My Velomax circuit wheels have been rock solid over 4 years of hard riding. I have not even needed to true them up to yesterday.
Yesterday I noticed a slight lateral blip when spinning the wheel. Plucking the spokes I found that one of the drive side was slightly low on tension compared to its neighbors. This spoke coincided with the blip. I thought this would be an easy fix; so out comes the spoke wrench. The nipple melted like butter when attempting to tension the spoke. This wouldn't do, so I started loosening the nipple. After 1 turn the nipple stripped smooth in the other direction.
I was determined to save the spoke; since these are 2 sided spokes and the did not want to unthread the spoke from the hub. I got out the dremel and sacrificed a screwdriver to make a spoke tool that I could use through the rim. Note the notch in the tip.
This almost worked, I got another 1 turn before the nipple stripped out inside the rim.
Determined, I went after the nipple carefully with the dremel - this was a futile exercise and I nicked the spoke threads. Out comes the bolt cutter and I cut the spoke in half. There was still a good amount of tension on the spoke so the nipple end shot out of the hub. I heated the hub with a lighter and I bent the remaining end so I could torque the spoke out of the hub.
After getting the old spoke out, i put in a spare with red thread locker. I threaded it in the same distance as the old spoke.
Today, I put the nipple on the end and went to work tensioning up the spoke. The tension would get close to good but never high enough. As the tension would get close to good, I would hear a click or pop. After an hour of frustration, I noticed that the spoke was actually pulling from the hub when the tension got too high.
Had I stripped it taking the old spoke out?
Did I damage it putting the new spoke in?
I don't know for sure, but suspect that the issue existed before the old spoke came out since that spoke was low on tension. At this point I considered my options. I did not want to trash the wheel since this is my favorite wheelset. I tried using teflon tape, that failed. I considered using JB weld on the threads. After looking the situation over, I came to this solution - which I think is pretty clever:
The hub is designed such that the threaded end protrudes into the hub, there is plenty of space for a nipple. I held the nipple in place with a long needle nose pliers while I threaded a non-drive side the spoke into the hub. I used a non-drive side as it is 7mm longer which allowed me to put more threads into the nipple. I put on plenty of threadlocker on the nipple and the spoke so it should not turn.
After doing this, I was able to bring the spoke up to tension. I did have to loosen several non drive side spokes and re-tension them as part of the process. The drive side spokes are at pretty high tension and wouldn't budge without loosening the non-drive side.
I took it for a quick test ride, everything seems good. Time to let the threadlocker set up.
Yesterday I noticed a slight lateral blip when spinning the wheel. Plucking the spokes I found that one of the drive side was slightly low on tension compared to its neighbors. This spoke coincided with the blip. I thought this would be an easy fix; so out comes the spoke wrench. The nipple melted like butter when attempting to tension the spoke. This wouldn't do, so I started loosening the nipple. After 1 turn the nipple stripped smooth in the other direction.
I was determined to save the spoke; since these are 2 sided spokes and the did not want to unthread the spoke from the hub. I got out the dremel and sacrificed a screwdriver to make a spoke tool that I could use through the rim. Note the notch in the tip.
This almost worked, I got another 1 turn before the nipple stripped out inside the rim.
Determined, I went after the nipple carefully with the dremel - this was a futile exercise and I nicked the spoke threads. Out comes the bolt cutter and I cut the spoke in half. There was still a good amount of tension on the spoke so the nipple end shot out of the hub. I heated the hub with a lighter and I bent the remaining end so I could torque the spoke out of the hub.
After getting the old spoke out, i put in a spare with red thread locker. I threaded it in the same distance as the old spoke.
Today, I put the nipple on the end and went to work tensioning up the spoke. The tension would get close to good but never high enough. As the tension would get close to good, I would hear a click or pop. After an hour of frustration, I noticed that the spoke was actually pulling from the hub when the tension got too high.
Had I stripped it taking the old spoke out?
Did I damage it putting the new spoke in?
I don't know for sure, but suspect that the issue existed before the old spoke came out since that spoke was low on tension. At this point I considered my options. I did not want to trash the wheel since this is my favorite wheelset. I tried using teflon tape, that failed. I considered using JB weld on the threads. After looking the situation over, I came to this solution - which I think is pretty clever:
The hub is designed such that the threaded end protrudes into the hub, there is plenty of space for a nipple. I held the nipple in place with a long needle nose pliers while I threaded a non-drive side the spoke into the hub. I used a non-drive side as it is 7mm longer which allowed me to put more threads into the nipple. I put on plenty of threadlocker on the nipple and the spoke so it should not turn.
After doing this, I was able to bring the spoke up to tension. I did have to loosen several non drive side spokes and re-tension them as part of the process. The drive side spokes are at pretty high tension and wouldn't budge without loosening the non-drive side.
I took it for a quick test ride, everything seems good. Time to let the threadlocker set up.
