Easton EA90 SL Broken Spoke
09-01-11, 06:40 AM
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Failures in 1/300th of that time are a defect in materials and/or workmanship.
Since my rear wheel is still dead-nuts true after 1,000+ miles I have absolutely no reason to think these are the wrong wheels for me.
The fact is that sometimes **** brakes.
Last edited by Drew Eckhardt; 09-01-11 at 01:13 PM.
09-01-11, 06:58 AM
#77
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Lets try this one last time, real slowly.
1.You clearly don't know much about wheels, there is nothing wrong with that. We are trying to educate you as to why you should be VERY WORRIED ABOUT YOUR SAFETY if you have broken a FRONT spoke. On a road bike your weight is roughly distributed 40/60 front to back, on a real aggressive racing bike it can be closer to 30/70. IF you weigh 250lbs that means you busted a spoke with only 100lbs focused on your front wheel. Your rear wheel is getting 150lbs. Thats 50% more weight than is on the front wheel. In addition, the rear wheel takes ALL the force of the drivetrain. As clydes we may not be able to cruise at 25mph like a 150mph cyclist does but we put everybit as much (in fact, more) torque through our wheels in order to get our larger mass moving. This is the reason you will often see rear wheels crack at the rim on the DRIVE SIDE only. The wheels get tensioned high to support our weight and hold together but combine that high tension with a lot of torque being put down and literally you rip the spoke and nipple right through the rim. (Note: this can happen even on a 32 spoke rim, since we are clydes even a std set of wheels will usually be built with higher tension than is done for a lighter rider).
2. Your front wheel oculd have broken for a number of reasons, however, if it was manufacturing defects in the spoke, don't you think that it's likely the defect was in a whole batch of spokes that were used on your wheel, and not just on one spoke. 2. IF this were court, the reviews read online combined with your first hand account of the problem you described would lead any jury to believe "beyond a REASONABLE doubt" that something with the design or manf process of these wheels is off.
3. I never told you lighter means weaker. I'm the guy on here who a few months back was asking tons of questions because I wanted to get a lighter wheelset. I've since done EXTENSIVE research including reading 2 books on wheelbuilding. Personally it is my opinion that as clydes we can run some really light wheelsets if we want to but it's probably not best to do that as training wheels. you have 3 parts of the wheels, the hubs, the spokes and the rims. What clydes get annoyed with is people trying to save weight by reducing spoke count when spoke count along with proper assembly has the most importance on overall durability of the wheel. Think about if you had to lift up a 1000lb object. Would you want 4 people helping you or would you want 12 people helping you. More spokes means each spoke doesn't have to work as hard. There are plenty of lightweight hubs out there of good quality such as white industries, chris king, etc. Hubs are at the center of the wheel and probably make the least difference in making a light wheelset "faster" The issues of lightweight hubs catastrophically failing is pretty small, it's more of an issue about lightweight, inexpensive aluminum freehub bodys getting indents from the cassette, or bearings getting worn out because of poor seals, but there is very little risk of these hubs actually physically coming apart and making the rest of the wheel come with it (nowadays almost all hubs are made to accept radial lacing of the front wheel as well which used to be the only real issue) Ultimately, what I (and many others) have come to discover is that if you want a lightweight wheelset, you should look to go with lightweight hubs and a lighter rim but KEEP THE SPOKE COUNT HIGH for added strength. Now if you are a heavier rider on lightweight rims, you will need to constantly inspect the rims for cracks around the nipples as that is where they are more likely to fail. it is also imperative that you avoid road hazards with them more so than if you are on a heavier rim. eliminating 20 spokes to go from 32/32 to a 20/24 wheelset will only save you about 5grams per spoke so yes, you can shave 100 grams. Going from a deep v rim at 525 grams down to a 450 gram velocity fusion will save you 150 grams and that is at the perimeter of the wheel where it's effect is greatest.
4. at the end of the day spoke count won't matter one bit if the wheel wasn't put together properly. I don't own these wheels but in seeing the reviews, there has to be a reason why they are all failing like they are. it could be defective spokes. it could simply be they werent tensioned properly. Easton is a pretty big well known company, they could be churning out these wheels built by machine and the problem could be as simple as the spoke tensions need to be double checked out of the box and that will render them fine. that is a common problem. however, they are charging an awful lot of money for these wheels and I would expect that to be something that was addressed. But knowing the size of the company and the fact that easton is a sporting goods company not a cycling only company like Mavic, I highly doubt these wheels are being built by a cyclist for a cyclist so I would be wary.
