Publisher's Note: Welcome to our 49th edition of Tech Tips Tuesday on "Dirt Bike Spoke Maintenance: Keep Your Wheels Running".  We'll be re-publishing an edition of AMSOIL Tech Tips for you every Tuesday.  Click on the Blog Category "AMSOIL" to see everything published to-date.

Dirt Bike Spoke Maintenance: Keep Your Wheels Running

Len Groom: Welcome to Tech Tips. Today, we're talking about spoke maintenance, an extremely important yet often overlooked aspect of bike care. Here's Ben from the AMSOIL Mechanical Lab to show us exactly how it's done.

Ben Grembowski: A common maintenance task you should be doing after riding your dirt bike is checking your spoke tension. Let me show you why that's important and what the process looks like.

It's all about the structural integrity of the wheel. If you don't have your spokes tight and you're riding on the trail, you can break your spokes, bend your rim, or, worse yet, you can crash because of it. Some of the things you want to look for when checking your spokes are spoke tension, your axial run-out, and your radial run-out. You can refer to your owner's manual for the specs on that. Let me show you on the bike how to do that.

If you don't have a training stand, one way to get around that is by first securing your handlebars with some straps so that your wheel doesn't move side to side; secondly, finding some markers and duct tape to attach to either side of the rim. When positioning the markers, you want to get them within about 2 mm of the rim. Then you're going to want to spin your wheel. And anywhere that the marker touches on the rim and leaves a line is an area you're going to want to correct. If your rim has a line on it, that means that you're outside of the 2 mm specification.

You can find your run-out spec in your service manual for your make and model. This rim does have a line on it which will mean we'll need to correct that. Even though it's difficult to see on a black rim, you can see the line starts right here and heads all the way to here. That means that we're outside of our run-out specification to this side, so we're going to want to correct that on the opposite side of the rim.

To adjust your spokes, you're going to need the proper spoke wrench. This particular spoke wrench came with the wheelset when I bought them. This is for spline drive nipples. You're going to want to make sure you have the right wrench for the nipples you have. Now, to adjust it, we're going to want to make small adjustments first, and we're going to start at the beginning of our line and we're going to want to loosen the side that is bent a quarter turn.

We're going to make sure to stay only on the side that's bent for right now. Now we're going to go to the opposite side and do those spokes, and then we're going to tighten those spokes the same amount that we loosened the other side. Now, you want to make small adjustments and recheck each time. And, as you can see, our small correction did put this within the 2 mm limit.

We didn't show you how to check radial run-out since it's not something that's generally done after the wheel's been built and the bike's been ridden. Radial run-out is generally checked when you're building a new wheel, relacing new spokes, or installing a new rim. There are sometimes that you'll get a flat spot in your rim from hitting a rock, and that unfortunately can't be fixed without replacing the rim.

The next thing and most important is to check spoke tension. The tools I use to check spoke tension is a spoke torque wrench. You can find these for about $100. You're going to want to refer to your owner's manual or wheel manufacturer to get the correct torque spec for your spokes. For these particular wheels, I run 55-inch pounds.

You're going to need a reference point. I use the rim lock, or you can use the valve stem, either or. Check this one. You're going to count 1, 2, 3. Check again and again 1, 2, 3. Now, again, the reason you want to count three spokes is that there are 36 spokes in this wheel and in most dirt bike wheels, and this spreads out where you're checking your tension around the wheel. 2, 3.

You'll make three passes around the wheel to get all your spokes tight. 1, 2, 3. Now, on the last one, 1, 2, 3 you're going to end on the first spoke that you started with. Now, to do your second pass, you're going to move one spoke forward. Check that. Count again 1, 2, 3. And you're going to continue this process all the way around the rim. 1, 2, 3. Now you can see again we're back to our reference point.

And now we're on our last pass. We're going to shift this spoke again. This is going to be our last revolution around the wheel. 1, 2, 3. Now, that completes three revolutions around the wheel, which means all 36 spokes are torqued to the correct specification."

"Now, a quick recap: We talked to you about axial run-out and how to correct that. We talked to you about radial run-out and how to spot that and what that is. And all of our spokes are torqued to the correct specification, which means we're good to go."

Len Groom: "After watching that, we should all go out and take a look at our spokes. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time."

Dirt Bike Spoke Maintenance: Keep Your Wheels Running