Road Cycling - Broken spokes

I am a big strong rider that has had problems breaking spokes. I weigh about 225lbs, 6'4" and I really pound the pedals when climbing. The traditional 3 cross spoked wheels have been fine. I've been wanting to get into the newer wheel systems (ie: radial lacing, etc.) but have had problems breaking spokes and overstressing these type of wheels.

The most current set of wheels I've been using are Cane Creek Areohead Cronos. I thought I found the wheels for me until about 3 months of riding them they started creaking and making sounds when out of the saddle. I figured that the spokes were getting a bit loose after break in period so I gave each nipple a 1/4 turn. It seemed to solve the creaking problem. But about 1 month later (yesterday) I broke a spoke on the drive side of the rear wheel. I called Cane Creek and they said that should not have happend and shipped out a spoke kit to fix it.

Question is: Do you think that this broken spoke was truely an anomolie, or am I doomed to ride traditional 3 crossed wheels for ever???

Does anyone have experience with this? I would really like to know other opinions.

You never use radial spoking on the drive side of a wheel. however, it actually might help prevent broken spokes on a heavily dished wheel by doing a semi-radial spoking pattern.

Nothing wrong with 3 cross wheels. The problem with the new wheels is the lower number of spokes. The reduction in spokes, meant that when a spoke breaks the wheel goes way out of wack and you can't finish your ride. I break one or two spokes a year on 32 spoke wheels...sooner or later you will break a spoke if you are a big rider that pounds on a bike. If you have 32 spokes, there are enough left to get you home safely. If you look at the weight of a 32 spoke wheel built with the new revolution spokes and high end hub and rim, it should be very close to that of the cane creek areohead. The areohead's uses 28 spokes in the rear, what's the big deal in saving 4 spokes? A buddy of mine had a 20 spoke rear wheel and that meant that the loads of the wheel only had 20 spokes to transfer the loads to the hub...the hub cracked.

Originally posted by fogrider
Nothing wrong with 3 cross wheels. The problem with the new wheels is the lower number of spokes. The reduction in spokes, meant that when a spoke breaks the wheel goes way out of wack and you can't finish your ride. I break one or two spokes a year on 32 spoke wheels...sooner or later you will break a spoke if you are a big rider that pounds on a bike. If you have 32 spokes, there are enough left to get you home safely. If you look at the weight of a 32 spoke wheel built with the new revolution spokes and high end hub and rim, it should be very close to that of the cane creek areohead. The areohead's uses 28 spokes in the rear, what's the big deal in saving 4 spokes? A buddy of mine had a 20 spoke rear wheel and that meant that the loads of the wheel only had 20 spokes to transfer the loads to the hub...the hub cracked.

True. I have been thinking of building up a set of Chris King hubs with Open Pro rims. I just like the looks of a radially spoked wheel. The Cane Creeks are great. I just don't want to have to deal with a busted spoke all the time.

I remember back in the 80's when the glued aluminum bikes came out. I had to stick with steel because of the frame size I needed in the early aluminum bikes would never hold up to the stress. Not that I don't like steel. It just seems like all of the cool new equipment is designed for those small little europeans that weigh 160lbs.

We'll see. The new spoke should be here early next week. I'll replace and true up the wheel and go from there. Does anyone have experience with Ksyrium wheels? Do they hold up better for bigger riders? The aluminum spokes make me nervous.

Ksyrium are known for being virtualy bombproof so should be a excellent choice. Only thing I really did not like in you're story was you said after you started hearing noise you turned every spoke 1/4 a turn, did you true it at that time or just tighten every spoke? Is it possible that some spokes had come loose and that is what actualy caused the problem and the added stress broke the spoke...

I'm still debating on my wheelset. Just talked to a guy this weekend however that probably made up my mind. He's a 295 heavy weight body builder. The guys huge. He ridin Velomax Tempest whees for over a year on his Specialized without a single problem and recently bought the Tempest II's. He says he rides about 150 miles a week on average.

