Wednesday, August 08, 2007

I'm probably going to jail...

...for the merciless slaying of my rear wheel. I am not kidding that this is the 5th broken spoke I've had to deal with on this wheel. That's right, I found another one. I'm not doing anything different than usual, either. I took it easy this morning. I really don't know what's going on, but I don't like it.

I somehow missed the Express Antioch bus, so I'm on the Quivira D bus. I swear, the D must stand for dreaded, derogatory, death, despair, disdain, and any other word beginning with D that can be used to paint something in a negative light. There's no reason that a motor vehicle should take a whole hour to transport humans 15 miles or so.

Anyhow, I get to go take my wheel back down to the LBS again. Sigh.

Update - The guys at Bike America hooked me up with yet another brand new wheel. They rock, and I'm happy. :)

I also have enough spare parts to build a bitchin' spare wheel. The Tiagra hub and decent spokes off my bike's OEM wheel will work nicely with the rim of the last wheel. I may attempt to take some of this stuff apart and do my own wheel rebuild sometime soon.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Except it sounds to me like you may have to take a taxi. :-)

Good luck with figuring out what's happening.

Bill said...

Take off yer spurs, Cowboy! Heh heh heh. (I know - not funny...)

Could something like a pannier or dangling backpack strap be catching your spokes? Otherwise I'm good with the gremlin story. I seriously believe in those little devils.

Noah said...

Good thought, but I went through a lot of testing and adjusting to ensure no spoke nor heel interference is met: which stuff goes in which side, what straps get tightened how far and how far back the panniers get mounted, etc.

No, sir. It's just gremlins and a poorly built wheel.

martinoffroad said...

Hmmmm, maybe you need a wheel with a much thicker gauge spoke, I do have a extra rear wheel that had been re-laced with thicker spokes I can sell you for a really good price, it came off my first bike that had had broken a spoke and when I took it back there was quite alot of wheels on that model of bike that was breaking spokes, so my bike shop re-laced the whole wheel free of charge.
Just let me know if you would like to at least try it for a period to see if it will take care of those spoke issues.

Noah said...

Thanks, but they gave me a nice Shimano R500 wheel, which isn't that great but it's a definite upgrade over the Alex wheel I had on there.

The OEM wheel (which I flatspotted on a storm drain) had a decent Tiagra freehub body on it. The second wheel that I got came with an el-cheapo HB-2200 that just felt chinsey, even compared to the Tiagra hub. I didn't bother looking at the freehub model number on the new R500 they gave me, but it feels solid, possibly moreso than the OEM Tiagra (HB-4400?) body.

Regardless, the new wheel comes with thicker shimano-brand spokes compared to the useless pieces of junk in my Alex R450. I'm thinking of taking the rim off of it, and lacing it to the freehub and spokes from my OEM wheel, or possibly buying all new spokes.

As it stands, I have one wheel that I'm pretty sure will last me a while, and enough stuff to fabricate a backup wheel that will hopefully be a little more bulletproof than the sum of its parts. Thanks for the offer, though.

Doug said...

Sounds like you need to switch bike shops as well as switching wheels. A good bike shop should've had this figured out a long time ago.

Noah said...

They sold me a faulty wheel that was probably built by slaves in asia somewhere. Then, they tried to make it better, and when they couldn't, they replaced it free of charge.

I fail to see how it's a bike shop specific problem.

Apertome said...

It's weird how many spokes you break. Hopefully the new wheel will solve that problem. The wheels that came with my road bike give me pause because they have a low spoke count, but so far, so good (knock on wood).

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