vinnyvincent

I got my cheap bikes direct bike back in December. Since then I've put under 900 miles on it. After the first 100 miles I took it to get the wheels trued. Ended up paying fifty bucks because a spoke needed replaced too. About 150 miles later a spoke noise developed. I rode it for a while and it just got worse, so I had it trued again. It went away and now just this evening I notice another spoke is broken.

The wheels are alexrims R450. I weigh 200lbs now. Riding mainly on bike paths and neighborhood roads. I hop the occasional curb or run into a small pothole once on a while, but nothing too bad. I rarely stand up to pedal.

Should I keep throwing money at these wheels, or get something more durable? Am I expecting too much from the 700x28 wheels?

andr0id

Watch where you're going and stop jumping curbs and running though pot holes on a road bike.

There's nothing wrong with that rim if it's well built.

How many spokes in the wheel that has problems?
If you have 32, that should be enough. 28 is a bit low for somebody that plows through pot holes.

When your shop replaced the broken spokes, did they check the tension on the rest of the spokes?

Carbonfiberboy 

The problem is that the wheels were built with unbalanced and too low spoke tensions. Breakage that soon means they were really poorly done. Truing won't do it. The wheels need to be detensioned and then retensioned to the correct spoke tension and stress relieved. Here's the problem: too low spoke tension allows the spoke J-bend to move under load as the wheel rotates. This causes fatigue in the spoke which eventually results in breakage. It's always too low tension that does it.

Anyway, here you are with a number of spokes in your current wheels which obviously already have a certain amount of fatigue in them. I'd probably take them to a bike shop that knows something about wheel building, which your current bike shop obviously does not, and ask their opinion. It might very well be the least expensive course to buy the new wheels which they recommend. Or maybe they can do the retension relatively inexpensively and save you a bunch of money.

Oh, BTW don't stop jumping curbs and having fun on your bike. You should be able to beat the crap out of it and have it be fine.

OldsCOOL

I agree with the above. Stay away from potholes. Dont "occasionally" hit one. It's far better to never ever hit one.

vinnyvincent

It's the rear wheel and it has 32 spokes. Some of those bumps I hit are not avoidable. I do try to take the path of least resistance.

So it's sounding like the wheel wasn't built correctly. Is it my fault for not taking it in to get trued until I put 100 miles on it, or should I see if bikesdirect will send me a replacement?

vinnyvincent

I may have misrepresented "potholes". what I am hitting are cracks in the pavement that span the whole bike path, a lot are from tree roots under it. The only way to avoid them is to run off road excessively.

OldsCOOL

Gotcha.

spectastic

I would recommend ditching the alex rims and getting something a little more durable, and use bigger tires, like 32 or 35s for commuting. when a bike keeps breaking spokes, it's a sign that the other spokes are probably compromised. it's also possible that the shop didn't do a very good job truing it, and only worried about the lateral trueness, while neglecting the radial trueness, resulting in a small hop in the wheel that puts extra stress on the spokes. alex rims are pretty cheap. I would start there.

vinnyvincent

It might also be worth mentioning that the front had functioned flawlessly where the rear seems like it was a little crooked from the get go.

vinnyvincent

So what's a lower end, yet more durable wheel if I do go that route? I think an equivalent Alexrim cost fifty dollars. Can I get a decent rear wheel for 100 or should I spend more? My only requirement is durability, not worried about weight.
I have a sora 8 speed rear derailleur/cassette.

rpenmanparker 

OP, you keep talking about truing despite having been quite correctly advised that a wheel can be perfectly true and still very prone to spoke breakage. There is nothing wrong or unsuitable about your rims or hubs. Your spokes may be a good model choice, but they were poorly tensioned. Now they are ruined. Get the entire rear wheel respoked by a competent wheel builder, not by an unproven LBS mechanic. Some know how to build a wheel, some don't. Find a real pro wheel builder. Lacing, tensioning and truing aren't expensive labor charges. The spokes should have tension on the drive side of about 120 kgF and all be within 5% either way of the average tension. The tension on the non-drive side will fall where it must, but it too should be uniform to +/- 5% of the average on that side.

If you can afford to have the front rebuilt at the same time, by all means do so. Front spokes see much less abuse and last longer, but I wouldn't trust your front wheel any more than you are able to rely on your rear one. Same rules for tension range except that it will be the same on both sides.

vinnyvincent

Thanks for elaborating Robert, I have a lot to learn about wheels.
I wasn't ignoring the advice about taking it to a competent person who knows about wheels, but the general consensus also seemed to be that the rest of the spokes are likely damages and need replaced. This is a fifty dollar wheel we are talking about. Is it worth it to have a pro/guru put all new spokes on it, or should I just start over?

FBinNY 

IMO there's not enough info to draw conclusions. It might be the wheel it might be you. Weight can be a factor, but riding style can be more of one. For example I used to ride with a ballerina and a gorilla. She weighed about 110 (or so) and danced with the NYC Ballet, and he weighed about 225 and was built like a tight end. However, he rode like a dancer, and never had issues, and she could tear stuff apart like nobody could believe.

OTOH it might be related to the wheels, for example plain gauge spokes are more sensitive to low tension, or the elbows aren't properly supported by thye flange, or aany of a number of mechanical details, that no one can verify without having the wheels in his hands.

HOWEVER,

while a single spoke is a fluke, and two a warning of things to come, three broken spokes should be read as a sign of problems that will only get worse, with the interval between breaks getting progressively shorter.

So no matter what else, you want this wheel rebuilt with fresh spokes, and probably the rim, or replaced fresh.

