Broken Spokes - Am I going to start chasing a problem?
 

I know, there's a spoke thread going already, but I didn't want to hijack it and my questions are a little less involved - I think.

Last week, I broke my first spoke. I was dismayed because I had to hand my bike over to the LBS and I was bikeless for a few days. It's 50 miles later, and I've broken another spoke. I'm riding on the rims that came with my Giant Defy 2. Both spokes were in the rear. I'm riding on typical country roads. Some parts smooth, some parts are like rolling over cobblestone. I don't hop curbs or do anything that I know can be hard on rims. Oh, I'm 288#

28 Spokes

rims Mavic CXP22
hubs Formula sealed Cartridge Bearing 24/28h
spokes SAPIM Race, 14/15g

Is this common? Is it just my turn to break spokes? Or is this indicative of a problem that won't be fixed by just having the LBS replace the spoke and re-true the wheel? I'm afraid I'll spend another 2 days without the bike and $35 on spoke/retrue only to have another spoke break in 50 miles. I'm toying with the idea of a new rear wheel, but I don't have much money to spend right now.

I got my Trek 7.2Fx when I was at about your weight, and went through four spokes on the rear wheel then decided to get some tools and learn to fix them myself. After another three broke in fairly quick succession, I took it to a LBS where the gruff old guy that ran it told me "those are cheep spokes". He then offered to rebuild the wheel for a hundred bucks. I said what the heck and left it. 2k miles later and it has held up. Best hundred bucks I spent. Come to find out the guy built wheels for Masi when they were here locally, and I've been going to him ever since.

At the price point of the bikes we have, he tells me, the spokes are usually a point where a lot of mfr's. skimp. My rear wheel is now strung w/SS. The front had held with the stock spokes, but has lower load on it, not just from there only being half the weight on it, but also from no torsional load.

IMO you are going to keep having problems. The wheel wasn't properly tensioned (nothing wrong with Sapim spokes btw) and the constant flexing of the spokes has left them weakened. Most cost effective (and best IMO) way to solve the issue would likely be to replace all the spokes as they are probably going to keep breaking. This assumes that the rime and hub are still in good working order. Replacing the rear wheel will solve the issue at least temporarily but with factory built wheels it'll likely come back.

Edit: as I'm sure someone is going to mention it, I don't think 288 is too heavy for a properly built 28 spoke wheel. Sure more may be stronger but IMO you don NEED to go buy a 36 or 40 spoke wheel. Especially if that is a downward moving number.

This is a problem that won't be fixed by just having the LBS replace the spoke and re-true the wheel. They must check and adjust the tension of every spoke on the bike, preferably with a spoke tension meter! This would seem to be an obvious step, but when many shops replace a spoke they focus on that spoke exclusively and ignore the rest of the wheel. This often leads to a situation where one spoke after another breaks, because none of them are at the proper tension.

I'd make sure that whoever is repairing your broken spokes is checking the tension on all of the spokes when they're truing the wheel. If they're not, then go somewhere else for the repair. Remember: wheels are not maintenance free, especially for Clydesdales! This might not be a bad time to think about buying a cheap truing stand, a tension meter, and a spoke wrench so you can do your own wheel maintenance...

Most of the time the factory wheels are low end, it might be best to invest in a good quality wheel.

36 spoke wheels should do the trick if it's a good quality.

This place has some CHEAP hubs. $50 for the rear 105! :thumb:


Find a Deep V on line for $60, maybe $70.

Then after ou get the parts, go to the shop and have them build it for you with new spokes. Be sure to hacve it retensioned after 200 miles or so ( no matter what the shop says, do it!)


32 hole hub on that site but with a Deep V and a good build, the 32 hole will work with your weight. If you want a better wheel for less than that, prolly ain't gonna happen!, ;).............I have abotu 15,000 miles on a 28 spoke Deep V that I built (240-260 lbs):thumb:

http://www.ribblecycles.co.uk/pp/roa...Hubs-Road/HUBR

If it were just one spoke, then that's just an irritation. If a second (then third...) goes, then that's the beginning of a problem that you will need to keep throwing money at.

I'm not personally a fan of <32 spoke wheels, but if you have some good high-quality spokes, properly tensioned, you will probably be OK.

Ask them to rebuild the wheel with stronger spokes. I did that on both of my Giants. Tell them to go four across.

I think it's a matter of patience. Understanding wheel maintenance takes some time and practice. Your LBS charged 33 dollars to install a $2 part. IMO...to get into wheel maintenance requires $25 for Jobst Brandt's book "The Bicycle Wheel", $60 for Park Tool's Tension Meter, and $5 for a spoke wrench. So about $90 dollars or 3 spokes replaced. The real question is "Do you have the patience to learn how to do this?" I would expect that your LBS will charge that much to rebuild your wheel. I meant this as a real question not an attack.

I had the exact same problem on my touring bike and here is a thread about what I found.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...oke-is-a-spoke

I would suggest you are going to keep chasing the problem. I also don’t think you have enough spokes for your weight but with a professional building your wheels back up with quality spokes you may well be ok. The other way to look at it is buying a new 36 spoke wheel readymade you should still have someone go over it and make sure the machine build is ok. In the thread I linked above I found in my case the generic spokes were most likely ok and the problem was in the factory machine building. Then the problem gets compounded with usage and you are at a point where you don’t trust any of the spokes.

