Discovered my wheel truing stand was reading 0.5mm off the whole time

I was chasing a wobble on a customer's road bike for like an hour last Thursday, kept getting frustrated. Finally grabbed a cheap dial indicator from Harbor Freight just to double check, turns out my Park Tool stand has been crooked since day one. Anyone else ever have a tool that was just built wrong from the factory?

2 comments

2 Comments

ericschmidt1mo ago

Got to push back a little on the "paperweight with attitude" thing. A crooked truing stand is still totally usable if you know it's crooked. Just have to zero it out on the rim itself every time before you start, then check your work with the rim in the same spot. Basically means you're using the rim as your reference instead of the stand's arms. Not ideal but a lot better than throwing it in the trash. Had a coworker do that with a Park Tool stand once and it still tracked fine for years.

wren_carr1mo ago

Bought a digital caliper once that was off by 0.3mm right out of the box. Didn't realize until after I'd used it to measure bars for a custom build and everything came out just slightly wrong. At least yours is still useable if you do the math in your head, a crooked truing stand is basically just a paperweight with attitude.