spokes and d-locks!

Dave B said:

Do I just have to find another way of imobilising the bike in the shed
(nothing to fix it to in the shed). I suppose I will have to use a
cable, but this isn't as secure.

what is the shed floor? If there is earth under it you could buy a
heavy chanin from a motorbike site, thread two steel pins (such as you
sometimes see supporting a temporary fence on roadworks) through
adjacent links ina cross shape. Dig a hole as deap as you can be
bothered, lay the pins down and backfill with concrete or even just
earth. Cut a hole in the shed floor (if it has one) to thread the
chain through and lock to the chain with a dlock or with another chain
or just with a padlock and loop of the end if the 1st chain. If the
shed floor is concrete there are a number of ground anchors you can
screw down. Again, google for motorbike security.

As for the original question I guess if the spokes were fatigued then
one breaking might not cause the rim to become untrue enough to hit the
brake pads but sould have stressed the adjoining spokes enough to cause
more to fail in the night

best wishes
james

Dave B said:

Do I just have to find another way of imobilising the bike in the shed
(nothing to fix it to in the shed). I suppose I will have to use a
cable, but this isn't as secure.

There's nothing truly immovable in our shed and we're renting the house
so I've put at heavy duty padlock on the existing heavy duty looking
padlock plates.

Quoted message said:

Oh and before anyone asks I didn't try cycling with the lock still in
place!! (will anyone own up to doing this!!!?? :-) )

Is your shed locked? No chance that someone had a go at riding off on
it until they realised the wheel was locked and gave up?

pete

Dave B said:

As the wheel was fine when I got home the day before, I can only assume
it is related to my use of the d-lock through the frame and back wheel.
(this is the second time this has happened!) I am careful to not apply
pressure to the pedals or wheels when I lift the bike out.

I don't see how threading a D-lock through your spokes could possibly
cause them to break, especially if you didn't try to ride off with the
lock in place.

Quoted message said:

Has anyone else had this problem?.

It's not unknown for fatigued spokes to go "twang" in the middle of the
night.

Quoted message said:

Do I just have to find another way of imobilising the bike in the shed
(nothing to fix it to in the shed). I suppose I will have to use a
cable, but this isn't as secure.

Do you lock the bike to something fixed, or just lock the wheel to the
frame? If the latter then it's hardly immobilised as it is.

Quoted message said:

So it's off to the bike shop tomorrow to see if the wheel is a
right-off. Oh joy :-(.

If it's simply a question of broken spokes the wheel should be
perfectly repairable. It's mainly a question of whether you can get
away with just replacing the broken ones, or all of them.

--
Dave...

Quoted message said:

what is the shed floor? If there is earth under it you could buy a
heavy chanin from a motorbike site, thread two steel pins (such as you
sometimes see supporting a temporary fence on roadworks) through
adjacent links ina cross shape. Dig a hole as deap as you can be
bothered, lay the pins down and backfill with concrete or even just
earth. Cut a hole in the shed floor (if it has one) to thread the
chain through and lock to the chain with a dlock or with another chain
or just with a padlock and loop of the end if the 1st chain. If the
shed floor is concrete there are a number of ground anchors you can
screw down. Again, google for motorbike security.

It's one of those horrible plastic B&Q sheds (inherited with the house!)
so I suppose I could fix something through the floor. I will look into it

Quoted message said:

As for the original question I guess if the spokes were fatigued then
one breaking might not cause the rim to become untrue enough to hit the
brake pads but sould have stressed the adjoining spokes enough to cause
more to fail in the night

This is the second spoke to go in the last couple of months (the bike
shop fixed the spoke the last time). Makes me wonder about the rest of
the spokes, but the bike is only 7 months old!

Quoted message said:

best wishes
james

naked_draughtsman said:

Is your shed locked? No chance that someone had a go at riding off on
it until they realised the wheel was locked and gave up?

Shed was locked so unless the thief unlocked the shed and relocked it
for me, I think its unlikely ;-)

Quoted message said:

pete

dkahn400 said:

It's not unknown for fatigued spokes to go "twang" in the middle of the
night.

Should they be fatigued in a fairly new bike? (7 months). Ok so I could
clean it a bit more often......

Quoted message said:

Do you lock the bike to something fixed, or just lock the wheel to the
frame? If the latter then it's hardly immobilised as it is.

