Originally Posted by
kmac27
I have been riding one bike (2007 trek soho 1.0) for around 3 years and about 3500 miles a year since december of 2007. On this bike I have broken 4 spokes and repaired them all to perfect true. I also am riding a $350 workhorse I just got last christmas. I have broken 4 spokes on this bike in the last 3 months. This bike had 2 spokes break and then I had it trued to perfect and I broke a spoke not even 10 miles after retruing this wheel. I am super frustrated as I've never had this kind of luck with bikes ever.
I weigh 188 lbs at 8% BF so losing weight isn't much of an option. Is this the main factor, or is there something else at play? I don't ride hard and on bumps I make sure I let as much pressure off of the bike as possible. When commuting I carry in-between 10 and 40 lbs. Any suggestions? I am extremely frustrated with my problem as it is my main form of transportation (I don't own a car).
I ride hard, on potholes, bumps, manhole covers, broken pavement. And I ride fast, usually up to 30 mph on straights, you could say I throw my bike around hard. And I am 260 lbs myself, with bike and everything included it goes up to around 330.
Your problem is probably in your wheels being machine built. So as an consequence of spoke tension not being in good balance, one spoke got overstressed and broke - then as a result of that, others got overstressed and the next weakest spoke broke. See where this is going? Now that most of the spokes are somewhat damaged, they will probably keep popping right one after another. No matter that you exchange them, in fact, that's only going to make it worse, because new spokes are in better shape then other old spokes, so old ones are going to have an even harder time to stand up to it.
What is going to solve your problem is to rebuild that wheel using all new spokes, and have it rebuilt by a competent wheel builder, which is going to balance it up and true it manually with feel. Such built wheel should stand up to a few years of harder abuse, if the hub and rim are up to it. Bare minimum for having your wheel rebuilt like that is having a double wall rim (preferably with spoke hole reinforcements), and a good quality brand name hub such as at least a Shimano Alivio/Acera/Deore hub. If you have weaker components, ditch the whole wheel and have a new one built something like this; DT spokes, Deore hub, and Mavic double walled reinforced rim. That will save you the trouble of dealing with that again for at least a few years. And DO NOT buy machine pre-built wheels; they are mostly crap. Insist on buying parts and having them built into a wheel.
Also have in mind that new wheels will need at least one re tensioning after they roll for about the first 100 miles or so; you will know when it is needed, as you will notice the new wheel slightly going out of true - when that happens (side to side wobble at the rim greater then 1 mm) - take them back to the builder to get them re tensioned. Every part of new wheel needs to seat in and stretch a bit, and that is why that happens, and it is perfectly normal. Good builders usually do that tune up for free if you had the wheel built by them.
After that, it is happy rolling, with mostly no maintenance. With such approach to the problem I never had the problem of breaking spokes again.