GT MTB Spokes/Wheels

[noodles]

Hi

Long time lurker/first time poster . Anyway, I recently bought a GT
Aggressor for light offroad (towpaths/country tracks etc) use. Ive had it 2
months and Ive recenlty had two spokes fail on me on the rear wheel. The
first one went afew days ago, I replaced it and trued up the wheel as best
as I could. Today another one went.

They seem to shear off at the hub end.So my questions are.

Should I bother to replace the spoke again or will this just make it more
likely that another one will fail. I'm guessing there is an art to spoke
replacment/wheel building.
or just buy a new (decent) rear wheel and stop messing around.


Thanks



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[Pete Biggs]

noodles wrote:
> Hi
>
> Long time lurker/first time poster . Anyway, I recently bought a GT
> Aggressor for light offroad (towpaths/country tracks etc) use. Ive
> had it 2 months and Ive recenlty had two spokes fail on me on the
> rear wheel. The first one went afew days ago, I replaced it and trued
> up the wheel as best as I could. Today another one went.
>
> They seem to shear off at the hub end.So my questions are.
>
> Should I bother to replace the spoke again or will this just make it
> more likely that another one will fail. I'm guessing there is an art
> to spoke replacment/wheel building.
> or just buy a new (decent) rear wheel and stop messing around.

It's quite likely that another spoke will fail since three have gone
already. If it was just one, maybe two, I would replace the broken spokes
and carry on with the rest after stress relieving* them. This case, I
think you're better off replacing the whole lot, or getting another wheel
with more spokes if you think that will help.

The wheel wasn't built well enough or doesn't have enough or good enough
spokes for you.

* Squeeze pairs of spokes together hard. See
http://draco.acs.uci.edu/rbfaq/FAQ/8c.1.html

~PB

 

[dkahn400]

Pete Biggs wrote:

> It's quite likely that another spoke will fail since three have gone
> already. If it was just one, maybe two, I would replace the broken
> spokes and carry on with the rest after stress relieving* them.
> This case, I think you're better off replacing the whole lot, or
> getting another wheel with more spokes if you think that will help.
>
> The wheel wasn't built well enough or doesn't have enough or good
> enough spokes for you.

My money's on insufficient spoke tension. You're probably right, Pete,
but if it were my wheel I'd give it one more chance after tensioning it
up properly and stress-relieving. There's a chance that any fatigued
spokes will break at this stage and any that survive the process will
be OK.

Noodles, remember that spokes can fly out of the wheel if they break
while you're tensioning them so leave the rim tape on and keep your
eyes out of the line of fire.

--
Dave...

 

[Pete Biggs]

dkahn400 wrote:
> My money's on insufficient spoke tension. You're probably right, Pete,
> but if it were my wheel I'd give it one more chance after tensioning
> it up properly and stress-relieving. There's a chance that any
> fatigued spokes will break at this stage and any that survive the
> process will be OK.

I had an unexpected response from Jobst Brandt once (via r.b.t). He
seemed to suggest that low tension doesn't make spokes more likely to
break, just makes the wheel weak.

~PB

 

[noodles]

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"Pete Biggs" <[email protected]> wrote in
message news:[email protected]...
> dkahn400 wrote:
>> My money's on insufficient spoke tension. You're probably right, Pete,
>> but if it were my wheel I'd give it one more chance after tensioning
>> it up properly and stress-relieving. There's a chance that any
>> fatigued spokes will break at this stage and any that survive the
>> process will be OK.
>
> I had an unexpected response from Jobst Brandt once (via r.b.t). He
> seemed to suggest that low tension doesn't make spokes more likely to
> break, just makes the wheel weak.
>
> ~PB
>
>

Thanks for all the help guy's, ill give it one more try, if another one goes
ill get a new one

Cheers

 

[Peter B]

"noodles" <noodlesUK*remove*@gmail.com> wrote in message
news[email protected]...

> Thanks for all the help guy's, ill give it one more try, if another one
goes
> ill get a new one

Did you buy the bike new from a local shop? If so it's a warranty job IMO,
spokes shouldn't break in normal use.
If you bought it new by mail order or in person from a distant shop you have
to weigh up the logistics of returning the wheel for repair/replacement.


--
Pete
http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/P

 

[noodles]

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"Peter B" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "noodles" <noodlesUK*remove*@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news[email protected]...
>
>> Thanks for all the help guy's, ill give it one more try, if another one
> goes
>> ill get a new one
>
> Did you buy the bike new from a local shop? If so it's a warranty job IMO,
> spokes shouldn't break in normal use.
> If you bought it new by mail order or in person from a distant shop you
> have
> to weigh up the logistics of returning the wheel for repair/replacement.
>
>
> --
> Pete
> http://uk.geocities.com/[email protected]/P
>
>

thats a good point, didn't think of that. It was mail order, but ill look
into sending the wheel back, might make work out cheaper, cheers