5. Did you read what I said about the SLX wheels? I didn't say you should ride them, I said you should push to get your SL's replaced with the more EXPENSIVE SLX wheels and then rather than ride them you should sell them to finance a proper set of wheels. But if you really must know, in my opinion, the slx's ARE a BETTER wheel for a clyde because they seem to have been designed and manufactured CORRECTLY while the SL's seem to have major flaws in either design, manf or both.
1.You clearly don't know much about wheels, there is nothing wrong with that. We are trying to educate you as to why you should be VERY WORRIED ABOUT YOUR SAFETY if you have broken a FRONT spoke. On a road bike your weight is roughly distributed 40/60 front to back, on a real aggressive racing bike it can be closer to 30/70. IF you weigh 250lbs that means you busted a spoke with only 100lbs focused on your front wheel. Your rear wheel is getting 150lbs. Thats 50% more weight than is on the front wheel. In addition, the rear wheel takes ALL the force of the drivetrain. As clydes we may not be able to cruise at 25mph like a 150mph cyclist does but we put everybit as much (in fact, more) torque through our wheels in order to get our larger mass moving. This is the reason you will often see rear wheels crack at the rim on the DRIVE SIDE only. The wheels get tensioned high to support our weight and hold together but combine that high tension with a lot of torque being put down and literally you rip the spoke and nipple right through the rim. (Note: this can happen even on a 32 spoke rim, since we are clydes even a std set of wheels will usually be built with higher tension than is done for a lighter rider).
2. Your front wheel oculd have broken for a number of reasons, however, if it was manufacturing defects in the spoke, don't you think that it's likely the defect was in a whole batch of spokes that were used on your wheel, and not just on one spoke. 2. IF this were court, the reviews read online combined with your first hand account of the problem you described would lead any jury to believe "beyond a REASONABLE doubt" that something with the design or manf process of these wheels is off.
3. I never told you lighter means weaker. I'm the guy on here who a few months back was asking tons of questions because I wanted to get a lighter wheelset. I've since done EXTENSIVE research including reading 2 books on wheelbuilding. Personally it is my opinion that as clydes we can run some really light wheelsets if we want to but it's probably not best to do that as training wheels. you have 3 parts of the wheels, the hubs, the spokes and the rims. What clydes get annoyed with is people trying to save weight by reducing spoke count when spoke count along with proper assembly has the most importance on overall durability of the wheel. Think about if you had to lift up a 1000lb object. Would you want 4 people helping you or would you want 12 people helping you. More spokes means each spoke doesn't have to work as hard. There are plenty of lightweight hubs out there of good quality such as white industries, chris king, etc. Hubs are at the center of the wheel and probably make the least difference in making a light wheelset "faster" The issues of lightweight hubs catastrophically failing is pretty small, it's more of an issue about lightweight, inexpensive aluminum freehub bodys getting indents from the cassette, or bearings getting worn out because of poor seals, but there is very little risk of these hubs actually physically coming apart and making the rest of the wheel come with it (nowadays almost all hubs are made to accept radial lacing of the front wheel as well which used to be the only real issue) Ultimately, what I (and many others) have come to discover is that if you want a lightweight wheelset, you should look to go with lightweight hubs and a lighter rim but KEEP THE SPOKE COUNT HIGH for added strength. Now if you are a heavier rider on lightweight rims, you will need to constantly inspect the rims for cracks around the nipples as that is where they are more likely to fail. it is also imperative that you avoid road hazards with them more so than if you are on a heavier rim. eliminating 20 spokes to go from 32/32 to a 20/24 wheelset will only save you about 5grams per spoke so yes, you can shave 100 grams. Going from a deep v rim at 525 grams down to a 450 gram velocity fusion will save you 150 grams and that is at the perimeter of the wheel where it's effect is greatest.
4. at the end of the day spoke count won't matter one bit if the wheel wasn't put together properly. I don't own these wheels but in seeing the reviews, there has to be a reason why they are all failing like they are. it could be defective spokes. it could simply be they werent tensioned properly. Easton is a pretty big well known company, they could be churning out these wheels built by machine and the problem could be as simple as the spoke tensions need to be double checked out of the box and that will render them fine. that is a common problem. however, they are charging an awful lot of money for these wheels and I would expect that to be something that was addressed. But knowing the size of the company and the fact that easton is a sporting goods company not a cycling only company like Mavic, I highly doubt these wheels are being built by a cyclist for a cyclist so I would be wary.
