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General Category >> Technical >> Life cycle of a spoke......
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Message started by reever on Feb 18^th, 2015, 6:18pm

Title: Life cycle of a spoke......
Post by reever on Feb 18^th, 2015, 6:18pm

So, I'm getting the feeling that the life cycle of a spoke is 1) become loose, 2) vibrate a heck of a lot, 3) break due to all of the vibration. If I check the spoke tension regularly I might not ever have to worry about them breaking. Set me straight on this if I'm wrong. Oh, and some spokes are stronger than others.........true???

Title: Re: Life cycle of a spoke......
Post by Bud_Bent on Feb 18^th, 2015, 6:52pm

Yes, checking spokes and keeping them tensioned properly will usually make them last a very long time, as long as the wheel is used as it's designed to be used, and nothing too severe happens to it.

With mass produced wheels, sometimes the tension is pretty far off right from the beginning. I've never had a spoke break on a wheel I've built, and I've built every new wheel I've used for the last several years.

Title: Re: Life cycle of a spoke......
Post by rmillay on Feb 18^th, 2015, 7:56pm

Spokes are vibrating whenever you ride. And our brutal roads make it worse. Spokes often break at the bend where they fit into the hub, as they have been stressed there, but they may break on the shaft. But the nipples can also break (particularly alloy nipples), and rarely, the hub flange may break. If you wipe your wheels clean every now and then, you can quickly check their tension by rotating the wheel while holding a stiff object gently against the spokes. The musical tones the spokes make should be nearly the same. Any that sound low or dull are loose. The spokes on one side of the wheel won't necessarily have the same tone as those on the other side. Or you can pluck the pairs which are nearly parallel on that side to feel if they seem to have the same tension.

Spokes come in several thicknesses and tensile strengths. Sapim and DT Swiss make spokes preferred by lots of wheel builders.

Title: Re: Life cycle of a spoke......
Post by LightningPilot on Feb 21^st, 2015, 10:28pm

Love my Joe Young built DT Swiss rim, hubs and spokes (20" front a nice Velocity.) Zero issues, and they're 3 years old. Very reasonable.

Title: Re: Life cycle of a spoke......
Post by Denman on Feb 22^nd, 2015, 9:41am

Tension is the key to long spoke life.

Bolts, spokes, doesn't matter, when tension is applied they stretch, and how much they stretch affects the service life.

Pre-tension them to roughly 70% of their yield point where they permanently deform and the stretch is almost non-existent.

Wheel building is an art, as is maintaining them. A well built wheel tends to last a long time between services. A poorly built wheel in effect almost needs to be rebuilt after some time on the road.

One thing I've noticed is some poorly built wheels using the same rims/hubs/spokes/nipples as a well built wheel tend to have bends in the spoke near the nipple. Well built wheels appear to have the nipples sort of angled. Which makes me wonder if the nipple shoulders in the rim may be counterbored at a bit of an angle. If they are, the counterbores would be at different angles so its possible that when first lacing up a wheel the builder chose the wrong hole to start with.

Anyone have an answer to that?

The rims in question are Velocity Aeroheats.