Lifetime of spokes?

[censored]! I have wheels that are 8 or 9 years old, 30,000+ miles (much of it in the rain) and I have
never broken a spoke. I ride only hand-built, pre-stressed and re-tensioned wheels with DT, Sapim,
or Wheelsmith spokes. I am 170 lbs, ride on O.K. roads.

So, I am no expert in wheel-building (there are MANY discussions in this group on that subject), but
the shop girl is feeding you an uninformed line of BS.

Steve Scarich

Quoted message said:

Her thought was that the stainless steel the spokes are made of is starting to "crystalize" and
become brittle with age. This makes it prone to breaking.

This is a classic "old wive's tale" told by uneducated welders, etc.

The solid state of steels, stainless or otherwise, is a crystal. Your spoke did not further
"crystalize" in use.

Quoted message said:

She did not think the problem was caused by looseness of some spokes.

Why not? If the quality of the wheel build was such that one spoke failed, it is not out of the
question that other spokes are experiencing similar fatigue loadings and damage.

Quoted message said:

Suggested fix was to re-spoke the wheel (~$50) or buy a new wheel (~$70) or just fix the spokes as
they break (~$10 labor total plus 66 cents for each spoke). For now, I'm doing the last.

I vote for biting the bullet and having the wheel respoked or buying a new wheel. Life's too short
to be running back to the shop every time a spoke pops, and at this point you've almost spent half
the cash required to re-spoke the wheel. I would try to find out who in the area has the best
reputation as a wheelbuilder, though - a professions go, wheelbuilding is as much art as science.

Chris Neary [email hidden]

"Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Bicycling combined all the
elements I loved" - Adapted from a quotation by Charles Lindbergh

303squadron said:

I've been riding a hybrid bike with street tires for about three years on a daily basis (about 12
miles a day on average). Street and rail trail use only. No big impacts. Never had any spoke
problems until a month ago when one spoke broke. Had that fixed at a local shop. Then yesterday,
two more spokes broke. (All on rear wheel.) Took it into the local shop for repair and spoke with
the service person about possable causes. Her thought was that the stainless steel the spokes are
made of is starting to "crystalize" and become brittle with age. This makes it prone to breaking.
She did not think the problem was caused by looseness of some spokes.

Not strictly accurate but a much better explanation than you will get from most. Let me guess, the
spokes all broke at the elbow, right? This is where nearly all spokes fail and the cause of the
failure is metal fatigue. The solution is to stress relieve the spokes towards the end of building
the wheel. This gets rid of the residual stresses that come about when the spoke bend is formed and
when the wheel is built.

See:

sheldonbrown.comwheelbuild.htmlOpen ↗

and

faqs.orgsection 28.htmlOpen ↗

Quoted message said:

Suggested fix was to re-spoke the wheel (~$50) or buy a new wheel (~$70) or just fix the spokes as
they break (~$10 labor total plus 66 cents for each spoke). For now, I'm doing the last.

Given that you have had three spokes break in somewhat quick sucession it is very likely that you
will continue to have failures assuming that all the spokes are the same age as you imply.

If you do a round of stress relieving now you will probably more break spokes - spokes which were
about to go anyway. That would be the final push for me to rebuild the wheel or get a new one.

The new wheel will be machine built at that price so it may need to have the spoke tension
increased and evened out and it will almost definitely need stress relief, otherwise you can expect
more spoke breakage down the road, probably sooner than 3 years. This is something you could do
yourself with just a spoke wrench and a bit of muscle (the wheel may need some minor truing
afterwards too, though).

It's impossible for me to say whether you can trust the shop to do touch up the new wheel (or
rebuild your current wheel) as bike shops really vary in their expertise now that wheels are
machine built and local builders are becoming a scarcity. You will have to decide this based on
the impressions you get from talking to them and perhaps by asking other cyclists in your area
for insight.
--

Chris Bird

Rick Onanian said:

Quoted message said:

spokes as they break (~$10 labor total plus 66 cents for each spoke). For now, I'm doing
the last.

Buy some spokes and a spoke wrench, and do it yourself. It's not difficult, and $10 buys the
wrench and a bunch of spokes.