It's not fixed to anything, so yes you are right, it's not truely
immobilised, but it is in a locked shed and it can't be cycled away at
least.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

If it's simply a question of broken spokes the wheel should be
perfectly repairable. It's mainly a question of whether you can get
away with just replacing the broken ones, or all of them.

Hmm. It might be all I suspect. the last time a spoke went (about 2
months ago) the wheel did buckle quite a bit. Maybe my LBS didn't do
the best job retensioning the spokes!

Quoted message said:

Dave B said:

This is the second spoke to go in the last couple of months (the bike
shop fixed the spoke the last time). Makes me wonder about the rest of
the spokes, but the bike is only 7 months old!

I'd be suspicious of the rest of the spokes, too, particularly if you've
been riding around a spoke short of a wheel (er....) When you bought
the bike, did you get the bike shop to tension the wheel properly?

R.

Dave B said:

I checked the breaks

brakes

Quoted message said:

against one break block.

brake block

Quoted message said:

(the spokes have broke at the hub end)

broken

Quoted message said:

Has anyone else had this problem?.

No. I lock my bike at work through the wheel and frame daily, and don't
have this problem. I'm careful to ensure there's no load on the spokes
when I leave it, though.

Are you that concerned about wheel theft from the shed that you don't
want to just lock it through the frame?

--
Mark.
http://tranchant.plus.com/

Richard said:

I'd be suspicious of the rest of the spokes, too, particularly if you've
been riding around a spoke short of a wheel (er....) When you bought
the bike, did you get the bike shop to tension the wheel properly?

When I took the bike back for its 30 day service I did ask them to
retension the wheels (I noticed a bit of a wobble in both, though not
much). When I got the bike back the wobbles had improved so I assumed
the job was well done.

When the first spoke went I did cycle 4.5 miles home (very gingerly of
course!), so I suppose I sealed the remaining spokes fate then. Maybe a
taxi home would have been cost effective!

Dave

Mark Tranchant said:

Dave B said:

I checked the breaks

brakes

Quoted message said:

against one break block.

brake block

Quoted message said:

(the spokes have broke at the hub end)

broken

Quoted message said:

Has anyone else had this problem?.

[censored]! If I wanted a spelling/grammar lesson I would have asked
for one. Yes there were a few errors (I'm knackered at the moment as my
son has been ill for the last week) but I don't think there was any need
for that.

I'm don't post often and if that's the attitude of the group then I
might not bother in the future.

Dave B said:

Richard said:

I'd be suspicious of the rest of the spokes, too, particularly if
you've been riding around a spoke short of a wheel (er....) When you
bought the bike, did you get the bike shop to tension the wheel properly?

When I took the bike back for its 30 day service I did ask them to
retension the wheels (I noticed a bit of a wobble in both, though not
much). When I got the bike back the wobbles had improved so I assumed
the job was well done.

(Provided that the rim, spokes and hub are true) a proper wheel
retension should *eliminate* any "wobble" (well, certainly get it to
less than a millimetre or so), not just "improve" it.

Quoted message said:

When the first spoke went I did cycle 4.5 miles home (very gingerly of
course!), so I suppose I sealed the remaining spokes fate then. Maybe a
taxi home would have been cost effective!

Yeah. I did the same once, rode it to the bike shop for the dead spoke
to be replaced and the wheel retrued and retensioned. The following
morning I got a call from the engineer, apologising and letting me know
that every time he tried to tighten it up, another spoke twanged. He
had to replace the lot.

R.

Dave B said:

When I took the bike back for its 30 day service I did ask them to
retension the wheels (I noticed a bit of a wobble in both, though not
much). When I got the bike back the wobbles had improved so I assumed
the job was well done.

When the first spoke went I did cycle 4.5 miles home (very gingerly of
course!), so I suppose I sealed the remaining spokes fate then. Maybe a
taxi home would have been cost effective!

Don't beat yourself up. Riding home with a broken spoke did not cause
the problem nor did the D-lock. The problem you have is the build
quality of the wheel was [censored] in the first place. This is often the
case with machine built wheels. Unfortunately many bike shops do not
know how to tension or retension a wheel properly and if you can find
one that does, stick with it.

Your best option is to get them to repair the wheel, then either visit
Sheldon Brown's website on wheel building or buy the bible, The Bicycle
Wheel by Jobst Brandt and follow the instructions therein. Done that
way all my wheels haven't been touched between build and replacing a
worn out rim.

