Originally Posted by
Kontact
I hope I can cut through all this for you. I have been a mechanic and wheelbuilder since 1990.
Well that doesn’t cut it.
I’ve been a mechanic and wheelbuilder (for myself) since 1980 for the former and 1986 for the latter. I’ve also been a clydesdale that mountain bikes and does loaded touring (on the road and over mountains) since before I started doing my own mechanical work. I know a thing or two that the “regular” cyclist doesn’t know about breaking spokes. Through my experience I’ve found that the common wisdom on wheels is usually wrong.
1. There is nothing wrong with the design and materials of your wheel. Not the type of spokes, number or spokes, rim or hub design. There are better wheel components, but these are perfectly acceptable. The problem is the lack of spoke head seating and proper tensioning. And that's because the wheels were built by a machine.
There absolutely is something wrong with the design and materials of the wheel. There are too few spokes to handle the load. The spokes are too weak and not elastic enough to handle the load. The type of rim means mostly nothing when it comes to wheel strength and durability. OEM wheels are often problematic for riders who are large and/or carry extra load. A 28 spoke wheel might work fine for a 170 lb rider who is a racer carrying nothing more than a couple of water bottles. Put a 200+lb rider on the bike and the 28 spoke wheels are more prone to having problems. Put an extra 60 lb of cargo on the bike and spoke breakage is almost guaranteed. Proper spoke seating and proper tension
are important but they aren’t the
only thing that are important.
The conventional wisdom on wheels is that you need the strongest rim possible and whatever spokes laying around. The conventional wisdom is wrong. Spokes are the things that break on wheels and spokes are the most neglected part of the wheel when wheels are being designed. A broken rim doesn’t spell the death of a wheel. Broken spokes do. If people concentrated on the spokes more than the rims, we’d have wheels that could stand up to clydesdale/utility use better. Sheldon Brown wrote about the Great Spoke Scam years ago.
The Great Spoke Scam: In the early '80s a clever marketeer hit upon the idea of using only 32 spokes in wheels for production bikes. Because of the association of 32-spoke wheels with exotic, high-performance bikes, the manufacturers were able to cut corners and save money while presenting it as an "upgrade!" The resulting wheels were noticeably weaker than comparable 36-spoke wheels, but held up well enough for most customers.
Since then, this practice has been carried to an extreme, with 28-, 24-, even 16-spoke wheels being offered, and presented as it they were somehow an "upgrade."
Actually, such wheels normally are not an upgrade in practice. When the spokes are farther apart on the rim, it is necessary to use a heavier rim to compensate, so there isn't usually even a weight benefit from these newer wheels!
This type of wheel requires unusually high spoke tension, since the load is carried by fewer spokes. If a spoke does break, the wheel generally becomes instantly unridable. More, thinner spokes make a stronger wheel than fewer, thicker ones. Some wheels being sold these days defy engineering principles: The hub may break too…
Eric Hjertberg, founder of Wheel Smith,
advocated for stronger spokes about 10 years ago. I had been using those spokes for about 10 years before he wrote the article and I had already found what he was writing about years earlier. Going from even double butted spokes to triple butted spokes significantly reduced my spokes breakage around 25 years ago and I’ve used them (as well as advocating for their use) since then. A 28 spoke wheels
could be built that would handle heavier loads and utility riding but only if the straight gauge spokes of SamSam77’s OEM wheel were replaced with a triple butted spoke. I don’t quite agree with Hjertberg that the triple butted spoke is equivalent to adding 10 spokes but it is certainly equivalent to adding at least 4 spokes…maybe 6.
Another OEM wheel (or even a higher end wheel) is unlikely to solve his problem. A 36 spoke replacement wheel would help although it still has the same weak spokes.
2. You are owed something for your trouble. Regardless of how the Jenson phone attendant sounded, do the process. You'll get something for it, and the company will take a lesson that might spare other customers.
Yes, this is a warranty problem. I will say that he has run up against the problem with going the on-line purchase route. Buying from a shop would give him a bike with some backup rather than having to deal with someone remotely. I, and probably you, don’t need to go to a shop because I probably know more about my bike and how to fix it than the mechanic at the shop does. That is especially true if the bike is older, although that is not SamSam77’s problem
3. Your wheels need to go to someone who is familiar with building wheels, and knows what "seating the spoke bends" is, and can do that and tension the wheel evenly and at reasonable tension. Once that is done, the wheels should last a very long time.
Better yet would be to find someone who will show him how to do it so that SamSam77 can start down the path of learning how to take care of his own bike and/or build better wheels.