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Old 02-17-11 | 12:47 PM
  #3  
dabac
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Joined: Mar 2008
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The No.1 spoke killer is well established to be fatigue, not sudden jolts.
A jolt might be the thing that kills off a spoke well on its way to fatiguing, but isn't the initial source of the problem. That spoke would have gone a few days/weeks later anyhow.
And at the elbow is where it usually happens. Once in a while one will snap at the onset of the threads, but the majority happens at the elbow.
Using threadlock prevents nipples from unscrewing, but to make unscrewing a reality the spoke has to slack first.
But the key priority in a good build is to have sufficient tension as to prevent spokes from ever going slack. Thinner spokes on NDS helps with this, as they allow you to build a wheel where the strain (load WRT surface area) can be more equally balanced despite the tension in absolute terms being different.
The strain is what decides the "stretchiness" of the spokes, and a higher strain means that the load cycling will be less as the wheel rotates. Helps keep the spokes under tension.
If the "normal" fixes,(different gauges, offset rims, NDS radial heads-out) doesn't work, then you might want to look into wheels with "paired" spokes, ie double the spoke number on the DS as on the NDS.
Another option (for a steel frame bike) is to re-dish the wheel to a more symmetric spoke angle, and then to cold set the rear triangles with an offset to compensate and make the wheels track again. You'll have to adjust the dropouts as well, watch out for crank/heel strike on chain stay, but is otherwise pretty much a non issue.
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