I bought a Fuji Touring in April of 2006, and I am riding with the stock wheels. In the past two months, I have been busting spokes regularly, so I thought maybe my rim was bent or maybe I weakened some of the spokes when the others busted. I also noticed that the outside walls on my rims have started going concave. (Not sure what the term is for that.)

I'm thinking of just buying a new wheel. Does it make sense to get another type of wheel? Are there stronger wheels that can handle more abuse? I've only had the bike five months, and I don't want to replace wheels twice a year. Has anyone else had problems like this before?

Get comfortable with the wheel, and grab opposite (so your hands are close together, not opposite sides of the hub) parallel pairs of spokes in your hands and flex them until you feel a small shift or fear breaking them. Go around the whole wheel. As you are doing this check the spokes for tension by feel, you are looking for any that are obviously different, and tighten them. Once you are through with that. Check the wheel against something on your bike to see if it is true left right and up and down. Do not use the tire as an idicator just the rim. retrue any wobbles. You should be good to go. The only thing this doesn't check for is absolute tension level though in theory tightening and trueing up from the hand flexes should get you close. You can tune the spokes to a given pitch if you have a guitar tuner, there is a chart on the net for that. But generally, if the wheels are machine built, as most stock wheels are, then the baseline tension is the one thing they might have gotten right. What goes wrong is parts reseat themselves and you have to go back and tighten them, which is one of the things a good hand builder will do for your from the start.

Beyond that, a touring bike is not a stumpjumper. Don't abuse it and it should be fine. If you need a touring bike for offroad abuse, maybe you need to look at a different starting point for the wheels.

This has been an ongoing problem with the stock Fuji wheels. I thought they had fixed it. If you STF, you'll find lots of info. It seems most people have been ok with their wheels, except for the unfortunate few (like you and me).

If you bought it new at a dealer, go back and insist on a new wheel (or at least a spoke/rim rebuild)--it'll be under warranty. Don't let them just replace the busted spokes...it'll just keep breaking. Fuji knows about this problem.

Wow, thanks for the info, I didn't know it was a Fuji problem. I did buy the bike new at a dealer. I had just been replacing the spokes myself, so it hasn't really cost me more than a couple bucks so far.

I'm kind of in a race to repair it (I'm riding in the MS150 this weekend), so I already bought a new wheel. I have another frame that doesn't have any wheels right now, so at least I'll have a use for it if I can get the dealer to replace the busted one.

If you have been breaking spokes than all your spokes are damaged by now. Replace the whole lot and get the wheel tensioned correctly. If the rim is not to your liking take the opportunity to replace it. Fixing spokes one at a time will not resolve your problems.