Bmach

I am going to dissagree with others here. You have cheap poor quality wheels on your bike. No amount of truing or tensioning will make them better. Cheap wheels have poor rims that will flex a lot as you go over the road, which will break spokes. They will also flex a lot under power causing spokes to break. Go to a bike shop and get yourself a better set of wheels. I went through the same thing bought a better wheel set and the problem went away. A good set of 24/28 will handle a rider weighing around 215.

nycphotography

I have a set of reynolds dv46 clinchers which I bought used.

At one point I broke a back spoke, took it to the LBS and replaced the spoke. Then I broke another. I asked the LBS what the problem was on the 3rd one. This was a guy with 30 years experience, not at all like the shops with hipster mechanics you get most places, and he said simply "get a spoke set and I'll rebuild the wheel. Over time, truing will get the tensions all out of whack (as in too high). The wheel doesn't just need to be true, it also needs to be correctly tensioned."

So he ordered the spokes, rebuilt the wheel, and I haven't broken one since.

nycphotography

Incorrect.

Instead of plowing through them with your full weight on the seat and bars, you can also unweight the bike reducing the impact, or even bunny hop over them completely.

vinnyvincent

Is a Shimano WH-R-501A a decent wheel set? REI I'd having a member sale right now, I can get them for 100 plus tax. Their shop always seems busy so I could but from there and have them do any work they need...

Marcus_Ti

Some wheel builds just suck and don't work. I had a Specialized that had CXP22s laced to some Ritchey hubs. Serial spoke breakers. Build just didn't work.

But before writing them off the thing to do is spend the $$$ and have them rebuilt by an experienced human being who knows what they are doing. They pop again, it is a bad grouping of parts.

79pmooney

OP, even if you have this wheel retensioned and trued to high standards, it may well be that say 1/3 of your spokes have been compromised already. If that were the case, then them breaking at random intervals would not surprise me at all. And at $50/replacement and retrue, that's a couple of high end hand built wheels that could last you a few 10s of thousands of miles.

One approach would be to buy a ~$100 wheel with a sturdier rim through a shop that will have its ace wheelbuilder check first (probably making it a $150 wheel). Another is having roughly that wheel handbuilt from scratch. That would probably add another $50-100 to the total.

Hindsight? The money saving strategy would be to have someone good inspect and retrue/retension the Bike Direct wheels for say $100 for the pair before you ever rode them.

You are a guy that is not small and may be hard on wheels in general. (See FB's comment about the ballerina and linebacker.) You need sturdier wheels that I do (at 155 pounds and decades of riding light wheels). Get wheels with sturdy enough components and see to it that they see skilled human hands or are machine built by a reputable source. (Manufacturers set their machines to do iterations of truing to varying standards. Machine time is expensive. Lowering the standards means fewer iterations and allows them to make more wheels/hour. The better maintained machines calibrated to high standards of wobble, hop and spoke tension uniformity can build wheels that are as good as the best hand made wheels.

Better rims will add cost. Double butted spokes will add cost. Skilled human touch will add cost. But all of these will improve your riding experience a lot. (And, if you wanted to, you could learn to build wheels yourself. With that skill, broken spokes will cost you about a dollar. Rebuilds will be fun. I have bought perhaps 10 wheels, 6 on bikes in the past 35 years. Several I bought for the parts and either didn't ride as is or rode them knowing I was going to replace the spokes when I had time.)

Welcome to the life and world of bicycle wheels!

Ben

vinnyvincent

Okay so obviously I'm not very good at finding a good bike mechanic. How would one go about locating an "ace wheelbuilder" locally?

CliffordK

I've put a lot of miles on old Rigida and Wolber rims. New rims of any brand will be stiffer. I wouldn't be so quick to discard the Alex rims.

But, if you're rebuilding the wheels, first make sure you have a good base to start with. Good hubs, good rim, all new BRAND NAME spokes.

Spend $50 to get a wheel rebuilt, and it should be at least as strong as going out and buying a $100 off-the-shelf wheel. Or, for a challenge, buy the parts and rebuild the wheel yourself.

As others have mentioned, be careful where you ride. It only takes a half a second to stop and gently let your bike off of a curb.

But, watch Road Bike Party, Road Bike Party 2, and Road Bike Party 3.

And, apparently the bikes and wheels held up well to the abuse. I do wonder, however, if well built carbon fiber wheels may be well suited to this kind of pounding as they may flex and spring back to the original shape.

Drew Eckhardt 

Expensive lightweight rims flex more than cheap heavy ones because there's less material, but don't break spokes.

Historic light box section rims flex even more (shallow 300-400g rims used to be popular) with beam stiffness proportional to the cube of depth which they're lacking. They don't break spokes either, although I bent a 400g front rim shortly after growing from ~140 pounds past 200.

CafeVelo

Where are you? Chances are we could recommend someone that we have experience with ( most areas have at least one member here). If you came to my shop with this story then I would suggest to you a few options: a cheapish wheel from our distributor that we check to make sure it's built properly before you thrash on it, or a nice wheel that we do the same thing to. As for the r-501 you asked about, they're fine, but they're H E A V Y OEM wheels. At that price though you could get the set and have a competent builder go over it for another $50 and come out on top from my above suggestions.

CafeVelo

Specialized claims their carbon wheels (roval) are the most robust in their catalog.

TimothyH

Leaning the bike up so it is supported by the side of the wheel or laying the bike flat in a car with the weight of the bike on the side of the wheel can cause broken spokes. They won't break immediately but randomly for what seems like no reason.

I kept getting mysterious broken spokes, couldn't figure out why. I thought the wheels were just garbage but a mechanic mentioned the way I lay the bike in the car with the weight on the side of the wheel. I stopped doing that and haven't had a broken spoke since.



-Tim-