Add in a cassette tool and chain whip, necessary when rear spokes break.
--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA terrymorse.combikeOpen ↗

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

I've been riding a hybrid bike with street tires for about three years on a daily basis (about 12
miles a day on average). Street and rail trail use only. No big impacts. Never had any spoke
problems until a month ago when one spoke broke. Had that fixed at a local shop. Then yesterday,
two more spokes broke. (All on rear wheel.) Took it into the local shop for repair and spoke with
the service person about possable causes. Her thought was that the stainless steel the spokes are
made of is starting to "crystalize" and become brittle with age. This makes it prone to breaking.
She did not think the problem was caused by looseness of some spokes. Suggested fix was to
re-spoke the wheel (~$50) or buy a new wheel (~$70) or just fix the spokes as they break (~$10
labor total plus 66 cents for each spoke). For now, I'm doing the last.

Anybody have any ideas about this?

You shouldn't be breaking any spokes in normal riding no matter how old the wheel is. Have the wheel
properly tensioned (you can do it yourself if you're careful), and you shouldn't break any more.

--
David Kerber An optimist says "Good morning, Lord." While a pessimist says "Good Lord,
it's morning".

Remove the ns_ from the address before e-mailing.

My old road training bike, a Gitane Allure, had done about 60,000 km in it's 16 years... The front
wheel was on it's original spokes, hub, but I replaced the bearings, cones and cups 5 times...

The rear wheel, I had re-laced onto a new rim, after a touring accident, and it did another 40,000
km after that, without breaking a spoke.... "archer" <ns_archer1960@ns_hotmail.com> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

I've been riding a hybrid bike with street tires for about three years

on a

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

daily basis (about 12 miles a day on average). Street and rail trail use only. No big impacts.
Never had any spoke problems until a month ago

when

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

one spoke broke. Had that fixed at a local shop. Then yesterday, two

more

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

spokes broke. (All on rear wheel.) Took it into the local shop for

repair

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

and spoke with the service person about possable causes. Her thought was that the stainless
steel the spokes are made of is starting to

"crystalize"

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

and become brittle with age. This makes it prone to breaking. She did

not

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

think the problem was caused by looseness of some spokes. Suggested fix

was

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

to re-spoke the wheel (~$50) or buy a new wheel (~$70) or just fix the spokes as they break
(~$10 labor total plus 66 cents for each spoke).

For

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

now, I'm doing the last.

Anybody have any ideas about this?

You shouldn't be breaking any spokes in normal riding no matter how old the wheel is. Have the
wheel properly tensioned (you can do it yourself if you're careful), and you shouldn't break
any more.

--
David Kerber An optimist says "Good morning, Lord." While a pessimist says "Good Lord, it's
morning".

Remove the ns_ from the address before e-mailing.

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

I've been riding a hybrid bike with street tires for about three years on a daily basis (about 12
miles a day on average). Street and rail trail use only. No big impacts. Never had any spoke
problems until a month ago when one spoke broke. Had that fixed at a local shop. Then yesterday,
two more spokes broke. (All on rear wheel.) Took it into the local shop for repair and spoke with
the service person about possable causes. Her thought was that the stainless steel the spokes are
made of is starting to "crystalize" and become brittle with age. This makes it prone to breaking.
She did not think the problem was caused by looseness of some spokes. Suggested fix was to re-spoke
the wheel (~$50) or buy a new wheel (~$70) or just fix the spokes as they break (~$10 labor total
plus 66 cents for each spoke). For now, I'm doing the last.

When your wheel was built the spokes were probably not stress relieved. Your wheel is probably going
to continue to break spokes until all the spokes are replaced. You can check this by trying to
stress relieve the spokes. The ones that are just about to break, will break when you try this. Wear
thick gloves and eye protection. Grab the adjacent nearly parallel sets of spokes on both sides of
the wheel and squeeze tight. If this was my wheel, I would change all the spokes out and make sure
to stress relieve all the spokes. You may want to pick up a copy of "The Bicycle Wheel" by Jobst
Brandt. It tells you all about building good wheels.
-----------------
Alex __O _-\<,_ (_)/ (_)

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

I've been riding a hybrid bike with street tires for about three years on a daily basis (about 12
miles a day on average). Street and rail trail use only. No big impacts. Never had any spoke
problems until a month ago when one spoke broke. Had that fixed at a local shop. Then yesterday,
two more spokes broke. (All on rear wheel.) Took it into the local shop for repair and spoke with
the service person about possable causes. Her thought was that the stainless steel the spokes are
made of is starting to "crystalize" and become brittle with age. This makes it prone to breaking.
She did not think the problem was caused by looseness of some spokes. Suggested fix was to
re-spoke the wheel (~$50) or buy a new wheel (~$70) or just fix the spokes as they break (~$10
labor total plus 66 cents for each spoke). For now, I'm doing the last.