5. Did you read what I said about the SLX wheels? I didn't say you should ride them, I said you should push to get your SL's replaced with the more EXPENSIVE SLX wheels and then rather than ride them you should sell them to finance a proper set of wheels. But if you really must know, in my opinion, the slx's ARE a BETTER wheel for a clyde because they seem to have been designed and manufactured CORRECTLY while the SL's seem to have major flaws in either design, manf or both.
1) I don't know what point you're trying to make here. I stated that rear wheel failure seems to be much more common, which is obvious considering that there is more force acting on the rear wheel.
2) You're right. It could have failed for a number of reasons. Let's all quit acting like we know for certain that it failed because it was not designed for a 220 lb rider.
3) I was poking fun at the previous argument on here about lighter = weaker. And I really don't understand why all the harping on spoke count. I have maintained the whole time that I chose the SL wheels over the SLX or any other production wheel in that price range because the SL in fact had more spokes. One other point worth making here is that a ligth of the light weight wheels that everyone is blasting here are made with aluminum spokes. You all act as if I bought a set of wheels with 18 aluminum spokes, when in fact I have a wheelset with a higher count ot STEEL spokes.
4) Easton wheels claim to be hand built. This could be good or bad. Humans make mistakes, just like machines.
5) Sorry, I missed the part about selling them.
09-01-11, 07:01 AM
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Spokes should last indefinitely. High quality stainless spokes in a good wheel build will still be going strong at 300,000 miles although you'll have replaced rims, bearings, and perhaps axles due to wear and fatigue.
Failures in 1/300th of that time are a defect in materials and/or workmanship.
With spoke failures usually due to fatigue (with about 750 cycles a mile as spokes and nipple sockets unloading passing the bottom of the wheel) and rim failures often coming from the problem, 1-3 months use are not a valid predictor.
We all brake on steep inclines with tight curves. Quality spokes in well bild wheels don't break.
Failures in 1/300th of that time are a defect in materials and/or workmanship.
With spoke failures usually due to fatigue (with about 750 cycles a mile as spokes and nipple sockets unloading passing the bottom of the wheel) and rim failures often coming from the problem, 1-3 months use are not a valid predictor.
We all brake on steep inclines with tight curves. Quality spokes in well bild wheels don't break.
09-01-11, 09:52 AM
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Then, you try to act intelligent but can't figure out what reviews we were talking about when I clearly posted a link in an earlier post. Duh!
Then looking back at you posting history, I can't count the times you posted, "I'm an engineer so I know better" type comments while dissing other posters with "all you internet experts" type comments while arguing with experienced mechanics. Only to find that you have installed other components like the bottom bracket while omitting parts during installation and not being able to figure out why you have problems. Wow, if you are an engineer, I hope you are engineering Hot Wheel type products and not something that really matters.
Not to mention, slightly over 300 posts since 2008, I'm guessing this is a troll profile of another poster used to initiate irate debates as entertainment.
Last edited by Mr. Beanz; 09-01-11 at 10:06 AM.
09-01-11, 10:27 AM
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Then looking back at you posting history, I can't count the times you posted, "I'm an engineer so I know better" type comments while dissing other posters with "all you internet experts" type comments while arguing with experienced mechanics. Only to find that you have installed other components like the bottom bracket while omitting parts during installation and not being able to figure out why you have problems. Wow, if you are an engineer, I hope you are engineering Hot Wheel type products and not something that really matters.
Not to mention, slightly over 300 posts since 2008, I'm guessing this is a troll profile of another poster used to initiate irate debates as entertainment.
Not to mention, slightly over 300 posts since 2008, I'm guessing this is a troll profile of another poster used to initiate irate debates as entertainment.
Not to mention, that's more than a bit creepy.
Last edited by RiverHills; 09-01-11 at 10:36 AM.
09-01-11, 10:46 AM
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Man I thought I had everyone fooled. Everyone, perhaps but you. And, if you really have enough free time to go back through my posting history to reveal my true identify as a fake engineer troll, then I submit that it is your [lack of] gainful employment that should be called into question.
Not to mention, that's more than a bit creepy.
