Broken spoke

smacl

Coming up lovers leap towards Enniskerry yesterday, I heard a bang from behind and found that one of my rear spokes had broken at the back. Having no other means of transport, I rode the bike gingerly back to Rathfarnham, resulting in a fair bit of rubbing of the rear tyre to chain stay and seat stay as the wheel went off true. So how to get it all hunky dory again? I haven't replaced a spoke or trued a wheel before and wonder is this a job for a pro, or something I can try myself. The wheel set is FSA RS80.

My thoughts are dropping it in to somebody who knows their stuff, e.g. Holyboy, will end up with a much better result than anything I'd manage myself, but it is also something I'd like to be able do. Out of interest, do people carry spare spokes on a long spin, and is this a feasible roadside repair?

ednwireland

smacl wrote: »

My thoughts are dropping it in to somebody who knows their stuff, e.g. Holyboy, will end up with a much better result than anything I'd manage myself, but it is also something I'd like to be able do. Out of interest, do people carry spare spokes on a long spin, and is this a feasible roadside repair?

no and yes (probably never tried it myself)

ashleey

I have dropped 2 wheels into cycle superstore in tallaght in the past for about 20 euro max including the bladed spokes and they have been fine ever since. Turnaround was about 3 days. I was very pleased and most good shops would be the same.

coastwatch

I'm sure it could be done at the roadside, but easier back at home. I would have a go at correcting a bad buckle (like yours) at roadside, if the tyre was rubbing against the chainstay / seatstay, it doesn't have to be perfect, just enough to stop the rubbing.

All you need is a spoke tool and of course it would be better to have had a go at fixing small wheel truing problems home first though.

I think it's worth having a go at replacing a spoke on your own, just for the experience, plenty of online help videos ("wheel truing"). If it all goes wrong, then you can bring it to your lbs.

nilhg

Took the bike out Saturday afternoon to check it over for yesterday and found 2 broken spokes in the rear wheel, took it into Eurocycles in Newbridge and the lads in there sorted it for me, don't think it took too long once they got time to do it.

I think the standard charge there for truing a wheel is €12.

I'd be reasonably mechanical, I'd imagine that doing it yourself is possible but that it's one of those type of jobs that the more of them you do the better your results will be.

doozerie

smacl wrote:

Coming up lovers leap towards Enniskerry yesterday, I heard a bang from behind and found that one of my rear spokes had broken at the back. Having no other means of transport, I rode the bike gingerly back to Rathfarnham, resulting in a fair bit of rubbing of the rear tyre to chain stay and seat stay as the wheel went off true. So how to get it all hunky dory again? I haven't replaced a spoke or trued a wheel before and wonder is this a job for a pro, or something I can try myself. The wheel set is FSA RS80.

My thoughts are dropping it in to somebody who knows their stuff, e.g. Holyboy, will end up with a much better result than anything I'd manage myself, but it is also something I'd like to be able do. Out of interest, do people carry spare spokes on a long spin, and is this a feasible roadside repair?

Can you do it yourself? Yes, for the mostpart working on a wheel just requires a methodical approach and patience. As long as you don't go mad (in particular, over tightening some or all of the spokes can shorten the lifespan of your rim), then you are highly unlikely to do any damage to the wheel. A good wheelbuilder will certainly produce a more consistent result, and a lot faster, but personally I think it is worth developing the skill of repairing a wheel at the very least, and ultimately building a wheel from scratch if that interests you. You do need to have determination though, it's one of those tasks that if you give it the time and effort it'll all work out but if you get fed up with it early on then it can be a hard, and possibly fruitless, slog all the way.

The design of the wheel will play some part in the degree of difficulty of repairing it. Wheels with low spoke counts, say less than 28 spokes for arguments sake, are likely to be trickier to fix as you have less granular adjustments available to you (i.e. each spoke is under greater tension than those spokes on a wheel with a greater spoke count) and making significant adjustments to an individual spoke can be a bit intimidating at the start until you get used to how much tension you can safely apply to a single spoke. The state of the wheel obviously plays a big part too - in theory, replacing a single broken spoke is the most straightforward repair to make but if that spoke broke because of excess (or not enough) tension on it resulting from some significant issue elsewhere on the wheel (e.g. if several spokes either side of the broken spoke are either over- or under- tensioned), then replacing the broken spoke may prove to be just one small step in a larger task of repairing the wheel as a whole.

Having said all of that, personally I think it's a task worth tackling. As already said, if you find yourself in over your head, or simply get bored with it, you can bring it to a shop to have it repaired albeit at a potentially higher cost as you may have left the wheel requiring more work than it did at first. I've seen nothing but praise for Holyboy's wheel building skills on here, plus his posts generally seem to show a lot of experience and skill in diagnosing some particularly quirky bike problems generally, so he seems like a good choice.

If you do tackle it yourself I'd recommend a good quality spoke key. I like Park Tool ones myself - the triple spoke key is a handy one to carry on rides as it'll deal with 3 different sizes of ("traditional") nipple, but this version is easier to use when sitting down to spend time on a wheel. A (semi-) musical ear helps too as you can compare the tension of the spokes in a wheel by plucking them and comparing the resulting sound and you are ideally looking to have all the spokes on the same side of the wheel have the same tension - that's obviously one of the reasons a repair is easier than building a wheel from scratch as you already have installed spokes at the correct tension (in theory at least) to compare against.

As for carrying spare spokes on a ride, personally I wouldn't bother. With most, if not all, wheelsets you'd really need a different length spoke for the rear drive side versus the rear non-drive side (perhaps with some rear wheels you'd get by in a pinch using the same length for either side, it would very much depend on the depth of the rim), and in some cases the front wheel would require a third different length spoke, so you'd have to carry up to three different length spokes with you. More significantly though, if you had to replace a rear drive-side spoke, then you might have to remove the cassette to remove the broken spoke and install the new one, again depending on the design of the rim (and the cassette ...and your willingness to bend spokes a lot!), making for a lot more tools to have to carry just in case. To me there are too many potential hurdles to make it worthwhile carrying spare spokes on a spin, but I do carry a spoke key so that if necessary I can retension spokes adjacent to a broken spoke to reduce the buckle and make the wheel usable to ride home. ...mind you, a while back I bought a set of wheels with paired spokes and if one of those spokes goes during a ride then I'm walking home regardless of how much of my toolbox I have with me, but I try not to think about that

smacl

Thanks as always for the solid advice Doozerie. I'll give it a go, and if and when it all goes pear shaped, off to Holyboy she goes. Also gives me an excuse to buy some new tools to play with

Paul Kiernan

At least it was just one spoke that broke ....