Spoked wheels have been around for as long as, well, motorcycles. It wasn’t until the 1970s that cast alloy wheels began to appear on production street motorcycles, but that didn’t make spoked wheels obsolete. In fact, spoked wheels are still the best approach for keeping things rolling on dirtbikes and adventure bikes. But with spokes comes required maintenance, and in some cases truing your wheels to make sure they are perfectly round so as to deliver a smooth and trouble-free ride.
Spokes attach the hub to the rim to create the wheel, and the spokes are under tension to give the wheel strength. The physics and engineering of how this actually works is massively complicated, but, basically, without proper tension, the wheel’s strength is compromised. And really, that’s all we…