Sevalecan

Another rambling post about my spoke stories, feel free to skip to the last paragraph to get straight to the point.

So, since it's a fair investment to get the tools to rebuild a wheel, and I'm still looking for a car to buy, I decided to stop the first heavy guy who looked serious about biking on the trail which I usually ride. I asked him if he knew any good wheel builders in the area. He recommended me to another LBS in town that I had forgotten about, and from what I've heard, the guy there is the man to talk to about wheels.

I'll skip past most of that story and just note, that while the people at this new LBS agreed that my wheel should be able to hold me and that the hardware it's got should essentially make it "bomb-proof," the wheel builder was hesitant to give me any assurance that we could eliminate this problem, so I e-mailed another shop that the guy I stopped recommended that's about 40 miles away, and have yet to hear a response from them. I will also say that the shop I did go to checked the tension on my spokes and said they were all right around where they were supposed to be, mentioning the number "60," if I recall correctly.

However, I was casually discussing my issues with someone where I work, and he referred me to another guy who works there who has actually done some work on his own wheels. This guy in fact knows another person there who's supposedly even better(and has been very successful with not having spokes break). I haven't spoken to the last person yet, but we'll name the second person in this chain "Jack." Jack mentioned that probably the only thing he could think of off the bat is maybe if the spokes weren't inserted in the correct direction, that is, so that the elbow rests inside the counter-sunk portion of the hub flange. After my unrelatedly bad day at work, I decided to go for a good old bike ride on the trail. As I was looking at my rear wheel to see whether the flange was countersunk on both sides, I noticed something.

There was a W on one of the spokes! I thought my old shop had told me they were all DTs?! Nope! Of course, it appears every spoke on the non-drive side *is* a DT spoke. However, the drive-side appears to be mix and match. I couldn't check the outside-end of the flange since the sprocket makes it basically impossible for me to see in there, however on the inside I noticed that most of the spokes had a W written on them, while one or two had DT's logo on them. It would appear that originally the drive-side was all wheelsmith, with spokes being replaced by DTs as they went along repairing them.

So, apparently my bike's rear wheel drive side is a mix of DT and Wheelsmith spokes. Go figure. I'm starting to wonder if this could contribute to any of my issues?