Anybody have any ideas about this?

- 303sq

"Some people wonder if their lives made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem."

Ronald Reagan

Sadly, this is a common failure in many machine built wheels. They are not properly stress relieved,
many miles of light duty use later and suddenly a spoke pops, then another and before you know it
the guy at the bike shop is telling you that every time he touches a spoke wrench to a spoke it flys
by his head and sticks in the ceiling. I see this all the time where where people ride from Halifax
or even Montreal and say they never had a problem until now. I don't even need to waste my time
trying to fix the wheel, it's time for a new one or a complete rebuild. Whenever you get a new wheel
you should put on a pair of work gloves, grab pairs of adjoining spokes on each side of the wheel
and squeeze for all your worth, do this all the way around the wheel twice, check it for trueness
and you should not have this problem again unless they were really cheap chinese spokes or you road
them loose for an extended period.
--
_________________________
Chris Phillipo - Cape Breton, Nova Scotia ramsays-online.comramsays-online.comOpen ↗

303squadron said:

that the stainless steel the spokes are made of is starting to "crystalize" and become brittle
with age. This makes it prone to breaking. She did not

I've never heard of stainless steel doing this. AFAIK, stainless lasts a _long_ time.

Quoted message said:

think the problem was caused by looseness of some spokes. Suggested fix was to re-spoke the wheel
(~$50) or buy a new wheel (~$70) or just fix the

At that price spread, I'd buy a new wheel rather than re-spoke.

Quoted message said:

spokes as they break (~$10 labor total plus 66 cents for each spoke). For now, I'm doing the last.

Buy some spokes and a spoke wrench, and do it yourself. It's not difficult, and $10 buys the wrench
and a bunch of spokes.

Quoted message said:

Anybody have any ideas about this?

Sounds like a damaged rim or hub, or badly built wheel coming apart, or bad/uneven spoke tension.

Where are they breaking? In the center? At the nipple? At the bend? Look at the break and see if you
can determine if it bent before it broke.

Quoted message said:

- 303sq

"Some people wonder if their lives made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem."

Ronald Reagan

--
Rick Onanian

"Rick Onanian" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Buy some spokes and a spoke wrench, and do it yourself. It's not difficult, and $10 buys the
wrench and a bunch of spokes.

Sounds like a damaged rim or hub, or badly built wheel coming apart, or bad/uneven spoke tension.

It's all about stress relieving. Read the FAQ.

Quoted message said:

Where are they breaking? In the center? At the nipple? At the bend? Look at the break and see if
you can determine if it bent before it broke.

Spokes never break in the center. 90% of the time they break at the elbow, the rest at the threads,
that's where the residual manufacturing/building stresses are. It's all in the FAQ.

Peter Cole said:

Spokes never break in the center. 90% of the time they break at the elbow, the rest at the
threads, that's where the residual manufacturing/building stresses are.

Never say never. I've seen a spoke break in the middle before, and it makes a pretty spectacular
noise. The culprit was corrosion, probably started at a surface scratch.
--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA terrymorse.combikeOpen ↗

Terry Morse said:

Quoted message said:

Spokes never break in the center. 90% of the time they break at the elbow, the rest at the
threads, that's where the residual manufacturing/building stresses are.

Quoted message said:

Never say never. I've seen a spoke break in the middle before, and it makes a pretty spectacular
noise. The culprit was corrosion, probably started at a surface scratch.

As I said, most of my spoke failures are from nicks made by the chain falling into the spokes
(because the end stops of today's derailleurs are too short to prevent going past the lowest
sprocket on my 6-speed FW's). The exception was a failure in the middle that showed no indication
for its failure with no crack propagation, only a slightly sloping complete separation and no
necking. When it went, it sounded no different from any other spoke failure, like a small hammer
blow on the hub.

Jobst Brandt [email hidden] Palo Alto CA

"Terry Morse" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Peter Cole said:

Spokes never break in the center. 90% of the time they break at the elbow,

the

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

rest at the threads, that's where the residual manufacturing/building

stresses

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

are.

Never say never. I've seen a spoke break in the middle before, and it makes a pretty spectacular
noise. The culprit was corrosion, probably started at a surface scratch.

