broken spoke - rear wheel



MLMercer

New Member
Nov 13, 2004
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Hey guys

Just realised I have a broken spoke on my rear wheel - is it safe to ride on until I can get it fixed? (being easter the bike shops wont be open for a few days):confused:

MM
 
MLMercer said:
Hey guys

Just realised I have a broken spoke on my rear wheel - is it safe to ride on until I can get it fixed? (being easter the bike shops wont be open for a few days):confused:

MM
Can you take the broken spoke out of the wheel?
Do you have 31 (or 35) other spokes left?
 
daveornee said:
Can you take the broken spoke out of the wheel?
Do you have 31 (or 35) other spokes left?
I have a lot of other spokes but I havent counted them -my wheels arent the type that have less than standard... I can probably remove it - it is loose close to the centre of the wheel.

The wheel is wobbling around a fair bit but the only issue witht that is its hitting the breaks every rotation - whih i can live with in the short term..
 
MLMercer said:
The wheel is wobbling around a fair bit but the only issue witht that is its hitting the breaks every rotation - whih i can live with in the short term..
I would say it's not a great idea. It'll just put on additional stress on other spokes and rim and may induce early failure of those additional items. And if power hard, it'll just make it worse.
 
Sounds like it's broken at the elbow. If that's the case, you should be able to pull out the broken end (probably will require some bending) and unscrew it from the nipple. That'll keep if from hitting your brake but your wheel is still going to have a wobble that will probably get worse if you ride it too much that way.

I'm guessing this is a non-drive side spoke. That's more common than I think that it should be. If that's the case, it failed due to too little tension. When that happens, in addition to replacing the spoke and retrueing the wheel, you need to increase the tension on the whole wheel to prevent a recurrence.
 
I broke a spoke once while riding, no biggie.

But I'd say take the wheel to a bike shop and have it repaired, that's if you don't have any of the necessary tools to fix it. I didn't so I paid about $15.
If I had bought the tools and part? It would've been over $100, so.
 
The longer you keep riding with a broken spoke the more likely it is that you will deform the rim so that you can't true it without over tensioning and under tensioning at the area of the blip. It is one thing to get youself home, and another to continue to ride on the damaged wheel once you have gotten there.
 
Nasgul said:
If I had bought the tools and part? It would've been over $100, so.
Buy them once, then have them for good. In any case, everyone riding more than trivially should have a spoke key. And a chain whip and cassette tool. What else do you need?
(A wheel jig is not necessary for replacing spokes, but after many years of mucking around, I've only just discovered how useful a tensiometer is. The spoke is never quite as tight as you think it is, and above about 50kgf, it becomes quite hard to measure by hand.)
 
MLMercer said:
I have a lot of other spokes but I havent counted them -my wheels arent the type that have less than standard... I can probably remove it - it is loose close to the centre of the wheel.

The wheel is wobbling around a fair bit but the only issue witht that is its hitting the breaks every rotation - whih i can live with in the short term..
I guess I will be a little contrarian on this one.
If you can get the spoke out, you can safely ride for sort term.,, especially if you have 31 or 35 more spokes supporting the rim.
 
Thanks everyone for your advice.

I can't get the spoke out myself without wire cutters but it is not going to fall out by itself because of where it is located. It looks to have just come unhooked and is loose but not protruding or anything.

I have at least another 35 spokes. At the moment the plan is to ride it to the bike shop tomorrow (about 15km)



MM