I’ve built hundreds of wheels. While it’s convenient to have a stand and an offset gauge it is not really necessary. I built my touring bike a couple years ago that way and just for giggles I checked it with an offset gauge at a LBS and it was within 1mm of being spot on. I still have all my specialty bicycle hand tools from 45 years ago, and added more over the years but I just didn’t feel it was necessary to spend the $$ for a truing stand. An offset gauge wouldn’t be bad thing to have though. Good luck.
P.S. you can buy a little plastic adjustable thingy that clamps to the chain stay for truing. They’re cheap. Also free if you have a 3D printer. STL files are on Thingiverse.