Sorry, I assumed stainless, I've long discarded anything that isn't. I've also had a few fail where
they were nicked by a chain, but I thought the topic was fatigue, not accidents or rust.

From: duke.eduHPGavin Wheel Paper.pdfOpen ↗

"In 1984 and 1985, fatigue tests on stainless steel bicycle spokes were carried out for Wheelsmith,
Inc. at Stanford University. In 68 spokes the failure occurred at the cold-worked elbow; in the
remaining 8 spokes the failure occurred at the threads."

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Never say never. I've seen a spoke break in the middle before, and it makes a pretty spectacular
noise. The culprit was corrosion, probably started at a surface scratch.

Sorry, I assumed stainless, I've long discarded anything that isn't. I've also had a few fail where
they were nicked by a chain, but I thought the topic was fatigue, not accidents or rust.

Stainless steel isn't immune to all forms of corrosion. Depending on the grade, stress-corrosion
cracking, usually associated with exposure to chlorides (i.e, sweat or salt air), is a common
failure mode.

Chris Neary [email hidden]

"Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Bicycling combined all the
elements I loved" - Adapted from a quotation by Charles Lindbergh

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Never say never. I've seen a spoke break in the middle before, and it makes a pretty
spectacular noise. The culprit was corrosion, probably started at a surface scratch.

Sorry, I assumed stainless, I've long discarded anything that isn't. I've also had a few fail
where they were nicked by a chain, but I thought the topic was fatigue, not accidents or rust.

Stainless steel isn't immune to all forms of corrosion. Depending on the grade, stress-corrosion
cracking, usually associated with exposure to chlorides (i.e, sweat or salt air), is a common
failure mode.

It's far more common in higher-temperature applications, however, than at normal room/ambient
temperatures.

--
David Kerber An optimist says "Good morning, Lord." While a pessimist says "Good Lord,
it's morning".

Remove the ns_ from the address before e-mailing.

"Chris Neary" <[email hidden] > wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Never say never. I've seen a spoke break in the middle before, and it makes a pretty
spectacular noise. The culprit was corrosion, probably started at a surface scratch.

Sorry, I assumed stainless, I've long discarded anything that isn't. I've

also

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

had a few fail where they were nicked by a chain, but I thought the topic

was

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

fatigue, not accidents or rust.

Stainless steel isn't immune to all forms of corrosion. Depending on the grade, stress-corrosion
cracking, usually associated with exposure to chlorides (i.e, sweat or salt air), is a common
failure mode.

Sure, but I don't think bicycle spokes are made from those alloys. Do you?

Quoted message said:

Sure, but I don't think bicycle spokes are made from those alloys. Do you?

Well, what are they made of?

I'm guessing a 410 martensitic alloy or similar, which has a number of corrosion failure modes at
room temperature.

Chris Neary [email hidden]

In article <k2BWa.43354$Ho3.6458@sccrnsc03>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

"Chris Neary" <[email hidden] > wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

>
> Never say never. I've seen a spoke break in the middle before, and it makes a pretty
> spectacular noise. The culprit was corrosion, probably started at a surface scratch.

Sorry, I assumed stainless, I've long discarded anything that isn't. I've

also

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

had a few fail where they were nicked by a chain, but I thought the topic

was

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

fatigue, not accidents or rust.

Stainless steel isn't immune to all forms of corrosion. Depending on the grade, stress-corrosion
cracking, usually associated with exposure to chlorides (i.e, sweat or salt air), is a common
failure mode.

Sure, but I don't think bicycle spokes are made from those alloys. Do you?

Probably; the austinetic stainless steels are among the most commonly used, and are susceptible to
SCC. Keep in mind, though, that at room/ambient temperatures, SCC is not exactly common, though it
can occur.

--
Dave Kerber Fight spam: remove the ns_ from the return address before replying!

REAL programmers write self-modifying code.

Regardless of the cause of broken spokes, unless you learn to replace and properly adjust them
yourself, your money and time will continue to be depleted by trips to bike shops. I always carry
several spare spokes taped to the frame and immediately replace broken ones with the tools from my
emergency repair kit. Riding on a wheel with a broken spoke will stress the remaining spokes next to
it and may lead to them also breaking before long. It's also damaging to the rims and hubs to run on
an out-of-true wheel and will wear out a tire much faster.

Steve McDonald