Broken Spoke

rollingscone

Hey,

I had a few loose spokes on the back wheel of my commu-tourer, whilst tightening them one snapped at the hub.

Sods law being that I have to cycle 40km tonight with pretty much a full load on the panniers.

Should I chance it? Or do I need to leg it down to the LBS for a spoke?

Icyseanfitz

id say you will get away with it, how many spokes on the wheel? i presume its 32? tri cross? if so id chance it

rollingscone

It's a 32. Does the broken spoke pose a threat to my tube?

rollingscone

rollingscone wrote: »

It's a 32. Does the broken spoke pose a threat to my tube?

Nope wheel has gone out of true...

doozerie

When only one spoke is broken, even if there is a bad buckle, you can usually make the wheel ridable by loosening the spoke either side of the broken spoke a little. You won't eliminate the buckle by doing this, that would require loosening those two spokes far too much, but it may reduce the buckle down to the extent that it doesn't snag on the brake blocks. It does make it a bit of a bigger job to re-true the wheel later when you replace the broken spoke though.

Sometimes breaking a single spoke doesn't produce a huge buckle to start with though in which case the wheel is ridable without any immediate intervention, though it could still result in some of the remaining spokes de-tensioning themselves a little.

rollingscone

So I ended up not making it out to where I was supposed to be last night.

Dejected I went home and decided to replace the spoke, which involved a learning by doing disassembly of the wheel (couldn't get the spoke in with the rear casette on) and hopefully a competent reassembly.

I'm off two minds whether to bother trying to true it to the extent that I can cycle to the LBS or just carry it.

cdaly_

You could try to true it yourself, see how far you get, then bring it to the LBS to sort it out...

Icyseanfitz

rollingscone wrote: »

So I ended up not making it out to where I was supposed to be last night.

Dejected I went home and decided to replace the spoke, which involved a learning by doing disassembly of the wheel (couldn't get the spoke in with the rear casette on) and hopefully a competent reassembly.

I'm off two minds whether to bother trying to true it to the extent that I can cycle to the LBS or just carry it.

you didnt make it because of the wheel? i feel bad for saying you would

rollingscone

Not a worry, it went wonky as soon as I got going. So I wasn't stranded

doozerie

I'd be in favour of trying to true it yourself, with the LBS as a fallback, as cdaly_ suggests. You might be lucky and and find that all you'll have to do is tighten the new spoke to bring the wheel back into true - try to get the spoke to around the same tension as the spokes on the same side of the hub as it, one way to gauge this is to pick an existing spoke on that side, pluck it, pluck the new spoke, and adjust the new spoke until both sounds are relatively close.

If you find that adjusting the new spoke alone isn't sufficient to eliminate the buckle, and that is often the case, then you could choose to step away from it at that stage and bring it to the LBS. You won't have made their job any more difficult by just working on one spoke, but it may help them if you can mark the new spoke, put some tape on it or something, so that they can identify it.

rollingscone

I regretfully surrendered the bike to my LBS having had no luck with adjusting the spokes myself.

On the positive side of the experience I now know how to strip and assemble wheels and remove a cassette.

rollingscone

rollingscone wrote: »

I regretfully surrendered the bike to my LBS having had no luck with adjusting the spokes myself.

On the positive side of the experience I now know how to strip and assemble wheels and remove a cassette.

Or not.

Apparently I crushed the axle with my superhuman strength, the LBS asked me if I'd used a massive spanner (I hadn't) or if I'd cycled it after overtightening the hub (I hadn't).

So I suppose the upside to this depressing and expensive tale of woe is I am apparently immensely strong.

doozerie

Do you know what they mean by "crushed the axle"? It sounds odd, I'm guessing that they mean the bearings and races are excessively worn, one cause of which is the axle cones being overtightened, and if that's the case then it most likely occurred before you did any work on the wheel as you'd have to ride on the wheel for a while for the wear/damage to occur. Also, removing and re-fitting a cassette usually doesn't require that you do anything to the axle at all (though it depends on what type of hub you have), making it seem even less likely that you could have caused any damage.

rollingscone

Apparently they couldn't open the hub at all.

I did take out the axle but it went back in with no particular force, so my best guess was that maybe I'd trapped a bearing.

rollingscone

Went and picked up the bike with new wheel this evening. Feeling shamefaced over my apparent eff up.

The guys in the shop commented that I had the wrong casette as I only had a 6 speed shifter, I noted it was 8 speed, and one guy said "Oh it musnt' be indexed properly".

The guy at the till then said the same thing to me about only being a six speed shifter, I pointed out that it was an 8 speed, it in fact says "8S" on it.

I feeling low about myself assumed I had imagined that I'd been cycling though all 8 cogs for the last week and switched it to friction shifting for the cycle home.

After getting home I noticed that the front lever was in a strange position, it was all the way down but only on the middle cog (Front lever is a friction only shifter). Sure enough my limiting screws were noticeably altered.

I had previously put their discovery of an issue with the rear casette down to test riding the new wheel. But why would they have messed around with the limit screws on the front derailleur and I'm wondering if they didn't fiddle with the rear as well?