Hello, I've just been giving my BFe a quick service and some of the spokes on the DT Ex5.1 (or similar) are a bit flexy, whilst others feel nice and stiff.

Is the goal to get all spokes to a reasonably stiff and similar state?
And do I do that simply by tightening the nipples of the flexy spokes?

Thank you for taking the time…

Please 😀

Short answer to all that is yes.

Spoke tension should be even. IIRC Park tools say + or – 20%. Most people aim for closer to 10% and on a good day if you're patient you can get less than that. However, if you can feel loose spokes and tight spokes, they're out by a country mile.

It's not just a case of tightening the lose ones though as you need to try to keep the wheel round both side to side and up and down as well as keeping it in the centre line of the bike. By the way, the drive side on the rear should be a bit tighter as should the disc side on the front.

Either find a good wheel builder or have a look for some of the online guides and have a go yourself. It can be tricky but it's also very satisfying.

I find I can build more balanced wheels than I can buy but the truth is, I couldn't afford to pay a wheel builder to spend as long on them as I do!!!!

Is it just the odd spoke that is loose? Is the wheel also out of true where the odd loose spoke is? If so then you may be able to get away with tightening up the rogue spokes with the wheel insitu checking trueness and tension as you go.

If there's many loose spokes it may be best to slacken off all the spokes and then build up the tension from scratch.

Thank you both very much. I will check further and go from there. Mucho appreciated.