Cool bike, btw... Makes a superb commuter, just add lights & rack.


That bent freewheel... I assume you mean that it wobbles slightly as it spins? Or are there some warped cogs on it?

I'm going to guess that the bike suffered some kind of mishap before you got it. Whatever happened taco'd the rear wheel, and either the bike's owner or the LBS re-trued it the best they could, and thus saved the wheel.

Thing is, in doing that, it put a lot of extra stress on some spokes.

I... uh... speak from experience here. I fixed a wheel for a friend after he had a bumped-from-behind encounter with a car, and I managed to straighten the rear wheel to where you almost couldn't tell it had been badly bent. It was fine for maybe a month, then it began to pop spokes. I didn't mark them (should have) but I'll bet the ones that broke were the ones I cranked on to pull the wheel back straight.

Also, there's a corollary of Murphy's law at work here: A part will fail pretty much immediately after you tune or adjust it.

You could get the existing hub re-laced to a new rim, or, for nearly the same money, buy a decent road bike rear wheel. If that 105 6-speed cog set is a cassette, all you need is a 4.5mm spacer to fit it on a 9 or 10 speed hub. If, though, it's a freewheel, you might have to search a bit to find a compatible wheel.

My advice: Check with the LBSs in your area... One of 'em might have a compatible wheelset hanging in storage.