Here are a few photos of a spoke with a crack in it. I've never seen closeups of a nearly broken spoke and thought I'd put them out here.
The story behind this spoke is that I didn't use spoke washers when I built my most recent 3-speed hub. The old hub flanges are thinner than current ones. New spokes are made for the thicker flanges of the new hubs. I used new spokes on an old hub and that resulted in wiggliness in the fit of the spoke to the hub flange. Wiggliness leads to breakage. I broke two spokes before rebuilding the wheel with the proper washers. The spoke in the photo would be the third to break if I hadn't removed it.
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The story behind this spoke is that I didn't use spoke washers when I built my most recent 3-speed hub. The old hub flanges are thinner than current ones. New spokes are made for the thicker flanges of the new hubs. I used new spokes on an old hub and that resulted in wiggliness in the fit of the spoke to the hub flange. Wiggliness leads to breakage. I broke two spokes before rebuilding the wheel with the proper washers. The spoke in the photo would be the third to break if I hadn't removed it.
4 comments:
Gosh, I wish I'd read this before building the virtually identical wheel...
This does not bode well for my wife's Schwinn
Peter White has an interesting note about DT spokes, like the one you have pictured. Check: peterwhitecycles.com and look for DT Spokes under "Articles".
Antonious: Thanks for the link to the article. I enjoyed reading it and learned some useful things.
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