Spokes problems and questions

Try checking for wheel trueness and spoke tension. An improperly tensioned wheel will put too much stress on some spokes than on the others, thus causing them to break. Try this: squeeze two adjacent spokes together, if you could squeeze the pair easily than the others then the wheel is not tensioned properly. Have a bike mechanic check the wheel. Rear wheels are trickier than fronts - they have to be "dished" to accomodate the cassette. Dishing involves centering the spindle (not the hub) with respect to the rim - making the drive side (cassette side) nearer to the rim. Thus, care should be taken when trueing/tensioning the rear wheel.

HTH

Cheers!

e_guevara

frenchy2999 said:

[font=Times New Roman]My partner and I are pretty new to the biking scene and are really enjoying ourselves… We got new road bikes a couple of months ago and ride a good 5 times a week on them average 40-50k and longer on our Sunday runs.[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]One of our bikes is a F80 Felt road bike… 2 Sundays ago a spoke broke on that bike(back wheel)… We got it in the shop and the guy said that the wheels on these bikes are good but that the spokes are really not, that we should replace them… Anyhow, we opted at that moment to have the broken spoke replaced, which they did…. The bike behaved for a week, the following Sunday another spoke broke… gah 🙁 … This time we decided to get the whole wheel re-spoked… and so far so good, but it has only been 1 day of riding since[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]So my questions are…. what are considered good spokes? do simple Stain Steel spokes do the trick? Is the Felt F80 equipped with bad spokes? or were just not installed properly? should we change the front wheel spokes as well to be sure of not having another on the road sunday adventure because of bad spokes?[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]I see in the specs that the F80 Felt is equipped with 15G Stainless Steel basic Spokes[/font]

[font=Times New Roman]Thanks a bunch [/font]
[font=Times New Roman]Isa[/font]

Yes, there is a difference in quality of spokes.
I would go with DT, Sapim, or Wheelsmith... in that order.
I prefer DT Competition DB 14/15 spokes for at least the right rear... as they have sufficient stiffness and durability. The interface at the hub is very important as that is where 95% of the breakage occurs. Spoke tension, tension balancing, alignment and stress releiving are all required for a durable wheel.
There is a significant difference in the quality of wheel building.