Sunday, May 22, 2011

Spaghetti Spokes?

I snapped a spoke at Grand Beach last weekend.  It took me 30 seconds to wind up around the others and continue racing, and 30 hours now to rebuild the wheel. 
Ok, I've only spent about 2 hours completely taking the wheel apart and rebuilding it.  I've got them all mildly tensioned and beautiful, ready to true (radially and laterally).  Someone is going to say, "why didn't you just replace the broken spoke?"  Well all the spokes nearest to the cogs were seriously chewed up from overshifting (3 times in races last year) so I wanted to replace all 8 of those.
Leonard Zinn has been my technical assistant.  His book "Zinn and the art of Mountain Bike Maintenance" makes it look easy and it actually seems to be working.  It's my first wheelbuild, and I'm excited.
These pics were taken before tensioning the spokes.

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2 comments:

  1. jamesMay 23, 2011 at 6:45 AM

    Nicely done Linc. Building and truing a wheel is as close as I get to playing an instrument. Ah, the music of the wheel...

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  2. Lincoln WiebeMay 26, 2011 at 5:16 AM

    It is a satisfying and rewarding instrument to play. Ting Ting Ting Ting Tong - tighten - Ting Ting Ting Ting Ting - hooray!

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