Rear Wheel Broken Spoke

[Sea Demon]

Did a longish ride on Sunday (65 miles) - mainly country lanes & when I got home I saw that 1 of my spokes had snapped near the hub. Just called my local Evans and they want £20 + the cost of the spoke so Im going to give it a go myself, have done them before on a racer but my hybrid has disc brakes.

Anyone know if I'd need to remove the rear disc to do this or this or is it easy enough to do with the disc on (only looked at it for a few secs, wasnt interested after 65 miles) Any decent guides around you could point me to?

Thanks

[itsnotarace]

Doing it yourself is a sure fire way to have further spokes snap in the surrounding area of the existing problem as you will be unlikely to set the correct tension finely enough.

By all means have a go but don't be surprised when it fails again, and then gets worse. Maybe try somewhere more...err independant than Evans

[Sea Demon]

Thats whats wrong with the world today, people need to give things a go!

I did LEJOG last year and had to change my 1st ever spoke on my racer carrying camping gear etc on the bike & it was fine so I'll give it a go myself 1st

Just to add - only asked Evans as their just around the corner from where I work & I'd like it sorted for a ride on Saturday, my usual place would do it for free but I cant get to them until the weekend.

Use of Evans explanation sorted!

Edited by Sea Demon on Tuesday 17th May 15:15

[Janosh]

You shouldn't need to remove the disk, as you can usually thread the spoke through one way or another.. If it's on the drive side, you'll have to remove the cassette.

As long as you know how to true the wheel properly, you'll do easily as good a job as Evans would!

[Sea Demon]

Lovely thanks - nope not on the drive side so should be nice & easy.

Everyone has their opionion of Evans but I just think £20 is a bit steep to replace a spoke!

[walm]

Perhaps I am a bit slap-dash but when I replaced a spoke, to get the right tension I employed the use of my ears.

There was all this balls online about needing a tensionometer or some highly expensive tool or something, but just tensioning the spoke until it "pinged" at the same pitch as all the others gave me a wheel that lasted 4,000 miles and counting...

[Sea Demon]

walm said:

Perhaps I am a bit slap-dash but when I replaced a spoke, to get the right tension I employed the use of my ears.

There was all this balls online about needing a tensionometer or some highly expensive tool or something, but just tensioning the spoke until it "pinged" at the same pitch as all the others gave me a wheel that lasted 4,000 miles and counting...

Thats what I like to hear

[itsnotarace]

walm said:

There was all this balls online about needing a tensionometer or some highly expensive tool or something, but just tensioning the spoke until it "pinged" at the same pitch as all the others gave me a wheel that lasted 4,000 miles and counting...

There is more to it than that, spokes stretch and rims compress under tension. The new spoke needs to be stress relieved and ideally the surrounding spokes should be de-tensioned and then re-tensioned back up as part of the truing service. £20 is not unreasonable if a bike shop do the job properly.

[Sea Demon]

I hear what your saying but Im quite a hands on person & would like to have a go at doing it myself just so I know my bike is kind of put together. Im riding to Amsterdam in a months time so me knowing how to do this on my hybrid could come in handy but if I make a hash of it and I end up stranded in the middle of no where with a buckled wheel and more broken spokes I'll march in to to Evans on Monday morning with £20

[walm]

itsnotarace said:

There is more to it than that, spokes stretch and rims compress under tension. The new spoke needs to be stress relieved and ideally the surrounding spokes should be de-tensioned and then re-tensioned back up as part of the truing service. £20 is not unreasonable if a bike shop do the job properly.

I don't have a view on whether £20 is reasonable or not.

I was just suggesting that in the spirit of self-discovery and aspiring to reach ever further up the bicycle repair learning curve without a substantial investment in a £120 truing stand, £50 tensionometer, £?? dishing tool etc... it is possible to create a relatively robust true-ish wheel according to my N=1 example!

[itsnotarace]

I'm not suggesting one goes and spends all that money, personally I just flip the bike upside down and spin the wheel in the dropouts. I will use an elastic band and a broken spoke set at right angles to the rim to assess the true of the wheel so you only need a spoke key and patience.

Just passing on my years of experience, not suggesting mine is the only method of doing things.