When I first bought the AlexRim, the drive side spokes were tight but the spokes on the other side were quite loose. I decided to give it a week to see how they settled in. While running errands yesterday I noticed a very slight wobble in the rear wheel. The new one. No broken spokes, and not the kind of wobble I’d normally worry about, but because the wheel is new I wanted to look into it. Since I’ve treated the wheel quite gently since buying it, I attributed the wobble to the lack of tension on the non-drive side. When I got home, I did some Googling on new wheels and discovered that they often need to have their tension adjusted. Nothing to be worried about.

This morning, I trued the wheel to get rid of the slight wobble, then tightened every spoke on the non-drive side by half a turn. I used the method described in Zinn’s Mountain Bike Maintenance book (or somewhere else), listening to the tone of each spoke. The non-drive side spokes all sound the same now, as do the drive-side spokes. I read that you can true a wheel to near perfection using the “ear” method. It seemed to do the trick, anyway. The wheel feels like my other wheels now, sounds good and, for the time being, seems true and well dished.