Serial Broken Spokes

[vern]

I broke a spoke on the non-drive side of my back wheel this morning. I broke a spoke on the same side of the same wheel about 3 weeks ago (at about the 7 o’clock position if the prior broken spoke is at 12 o’clock). The wheel is the stock wheel for this bike: http://www.bikepedia.com/quickbike/BikeSpecs.aspx?year=2010&brand=Fuji&model=SL1-COMP+Shimano

bought new, out of the box in January of this year. The wheel doesn’t have more than 3000 miles on it. I checked it for true on Sunday and it was almost perfect.

I know spokes break on occasion. But because I’ve broken two on the same side of the same wheel so close in time, I’m wondering if there are things I should be looking at/for in terms of prevention. All of my riding is on paved trail and roads. TIA.

Topic

[Terpfan]

@hozn 118759 wrote:

I’m pretty confident they’re just badly built wheels; I haven’t ever heard of a bike frame being the culprit for broken spokes (although, sure, if you’re loading up the bike that is a factor). It’s primarily about weight (you+bike) on the wheels (and impacts, etc.). Both wheelsets sound like they have been junk. There is no shortage of garbage wheels out there that will work fine for the person that rides their bike 5 miles a few times times a year, but they won’t hold up to daily use/abuse. If you don’t want to pay for better wheels (best to get hand-built, but some of the better brands like Easton also build their off-the-shelf wheels by hand) then I’d say go for more spokes. Not sure what you have now but maybe go with a 32-spoke wheelset.

It sounds like you just got “lucky” with the Hybrid and it came with a decent set of wheels. They probably also had more spokes, so that can mitigate an otherwise poor build.

Well, I wouldn’t return bike because of the wheelset, but I suppose you could choose another bike with different wheels and get lucky. Performance (and Nashbar? Others?) carry a Mavic Open Pro / Ultegra wheelset, 32h — seems like that would be a pretty good choice. http://www.performancebike.com/bikes/Product_10052_10551_1158367_-1_400934__400934

There is also an Open Pro 105 wheelset that is cheaper (and heavier). Neither of those will be light, but it might fix the problem.

Yep, the current wheel is 24 and I do think it’s a relatively cheap wheel. Oh, hand-built may exceed my budget capacity, but I bet more spokes would work. I’ll take it store anyway and suggest rather than deal with all the warranty stuff, they just agree to install it for me and then I have it sent there.

I actually do enjoy the rest of the bike and have found it responsive to my wear. It’s just the spokes that are driving me nuts because I’m used to doing routine lower level maintainance and then a decent tune-up a few times a year, but never really encountering this sort of perpertual problem.

Many thanks for the advice!

[Author]

Replies