Our Sunday loop: Kukkarahalli lake to Lalitha Mahal
Eighteen kilometres, one gentle climb and a cup of coffee at the end: a turn-by-turn guide to our Sunday morning ride.
Truing a wheel by hand in our workshop
A spoke key, a truing stand and a lot of small turns: how a bent wheel becomes straight again.
Behind our shop floor is the workshop where Ravi, our senior mechanic, has trued wheels for more than twenty years. It is still done completely by hand.
A bicycle wheel is held in shape by spokes, usually 36 of them, each pulling the rim towards the hub. When a wheel hits a pothole or a kerb, some spokes loosen or stretch and the rim develops a wobble from side to side, or a flat spot. You notice it when the rim rubs against the brake pads once on every turn.
Truing starts with the wheel on a truing stand, a frame that holds it and has two adjustable pointers on either side of the rim. Ravi spins the wheel slowly and moves the pointers in until they just touch the rim at its worst wobble. Then he tightens the spokes that pull the rim away from that side and loosens those on the other, a quarter turn at a time with a spoke key. He spins, checks, adjusts again, working out from the worst spot in both directions. A badly bent wheel can take 40 minutes.
He also checks that the rim is round, not just straight, and that every spoke has roughly the same tension, which he judges by plucking them like guitar strings and listening to the note. Truing is included in our ₹799 full service. A single wheel on its own is ₹150, done while you wait, unless the rim itself is cracked, in which case we will show you and quote for a new one.