I advise everyone I know buying a new bike to request that the wheels are gone over by the bike shop first. And anyone buying mail order find a shop to tension and true before they start using the bike.

When I first rode the bike after getting the spoke replaced, there was an audible "tang" from the rear wheel at first. I thought it was probably normal. A new spoke seating itself or something. I think that had the spoke been replaced and all of the spokes re-tensioned and seated (pre-loaded?) that I wouldn't have broken the next spoke.

That twang is a sign that the person who repaired your wheel didn't do it properly. You usually hear that sound when a wheel hasn't been properly stress-relieved.

If you don't want to do your own wheel maintenance, and I can certainly understand if you didn't, it wouldn't be a bad idea to find a shop with a more competent wheel builder. Wheel building is one of those things that's a bit of an art. Getting it right takes time and/or talent. If your shop mechanic doesn't build wheels on a regular basis, or if he's getting pressure from the boss to move through jobs quickly, your wheel might not have received the attention it needed...

+1...it's a shame that some shops have newbs true wheels. Seems easy enough but if they don;t do it right, the wheel willbe straight bu tthe spokes bind up causing the twang.

Binding, they turned the nipple and it twisted the spoke right along with it, now it's in a stressed postiton.

When I build my wheels or true, I place a black dot with a marker on the spokse so whenI turn the nipple, I cna be sure the spoke doesn't go along for th ride. Some use tape around spokes like flags to monitor. I just wipe the mark off with WD40, pretty easy.

There is a reason I won't allow any LBS to touch my wheels. Some of those free tuneups do more damage than good. WHne I do need to go to the shop, I make sure they understand that they are not to touch my wheels. I even have them write it on the work order ;)

I'm going to steal that idea!:thumb:

I have black spokes. So I take a piece of rubber from a handlebar wrap and cut a slit in it. Put the rubber piece into the spoke at the slit. It grips the spoke enough to indicate twist. I'd like to buy one of those spoke pliers but they're pricy.

If it's already broken spokes (plural) the rest in the wheel half (ex: rear drive side) should be very near their fatigue limit and should be replaced at the same time.

Not much I can add that hasn't already been said. By the time you break a third spoke, all the spokes on that wheel should be considered suspect. If the rim's still in decent shape a relacing with quality spokes may be enough. Probably little difference in price between an LBS doing it and outfitting yourself, if you're so inclined. If buying a new rim in addition to spokes, I would opt to increase spoke count to 32 or 36 and include a new hub as well.

What more would you like to know from the collective Clyde brain trust?

What about hubs... As far as I can tell there's no real benefit to ceramic bearings and if you're interested in durability, they are probably detrimental, but other than that, what the heck gives with all the different kinds of hubs?

I saw a set of ultegra hubs for $124 at ribble - is there any benefit to DA hubs? What about DT Swiss 240 vs 350? Chris King? Brand X?

I actually found "The Bicycle Wheel" on my bookshelf tonight, so suddenly I"m interested in actually reading it and using it. Having said that the book was written back in 81 when rims were decidedly more noodly than they are today so is that advice still sound? Brandt says "NO" to radial spokes even in the front. My wheels are Easton EA90SL and they're 24 radial in the front, 28 radial/2x in the back and they've been incredibly true and solid (but I banged into something and dinged the rim... now I'm a little concerned)

His method for arriving at correct absolute tension by tensioning and stress relieving until the wheel goes out of true in waves works for box section rims up to at least MA40 weight (often measured at 500g) with traditional spoke counts (32 and 36, perhaps 28) .

As noted it does not work for deep aero rims and low spoke counts where tension is limited by stress cracks in the spoke bed not the rim's elastic limit.

Classic hubs don't have enough material in the flanges to reliably work with radial lacing which has less material supporting the spokes than traditional near tangential patterns which also have much of the spoke tension going into compressive loading where adjacent leading and trailing spokes oppose each other.

Modern hubs are often rated for radial lacing although as a Clydestale that doesn't seem prudent.

My third edition was published in 1993. He states there is no aero advantage to radial spoking. So I guess it's just a "looks cool" thing. The real value of the book IMO is his explanation of how wheels work. Priceless to a beginning wheel builder.

I have the same edition. I used to run across Jobst Brandt on usenet and he's a curmugeon! I wonder how much he updated his actual philosophies between editions. Regardless, it's a fine piece of work and a great reference.

I have an old (14 yrs or so) set of mavic open pros with ultegra hubs that are in dire need of retruing (they never seemed to stay true) - maybe i'll stick those in a stand and see if I can get them true before building something from scratch. It would be nice to have a backup set of wheels, that's for sure.

I'm at 8 broken spoke in the last month, I'm taking the wheel back to my lbs this coming friday to have it completly rebuilt. I guess that the metal just got weak after a few years. I've been riding on that wheel for 8000 kms with no problems and then 8 spokes in the last 1400 kms.

What are they charging for the rebuild?

My shop with an excellent reputation for building wheels charged me about $100 per wheel using my hubs and rims and new DT spokes 36 per wheel. They also had me come back in after a few 100 miles to check it all out. That price might have been high I don’t know but I felt good about the job so I went with them. Like someone posted above it was costing me 20 bucks a spoke to have them do them one at a time.

In most cases, you're paying more money for lighter weight. The only exception is Chris King: there you're paying for the angry bees he puts in the hub :D