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Used to replace every snapped spoke, now I just fix the one and re-tension the wheel
For 6 years I ran a shop in Tucson and every time a spoke popped I would just swap in a new one and true it up. The wheel would be back in a week or two with another broken spoke, usually right next to the first one. Then about 3 years ago an old wheel builder watched me do it and asked why I was treating the symptom instead of the wheel. Now when a spoke breaks on a used wheel I pull the tire and rim strip, check tension on all 32, and usually find 5 or 6 that are way under or over where they should be. I fix the broken one and bring the rest back to even tension, and my come-backs on those wheels dropped to almost nothing. Anyone else find that a single snapped spoke is really just a sign the whole wheel has been neglected?
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kim.nina11d ago
Six years of doing it the hard way and some old guy just walks up and flips your whole method in one sentence. That part floors me, not gonna lie. But the part that really gets me is the 5 or 6 spokes out of spec on a used wheel. That means most of these wheels show up already loose and nobody ever checked them, they just wait for the pop. Makes sense why the next one goes a week later, it was the same problem all along wearing a different jersey. Treating every wheel like a whole system instead of one bad spoke seems so obvious once somebody says it out loud.
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