help with a spoke

Katharine & Paul said:

Hello all!

Broken spoke - drive side rear wheel. So the back wheel is a bit wobbly.

I live in a country town - so no bike shop.

Rang a mate to see if he had a lockring remover - no answer - must have gone
away for the weekend.

Any suggestions on a temporary fix???? Or just ride on a wobbly wheel for
the next week?

Assuming you have a 32 spoke wheel, tweak the spokes around the break to
true the wheel. It should be okay until you can replace the broken one.

--
..dt

Katharine & Paul said:

Hello all!

Broken spoke - drive side rear wheel. So the back wheel is a bit wobbly.

I live in a country town - so no bike shop.

Rang a mate to see if he had a lockring remover - no answer - must have gone
away for the weekend.

Any suggestions on a temporary fix???? Or just ride on a wobbly wheel for
the next week?

Road bike? Cassette? spin-on? (cluster)? Normal wheel or something
exotic? Got a spare spoke that's the right length? Need more
information to be able to assist ...

Quoted message said:

Paul

Katharine & Paul said:

Any suggestions on a temporary fix???? Or just ride on a wobbly wheel for
the next week?

If you've got a spoke key you should be able to up the tension on the
surrounding drive side spokes and back off the opposite side so you've got
a mostly straight wheel. That's a fairly standard MTB trail fix.

Without a spoke key the best suggestion I can make is to see if you can
borrow wheel, or ride the wobbler. If it's rear wheel you might be happy
to take off the brake. That's up to you of course, since it means if the
front goes for any reason you're back to jumping off or sticking your foot
on the tyre. Old Skool!

--
Dave Hughes | [email hidden]
Brooker's Law: "The wackier the project, the easier it is to fund."

Shimano Ultegra 9 speed. 32 spoke wheel.

Went for a ride this morning. Just tensioned up the nearest spokes on the
drive side, and loosened up on the other side a bit.

Wrote down how much I moved them to make it easier to fix when I can remove
the cluster. Problem at the moment is that I cant remove the cluster

Paul

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

Quoted message said:

Katharine & Paul said:

Hello all!

Broken spoke - drive side rear wheel. So the back wheel is a bit wobbly.

I live in a country town - so no bike shop.

Rang a mate to see if he had a lockring remover - no answer - must have
gone
away for the weekend.

Any suggestions on a temporary fix???? Or just ride on a wobbly wheel
for
the next week?

Road bike? Cassette? spin-on? (cluster)? Normal wheel or something
exotic? Got a spare spoke that's the right length? Need more
information to be able to assist ...

Quoted message said:

Paul

Katharine & Paul said:

Shimano Ultegra 9 speed. 32 spoke wheel.

Went for a ride this morning. Just tensioned up the nearest spokes on the
drive side, and loosened up on the other side a bit.

Wrote down how much I moved them to make it easier to fix when I can remove
the cluster. Problem at the moment is that I cant remove the cluster

You could probably ride the bike with several broken spokes, how far is
civilization? (ie bike store)

If you got the internet, buy one, you will never regret it. Just routine
maintenance, which I should do more often, requires the cluster removal tool
to get at the ball races.

At one stage I was going through a couple of spokes a week till I got the
wheel rebuilt. I have no idea how people exist without their cluster removal tool.

Good luck

Owen

Katharine & Paul said:

Hello all!

Broken spoke - drive side rear wheel. So the back wheel is a bit wobbly.

I live in a country town - so no bike shop.

Rang a mate to see if he had a lockring remover - no answer - must have gone
away for the weekend.

Any suggestions on a temporary fix???? Or just ride on a wobbly wheel for
the next week?

Paul

Buy several spokes so next time you'll have a few spares. A cluster
remover is the sort of tool you should own, it'll always come in handy.
If you do manage to get the cluster off you could try having a look at
the local rubbish dump, there's always old bikes and wheels at the dump,
you might even find a complete working wheel that'll get you by 'til you
can get yours fixed.

