Old 07-18-19, 01:58 PM
  #21  
Tourist in MSN
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Madison, WI
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Bikes: 1961 Ideor, 1966 Perfekt 3 Speed AB Hub, 1994 Bridgestone MB-6, 2006 Airnimal Joey, 2009 Thorn Sherpa, 2013 Thorn Nomad MkII, 2015 VO Pass Hunter, 2017 Lynskey Backroad, 2017 Raleigh Gran Prix, 1980s Bianchi Mixte on a trainer. Others are now gone.

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Three years ago on a really bad road full of rocks and cobbles in the interior of Iceland, something happened to cause a rock to briefly jam between a spoke and the frame on my rear wheel. I assumed the front wheel threw a rock into the rear wheel but do not really know. At first I did not know what happened, heard a sudden noise and the bike shook a bit. Later I could tell that a rear brake was rubbing on part of the wheel revolution. That was a 14 hour day, did not look at the wheel until the next day which I decided to take as a rest day.

You can see one bent spoke in my wheel. And that spoke was quite loose.



I did not know what happened, but I suspected that the nipple threads had been stripped. But decided to try to tighten it with the spoke wrench as I did not want to dig out my spares, pull the rim tape off, etc. And found I got lucky, the spoke nipple tightened up just fine. I trued the wheel and kept going, the nipple threads were not stripped. I then concluded that the spoke must have been stretched under the tension from the rock jamming in it, and it is a 2.0mm straight gauge Wheelsmith spoke so that must have been a LOT of tension to cause that kind of damage.

I finally replaced that spoke about half a year ago when I was doing some other work on the wheel and had the rim tape off. The spoke was still holding tension, but the big nick in the metal where the dent had been suggested to me that since I had the rim tape off, I might as well replace it.

My point is that at times I am amazed how well spokes hold up. I noted above in post 8 that I have not broken a spoke for over a decade and a half. And the wheel that I broke that spoke years ago was in an old tubular tire wheel with a Campy hub that had a 1961 date code. I have no clue how many owners that bike had before I bought it.

As I noted in a post 8, I still carry spare spokes and the tools to replace them on a tour, but I really think that modern wheels are pretty good and a broken spoke would surprise me greatly.

***

One point that I think many people are missing in this post is that the OP does not have a normal set of wheels with a normal set of straight gauge or butted spokes. He has some special bladed ones that are direct pull, and a small number of them.


Yet I still think that the OP could easily do a few multi-day bikepacking rides with his wheels if he had the spares, tools and knowledge to replace a few spokes because he would still get home, as I noted in post 8 above. I do not think he would break a spoke, but if he did and could replace it, then it is not a big deal.
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