How do you tighten your spokes on your bike?

Question

can you tighten them? if so, how? my spokes are very loose. and i heard on a tv show that you should tighten them when they get loose.

Answer 1

Tighten spokes evenly and you should be OK. Don't over tighten. And it's righty tighty - lefty losey as normal with spoke not reverse like someone told you.

Answer 2

At the end of your spokes going towards the outside of the wheel (right at the rim), there are square "nipples" that can be used to adjust the tension of individual spokes.  What you need is a spoke wrench, which fits over the flats of these square shaped nipples.  To tighten the spoke, you will turn the spoke wrench COUNTER-CLOCKWISE to tighten and CLOCKWISE to loosen.  This is opposite of normal screws as essential the nipples are being screwed in from the outside of the rim.

Tighten in very small increments at a time, making sure each spoke has an even tension.  Ideally, if the rim is true, doing so will not distort the trueness of the wheel and will not produce wobbliness laterally, but in most cases you will have to adjust the tension on pairs of spokes to make the wheel go back into true.  Generally, tensioning and truing are done simultaneously on a truing stand.  

If you don't have access to a truing stand and are not experienced with truing your own wheels, you are probably better off going to a local bike shop and having them look at your wheels or teaching you how to do so.  Tensioning too much or improperly truing the wheel can cause early wheel failure.

Answer 3

You can use a spoke wrench.  They are pretty cheap at a bike shop.

But be careful tightening them can change the shape of your wheels.  Example: If you tighten the right side and not the left (or just not equally) the wheel can bow.  

If possible just let the bike shop do it.  Good luck

Answer 4

Yes there are small nuts on the ends of the spokes . Make sure you tighten them evenly.So count the turns of your spaner.

Answer 5

If only one or two are loose, you can tighten them using a spoke wrench ($5-10 at a shop.) However, if they are all loose, you'd be better off having the shop to it. It's very easy to get the rim off-centered, out of true, or worse, out of round. Due to the interaction with all the other spokes, knowing which spokes to tighten isn't always intuitive.