Friday

As already mentioned you will have one of the three below :

Screw-on Freewheel:

Found on cheap bike usually under 200$ or older style wheels, but generally
phased out on dearer bikes well over a decade ago. You just need a freewheel
remover 90% of time a Shimano-spline type & a vice or large adjustable
spanner. Cost tool around $12.00. Back in the Eighties there were many
different splines Regina, Sun Tour (2 or 4 prong) , Maillard etc. but
Shimano seems to be the industry standard now.

Screw-on Cassette:

A early type of cassette hub where the first sprocket ie 12 or 13 is holding
the rest of the sprockets on the spline . You will need two chain whips to
hold one sprocket & then a chain whip to remove the first sprocket. Just
hope the former owner wasn't a gorilla as these can be a 'pig' to remove. 2x
chainwhips required cost around $15-$20 each

Modern-day cassette:
Most commonly found now, the cassette sprockets are all splined & slip onto
the hub cassette body by lining the arrow on each cog with the widest spline
on the body. The cassette is held on with a lockring which threads inside
the cassette body. You will need 1x chainwhip & 1 cassette lockring tool.
Prices around $15-20 plus $12.

Steve

Ideal Cycles WA

Very handy is a cassette lockring tool which has a little bent arm on the
lever end for butting up to the back stay. You just take the wheel off, fit
the tool the right way, put the wheel back on and give the pedal a good push
with your foot. The cassette is loosened because the tool can't rotate due
to the back stay. Saves carrying a chain whip. Can tighten the cassette up
by doing the reverse.

But you can get by with just adjusting nearby spokes for a rough true.

fractal

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

Quoted message said:

As already mentioned you will have one of the three below :

Screw-on Freewheel:

Found on cheap bike usually under 200$ or older style wheels, but
generally phased out on dearer bikes well over a decade ago. You just need
a freewheel remover 90% of time a Shimano-spline type & a vice or large
adjustable spanner. Cost tool around $12.00. Back in the Eighties there
were many different splines Regina, Sun Tour (2 or 4 prong) , Maillard
etc. but Shimano seems to be the industry standard now.

Screw-on Cassette:

A early type of cassette hub where the first sprocket ie 12 or 13 is
holding the rest of the sprockets on the spline . You will need two chain
whips to hold one sprocket & then a chain whip to remove the first
sprocket. Just hope the former owner wasn't a gorilla as these can be a
'pig' to remove. 2x chainwhips required cost around $15-$20 each

Modern-day cassette:
Most commonly found now, the cassette sprockets are all splined & slip
onto the hub cassette body by lining the arrow on each cog with the widest
spline on the body. The cassette is held on with a lockring which threads
inside the cassette body. You will need 1x chainwhip & 1 cassette lockring
tool. Prices around $15-20 plus $12.

Steve

Ideal Cycles WA

Katharine & Paul said:

Shimano Ultegra 9 speed. 32 spoke wheel.

Ok, standard road wheel. If the spoke is drive side (most likely) then
you will need to remove the cassette (as you know) which requires a
special tool.

Quoted message said:

Went for a ride this morning. Just tensioned up the nearest spokes on the
drive side, and loosened up on the other side a bit.

Wrote down how much I moved them to make it easier to fix when I can remove
the cluster. Problem at the moment is that I cant remove the cluster

You need a cassete tool, and a chain whip will make it a lot easier
too.
examples of both are here :

http://www.cecilwalker.com.au/category67_1.htm

You can pretty easily make your own chainwhip out of a bit of flat
steel and and old chain, but the cassette tool is going to be tricky!

Another handy solution from Sheldon Brown's Touring link is to carry a
Kevlar fibre spoke. These are flexible so you can install without a cassette
cracker. Nifty. Anyone used one?

fb

Fractal said:

Another handy solution from Sheldon Brown's Touring link is to carry a
Kevlar fibre spoke. These are flexible so you can install without a cassette
cracker. Nifty. Anyone used one?

