broken spokes...

I decided to save myself the taxi fare and take a chance riding the bike
10 miles to the LBS. No additional failures on the way there.

For $20 CDN the LBS replaces the 3 broken spokes and trues the wheel
while I wait, well I'm not sure how true the rear wheel is but at least
I can ride without having to disengage the rear brake so it must not be
too bad.

LBS tells me that if this happens again to just replace the wheel. They
suggest the one I have may be going "soft".

I ride around an additional 30 miles without incident.

While at the LBS I checked out (no test ride) a $3000 CDN full
suspension Giant, man that thing must ride like a Cadillac.

Quoted message said:

The wheels have 1500 miles since May 2000 on a Giant Yukon

It is a mountain bike that was never used as such, but rather adapted to
urban use on pavement and some gravel.

The only harsh treatment, relatively speaking, has been dropping off
curbs on a regular basis where that rear wheel likely hits the ground
fairly hard. I'm 230 lbs.

Agreed on learning the repairs. I've never had a failure, so I suppose
I've been extremely lucky.

Joe,

I suspect the wheels you've got are machine built and somehow those
spokes had gotten loose by repeated impact, jumping off curbs and what
not and then broke. No big deal.. You can either replace the broken
spokes (a temporary solution) or have a local LBS rebuild your wheel
with brand new spokes. A properly built wheel should be able to take a
lot of pounding even from an 8inch drop. Heck, I do MTB myself here
and occassionally ride down stairs, do 2 to 3 foot drop offs and my
hand built wheels take the lickin and keeps on tickin..

David.

Quoted message said:

Joe Canuck said:

The wheels have 1500 miles since May 2000 on a Giant Yukon.

Quoted message said:

It is a mountain bike that was never used as such, but rather
adapted to urban use on pavement and some gravel.

Quoted message said:

The only harsh treatment, relatively speaking, has been dropping off
curbs on a regular basis where that rear wheel likely hits the
ground fairly hard. I'm 230 lbs.

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Most of these failures arise because the wheel was never tightened
sufficiently to stress relive the spokes and improve the spoke line to
prevent repeated flexing of a semi-loose spoke.

Boy isn't that the truth! On my first "real" mountain bike, I tacoed
the rear wheel in the parking lot with a bit of a sideways landing from
a bunny-hop. I'd never had that happen with the BMX bikes I rode. Talk
about being shocked!

One of the shop mechanics was with us and was very apologetic. The bike
was about to go on its first outing! He did a quick field fix, then
took it back to the shop and tensioned and trued the wheel properly
after the ride. He said it must have been overlooked when the bike was
assembled at the shop.

A good wheel can take the abuse. I used to fly off of curbs on my ten
speed (good ol 27" wheels) and never had wheel problems. While I was a
good bit lighter back then, I still wasn't gently on the bikes I rode.

If a good shop replaces the spokes, tensions and true the wheel
properly, it should last through curb drops even with a 230lb plus bike
load. Mine do. (They just can't handle trailer hitches being jammed
into them....)

-Buck

David who? said:

I suspect the wheels you've got are machine built and somehow those
spokes had gotten loose by repeated impact, jumping off curbs and
what not and then broke. No big deal.. You can either replace the
broken spokes (a temporary solution) or have a local LBS rebuild
your wheel with brand new spokes. A properly built wheel should be
able to take a lot of pounding even from an 8inch drop. Heck, I do
MTB myself here and occasionally ride down stairs, do 2 to 3 foot
drop offs and my hand built wheels take the lickin and keeps on
tickin.

You can consider truing the wheel yourself, aligning and stress
relieving the spokes which with "the Bicycle Wheel" in hand is far
more productive and long term helpful than having the LBS work on your
wheels. Likely most of the spokes are still good and require only
some proper care (assuming they are major brand stainless).

The reason machine built wheels are too loose is that final truing
becomes impossible for the machine if tension is adequately high. I
have been talking to Holland Mechanics (the machine builders) these
last two years on how to get around the spoke twist problem in which
final truing gets the machine nowhere because it its twisting spokes
with no thread advance or release. Since the weird wheel syndrome is
cutting into machine building, HM has gotten more interested in
solving this problem.

I'm looking forward to the next version of their machines, the
solution being so simple that it can be explained to the manufacturer
in a single sentence. There is hope for machine built wheels!

Jobst Brandt

Quoted message said:

I'm looking forward to the next version of their machines, the
solution being so simple that it can be explained to the manufacturer
in a single sentence. There is hope for machine built wheels!

Jobst Brandt

Jobst,

I have no doubt machine built wheels have hope. When I was at
Interbike a couple years ago, I saw a demo of one machine that was in
the process of making a normal wheel. Very neat process and if they
somehow perfected and incorporated your solution to improve wheel
build, we can only see better things to come.

David.