As a quick fix, when you get the wheel back put on some thick gardening
gloves, grap two adjacent parallel spokes on each side of the wheel and
squeeze them together hard. Repeat round the wheel. This should deal
with spoke failure if the tension is not too low.

--
Tony

"The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the
right."
- Lord Hailsham

Dave B said:

dkahn400 said:

It's not unknown for fatigued spokes to go "twang" in the middle of the
night.

Quoted message said:

Should they be fatigued in a fairly new bike? (7 months). Ok so I could
clean it a bit more often......

It depends on what kind of wheels it has. If they were hand built, or
at least hand tensioned, I would think it unlikely. But if they were
machine built then it is i'm afraid entirely possible for them to
start pinging spokes.

I once had a spoke ping on wheels I hadn't touched for years as I
gently rolled the wheel into a kerb as I was doing a pre-mount three
point turn.
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

"Dave B" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Mark Tranchant said:

Dave B said:

I checked the breaks

brakes

Quoted message said:

against one break block.

brake block

Quoted message said:

(the spokes have broke at the hub end)

broken

Quoted message said:

Has anyone else had this problem?.

[censored]! If I wanted a spelling/grammar lesson I would have asked for
one. Yes there were a few errors (I'm knackered at the moment as my son
has been ill for the last week) but I don't think there was any need for
that.

I'm don't post often and if that's the attitude of the group then I might
not bother in the future.

Hi, take no notice. Some people forget the aims of a newsgroup and think
they are some kind of usenet police.

John

Mark Tranchant said:

Dave B wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I checked the breaks

brakes

Quoted message said:

against one break block.

brake block

Quoted message said:

(the spokes have broke at the hub end)

broken

Quoted message said:

Has anyone else had this problem?

Yes but I usually just curse and mutter under my breath about falling
standards of education. :-)
--
Phil Cook looking north over the park to the "Westminster Gasworks"

I had a spoke break on me last week.
The wheel went a bit wobbly but not so bad I couldn't cycle home.
Bought a coupla spokes and the gizmos to take the gear cassette off (of
course it was on the drive side).
Had a really bad time replacing the spoke. Two more broke while I was
trying to re-true the wheel, requiring an emergency dash to the LBS for more
spares, and I managed to hole the inner tube.
Finally got the wheel true-ish, but still a slight wobble and some spokes
seem a lot tighter than others.
Did the spoke squezing thing and no more bad happened, not let me down after
30 miles or so but still decided to check it into the shop for a proper
re-trueing.

How much would you expect them to charge for the job?

John said:

Hi, take no notice. Some people forget the aims of a newsgroup and think
they are some kind of usenet police.

How many kinds of usenet police are there? Anyway, I quite like the
ones on bikes.

R.

Dave B said:

dkahn400 said:

It's not unknown for fatigued spokes to go "twang" in the middle of the
night.

Should they be fatigued in a fairly new bike? (7 months).

No, not if the wheel was properly built in the first place. Many
machine-built wheels aren't but a good bike shop should take care of
that on the free first service. The spokes should last longer than the
rims.

Quoted message said:

Ok so I could clean it a bit more often......

Maybe you could, but dirt won't affect the life of your spokes.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Do you lock the bike to something fixed, or just lock the wheel to the
frame? If the latter then it's hardly immobilised as it is.

It's not fixed to anything, so yes you are right, it's not truely
immobilised, but it is in a locked shed and it can't be cycled away at
least.

It they're breaking into sheds they probably have a van. You either
need to have it secured to something immovable, or have well above
average shed locks.

Quoted message said:

Hmm. It might be all I suspect. the last time a spoke went (about 2
months ago) the wheel did buckle quite a bit. Maybe my LBS didn't do
the best job retensioning the spokes!

At a guess they probably replaced the broken spoke and trued the wheel
up quickly. They should really have retensioned the whole wheel, but
that takes longer. I would not now trust any of the existing spokes. If
it were my wheel I'd replace them all. Either teach yourself how to do
it (it's not as hard as it seems) or get the bike shop to do it, but
make sure they treat it as a proper build and give the job to their
wheel builder.

--
Dave...

..

Quoted message said:

How much would you expect them to charge for the job?

My LBS in Leeds charges around £8 for a retrue/retension. £25 for a rebuild
including a full set of spokes