One of our customers offered this review of the FiberFix spoke:
2) FiberFix emergency spoke: I didn't expect to have to use this, and on my trip, I didn't. But, knowing the kit was there (I bought two) gave me peace of mind. I had never broken a spoke on my touring bike, in nearly ten years of use in Southern Africa & North America, so I didn't really expect to need the spoke-repair kit.


However: When I unpacked my bike in my workshop early this past week, and mounted and spun the front wheel--very true when I last saw it in Prague--I found that in transit (Prague to Amsterdam by train, via Bruges; then Amsterdam to Ottawa by air, via Toronto) a spoke had broken just at the elbow near the front hub. Dang!! :-( Though I guess, if you're going to have one, your home workshop is the place to find it...


So, turned out that I could test the FiberFix kit with no unseemly environmental conditions--not threading it in semi-darkness in a driving rain, or in noonday heat beneath a merciless sun, whatever.

• Ease of use and effectiveness: I read the instructions carefully, to make sure I understood how the thread the FiberFix spoke correctly. The two views of the threading were helpful, and the text description was clear as well. I left the old spoke in place so that I could line up the FiberFix replacement properly. When I was clear about that, I removed the broken spoke, threaded the FiberFix cam-lock into the spoke nipple, then threaded the replacement kevlar spoke through the spokehole in the hub and then through the FiberFix cam-lock. This all went smoothly enough, though I found the final pass of the kevlar thread through the cam-lock (i.e., through the U-shaped rigid wire following the second of the two ribbed pieces) to be a bit fiddly. I couldn't tighten the kevlar thread quite as described ("a few sharp tugs") as my bike was up on its stand -- a few sharp tugs would probably work if the front wheel were on the floor. Instead, I hand-tightened the kevel thread to take up the initial slack, then used the kit's included spoke key to tighten the kevlar spoke via the nipple, now holding the cam-lock.

Mounting the emergency spoke went quite easily, and I was able to rebalance the wheel quickly, as if I had a normal spoke in place. See photo below, with the finished item in place, complete with four half-hitches, two one way and two the other.

• Dismantling the kevlar spoke was simple: I just released the tension at the nipple, then unthreaded the kevlar spoke from the cam-lock. Then, I removed the cam-lock mechanism from the nipple, and replaced the FiberFix with a regular spoke. Balancing the front wheel took very little time, as I had done an initial re-balancing when the FiberFix was in place.

• Summary opinion: Easy to use, don't leave home without one. (Maybe try using it at home before having to do so at the roadside?) A bargain for a few dollars -- very good value.

As an alternative, the Unior cassette tool is ingenious cheap and small and it actually works great to crack the cassette lock ring in order to change a spoke on the drive side.