I'm not even sure they're still available. I remember seeing them fairly
regularly on the shop shelf a few years back and thinking they were a good
idea. That said, I've always been able to bodge a wheel straight enough to
ride (discs help here!), and if I were doing long stuff where that
wouldn't be particularly doable it'd be easy to chuck a couple of spokes,
a chainwhip and a cluster tool in the bag.

Allegedly you can gaff a spoke back together. It doesn't do much for
the wheel, but it's fun to tell people you've done it. Landing largish
jumps with the same wheel is probably a bad idea as well. Oooops.

--
Dave Hughes | [email hidden]
"The wages of sin is death, but so's the salary of virtue, and at least
the Evil get to go home early on Fridays" - Pratchett

Fractal said:

Another handy solution from Sheldon Brown's Touring link is to carry a
Kevlar fibre spoke. These are flexible so you can install without a cassette
cracker. Nifty. Anyone used one?

fb

They are great, have not had a broken spoke since I bought one many
years ago!

--
Remove norubbish to reply

Fractal said:

Another handy solution from Sheldon Brown's Touring link is to carry a
Kevlar fibre spoke. These are flexible so you can install without a
cassette cracker. Nifty. Anyone used one?

I've been carrying one on tour for years, never used it.

Problem with carrying the chain whip, cassette lockring-remover &
huge-[censored]-spanner to turn lockring remover, is that they make up
the heavy-end of a few kilo tool bag. The only time I've ever
needed to use the things, I'd mangled more spokes than I had spares
anyway.

It makes me wonder - if you've only pinged one spoke, and can still
ride somewhat (perhaps not with a touring load), and, with my skills,
can't actually true the wheel if more than one spoke goes out at once,
then there's no point carrying said tools on tour, because (a) you
don't need them (for 0 to 1 breakages), or (b) can't repair > 1 breakage
anyway.

*shrug*

Maybe building a wheel from scratch will teach me?

-kt

--
Kingsley Turner,
(mailto: [email hidden])
http://MadDogsBreakfast.com/ABFAQ - news:aus.bicycle Frequenly Asked Questions

quote='Kingsley'On Tue said:

Another handy solution from Sheldon Brown's Touring link is to carry a
Kevlar fibre spoke. These are flexible so you can install without a
cassette cracker. Nifty. Anyone used one?

I've been carrying one on tour for years, never used it.

Problem with carrying the chain whip, cassette lockring-remover &
huge-[censored]-spanner to turn lockring remover, is that they make up
the heavy-end of a few kilo tool bag. The only time I've ever
needed to use the things, I'd mangled more spokes than I had spares
anyway.

It makes me wonder - if you've only pinged one spoke, and can still
ride somewhat (perhaps not with a touring load), and, with my skills,
can't actually true the wheel if more than one spoke goes out at once,
then there's no point carrying said tools on tour, because (a) you
don't need them (for 0 to 1 breakages), or (b) can't repair > 1 breakage
anyway.

*shrug*

Maybe building a wheel from scratch will teach me?

-kt

--
Kingsley Turner,
(mailto: [email hidden])
http://MadDogsBreakfast.com/ABFAQ - news:aus.bicycle Frequenly Asked Questions[/QUOTE]
I always carry a Hypercraker and have used it many a time, not just on my own bike. No need for the chain whip and large spanner. I usually don't do up my lockrings very tight so that they can be removed just by holding the cassette with a rag or gloved hand. The fibre spokes are ok, but it's not easy to get good tension with them.

I believe the original Hypercracker is no longer available, but there are a couple of equivalents around. Haven't looked around locally for one as I've already got one. Saw a neat one recently on the web from a small Swiss(?) company.

Building your own wheels is a great a idea. It is not rocket science or a black art, as some would have you believe. With a bit of care, and by using good quality materials, you can build very reliable wheels. I've probably only broken a couple of spokes in all the wheels I have built in the last 15 - 20 years on loaded touring bikes, mtbs and tandems. I've even reused sets of spokes when replacing worn out rims.