Not to mention, that's more than a bit creepy.
It's not creepy to look back at a poster's history to investigate that his history mainly consists of idiotic posts. This is what allows me to sit back and and read your self confusion with a smile on my face. 
FTR, creepy is having to post under a troll because you haven't the pride to do so under your main profile. You are a frightened child.
BTW, because you claim to be an engineer doesn't mean you are employed at the time. If so, you won't be for long. You spend all day on the forums then run of to play volleyball in the evening. I never use company time to post.
I guess the main issue here is that you are a troll but haven't the to post these things under your real profile.
Last edited by Mr. Beanz; 09-01-11 at 10:53 AM.
09-01-11, 10:52 AM
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Creepy? But you know my history. It's not creepy to look back at a poster's history to investigate that his history mainly consists of idiotic posts. This is what allows me to sit back and and read your self confusion with a smile on my face.
FTR, creepy is having to post under a troll because you haven't the pride to do so under your main profile. You are a frightened child.
It's not creepy to look back at a poster's history to investigate that his history mainly consists of idiotic posts. This is what allows me to sit back and and read your self confusion with a smile on my face. FTR, creepy is having to post under a troll because you haven't the pride to do so under your main profile. You are a frightened child.
09-01-11, 10:55 AM
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09-01-11, 01:09 PM
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I'm not a high mileage cyclist but added 3000 miles to my favorite wheels (2.6M cycles) last year plus trainer time. They still have all the same spokes (DT Revolution 2.0/1.5 front and NDS; Competition 2.0/1.8 DS)I built them with 13-15 years ago.
Jobst put 300,000 miles on a set of 1.8/1.6 stainless spokes + hub shells and various high-mileage listers not chasing the latest trend have also racked up six figures.
All quality stainless steel spokes with elbow diameter and length appropriate for the hub should last indefinitely, with Sapim's claim just a marketing gimmick.
Last edited by Drew Eckhardt; 09-01-11 at 04:41 PM.
09-02-11, 08:46 AM
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Update on my wheel with the broken spoke...
One LBS wanted to replace the broken stainless steel spoke with a black spoke because they didn't have any stainless steel in stock. The next LBS proposed rebuilding the wheelset with the Sapim C X-Ray spokes. He said he has rebuilt several wheels this way with great success. So, that is what I decided to do. This will eliminate any threat that my broken spoke was due to poor assembly on behalf of Easton, despite their claims of handbuilding and accustically tuning each and every wheel. Now I will essentially have a true hand built wheelset by a local mechanic. Not to mention my average will double due to the aero effects of the bladed spokes.
One LBS wanted to replace the broken stainless steel spoke with a black spoke because they didn't have any stainless steel in stock. The next LBS proposed rebuilding the wheelset with the Sapim C X-Ray spokes. He said he has rebuilt several wheels this way with great success. So, that is what I decided to do. This will eliminate any threat that my broken spoke was due to poor assembly on behalf of Easton, despite their claims of handbuilding and accustically tuning each and every wheel. Now I will essentially have a true hand built wheelset by a local mechanic. Not to mention my average will double due to the aero effects of the bladed spokes.
09-02-11, 09:41 AM
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12-24-11, 08:15 PM
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Hmm, I wonder if I should be worried. I just posted a thread about breaking spokes on both my rear (drive side) and front (while climbing a 15% grade) on the same ride (only 35 miles). I've had the Easton EA90s for about a year, and have 3000 - 4000 miles on them problem free. Up to this point I've been very happy. I'm not a heavy rider (175lbs), but I do tend to push big gears and I know I put a lot of torque on the rear wheel. Plus I've been doing a lot more climbing than I usually do over the last couple of months (mother nature gave us a break, so I've been riding quite a bit and hitting the hills with the intent of fixing my weakness, which is going up grades)
I came from Mavic Ksyrium Elites which I absolutely loved. I also love the Eastons, and I'm wondering whether this was a freak occurrence (who knows, temperature, climbing etc) or whether once I get my wheels back I will need to start worrying about other spokes breaking (I can understand the rear, but the front?)
I came from Mavic Ksyrium Elites which I absolutely loved. I also love the Eastons, and I'm wondering whether this was a freak occurrence (who knows, temperature, climbing etc) or whether once I get my wheels back I will need to start worrying about other spokes breaking (I can understand the rear, but the front?)
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