Well, I have had trouble with wheels over the years. I found that I could get 10,000 miles or so out of an MA40 Rim but then the spokes would pull out and the rim disintegrate. And that was with 36 spokes. I have switched to 36 spokes on a Mavic T519 and I have gotten 40,000 miles on this set, so it looks like I can't break them.

The thing with large, strong and heavy riders, getting light equipment that might fail, just does not seem to make a whole lot of sense. Sure it looks as neat as all get out but I don't think it makes sense from an engineering point of view.

I mean you have your 150 lb rider. He is on an 18 lb bike and it has a pair of fancy, pare all the weight wheels. Rider and ride are a combined 168 lbs with the bike making up 10.7% of the total weight.

Now say you are a 230 lb rider on a 20 lb bike with heavy, durable wheels that will not fail you. Rider and ride are a combined 250 lbs with the bike making up 8% of the total weight!

Effectively the heavy guy has a lighter bike even with a concession to having some heavier components on his bike. If you are big and strong and ride a lot, it just does not make sense to shave the weight unless you like replacing stuff all the time.

My wheelsets creak all the time buit never have broken a spoke and never touch the spokes.Everything i have stays true.

Originally posted by Kev
Ksyrium are known for being virtualy bombproof so should be a excellent choice. Only thing I really did not like in you're story was you said after you started hearing noise you turned every spoke 1/4 a turn, did you true it at that time or just tighten every spoke? Is it possible that some spokes had come loose and that is what actualy caused the problem and the added stress broke the spoke...

Cane Creek says that you should not have to adjust the spokes after the "break in period" like conventional wheels. They claim that with direct pull spokes, there is no "seating" of the spoke heads like you get with J bend spokes. So I ignored the noise for a couple of months. Finally I decided to tighten the wheel. I did true the wheel after tightening. CC says the drive side should not exceed 130Kg tension. I don't have a tensiometer so I didn't check. If these wheels are a tough as Cane Creek claims, I can't imagine that this would have put enough pressure on the spokes to break them. They were working great before the spoke broke. Silent, strong and quick.

Manufactures claim alot of things :) Does not mean in reality it is that way. I've heard alot of good things about cane creek wheels, I just wanted to throw that out as a possibility.

I had a problem with the spokes coming loose on my Mavic wheels, took it back to LBS and they said it was a fault of machine built (as opposed to human built) wheels.
A guy I ride with sometimes rcently bought a new bike and broke a few spokes on his bike (dunno what sort of wheels) and the LBS said it was common problem with black spokes (mine were black too), there's a bad batch of them he reckons.

I broke a spoke yesterday...

I amd using Rigida Sphinx-r 36h rims on Shimano XTR hubs.

broke one at the rear, drive side..

This was after I had a high speed flat.. I was cruising about 42-45kmh then suddenly heard a hissing sound, at that speed a sudden loss of tire pressure would be very dangerous in my opinion. I hit a pothole at about 35-36kmh, when I had the bike at full stop, the rear was completely flat.

The bike was almost out of control, good thing i remembered not to apply brakes on the flat wheel..

The bike is at my LBS right now, I'll be picking it up later..

Oh, BTW i weigh 200lbs......
:D

Originally posted by Falchoon
LBS said it was common problem with black spokes (mine were black too), there's a bad batch of them he reckons.

Does your LBS know more info about this bad batch thing? make, model?

I also have black spokes!:(

Bullit proof....Shimano 48 hole tandem hubs, 3x, DT Alpine spokes, and an appropriate rim.

Dark hard anodized rims tend to have spokes pull out. In other words the eyelets pull out of the rims. Try using silver, non-anodized, rims. They arent as strong but you wont have to worry about spokes pulling out.

A nice combination for you would be a set of wheels built with 32 holes, 3X, DT Alpine spokes, a good (UAB SUP) Mavic rim (double walled and wide).