sd5782 

I didn’t want to hijack another spoke length thread about spoke length on the C&V, so thought I would post here. On my 73 Schwinn SuperSport that I bought in 1975, a new Weinmann rim was replaced by a bike shop in 1976 after the stock one was damaged. It was a fairly exciting experience where a stick was thrown up by another biker and wound up in my spokes on that front wheel causing a flip at maybe 20 mph.

That was my only bike for decades getting ridden a fair amount earlier on and only maybe 50-100 miles a year in the following decades. Around 1980 I did put over 2000 miles on it including a 600 mile loaded ride to visit a college buddy. This front wheel has held up since with maybe only a couple truings and no problems. Fast forward to now where I have many bikes and like to tinker and got a spoke tension gauge and have been going through some wheels.

For whatever reason this wheel has spokes that are probably at least 6mm short. Best guess is around 295mm with another same year and model bike being maybe 301. Perhaps the shop put on shorter spokes or kept old ones and the erd was different. When I was going to redo this wheel, I was going to put 14 mm nipples on it, but they would have been too short. I replaced some rounded off 16s with some new 16s and finished the job bringing up true and tension.

So, the long story is to ask why everything works well enough even though the spokes were way short and also, they were fairly loose relative to how they should be. I guess I didn’t worry as I did my long deferred maintenance as it has held up for 4 decades. The spokes are galvanized butted spokes laced 3 cross on Weinmann non eyletted rims if that matters. I just discovered that the 1976 replacement rim is also hooked. I guess I may be not as concerned now on my other vintage bikes if spokes are 2-3 mm short.