I keep breaking spokes!! Help advice needed

tcecil

Hi all

Fairly new to road biking and after buying a second hand Trek 1.7 i have experienced 3 broken spokes in a very short period. Mainly in my front wheel. I am currently on the stock wheels which are 20 spoke. I have had the spokes replaced by my local bike shop so would expect all the spokes to be tensioned properly.

The spokes seem to snap whenever i start to push hard.

I have entered quite a few charity bike rides, many covering 75 miles and do not want a spoke to snap mid way round.

Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening so often

a) could it be the wheels, i have read mixed reviews on Bontrager wheels
b) am i too heavy for so few spokes (im about 13st 8)
c) would i benefit going up to a larger amount of spokes?

Getting very bored of not being able to use my bike for the few days it takes to get the spokes fixed.

Any help/advice greatly appreciated

rake

i know how annoying it is to have this happen regularly. i had the suspence of wondering weather i was going to complete rides as well. i was going to suggest having new spokes if the mileage was high or the spokes were of poor quality. im quite surprised that the front are going. mine were all rear drive spokes.
what spokes were used?
how many miles?
do they have a non conventional spoke pattern?
are they 'j' bent spokes or straight pull?
where abouts are the spokes breaking?
are they all breaking in the same place?

if you can supply this information it will be much easier to hazzard a guess.
To answer your question more spokes will build stronger more reliable wheels everything else being equal.

freehub

20 spokes should be fine for someone who is 13st, depends on the wheels. If you had some Aksiums you'd not be snapping the spokes on them.

tcecil

Oh dear i feel my lack of knowledge might appear here.

The spokes are breaking close to the middle
Not sure what spokes are being put in as replacements, i assumed they were trek/bontrager spokes (repair shop is a trek dealer)
I think they are J spoke

The bike was bought second hand so not sure of mileage before i bought the bike but i was not very old. I have probably done about 250 odd miles so far.

Only done 30 odd miles since last front wheel repair.

Sorry bit useless when it comes to answering all your questions.

I ve been looking at wheel upgrades but they all seem to have low spoke counts.

spooky1980

Very often it starts with one spoke and then the others follow . I dont know what wheelset you have but i suggest you get them respoked from scratch or buy a complete new wheelset .

tcecil

they are bontrager ssr wheels.

I think i may enquire about how much it would be to get the whole set respoked, before i fork out for a new wheelset (no clue on what to upgrade to to be honest)

rake

it would appear the topic has been covered. so i would say the wheels are pretty poor. dont bother respoking get some new ones. with poor wheels its cheaper in the long run.
http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=15202290

Ollieda

how carefully do you ride?

A lot of people get road bikes after having spent a long time on mtb and the like and treat the bike in a similar way. i.e. riding off the pavement and dropping down onto the road. Whilst it can easily be done on a road bike it will put extra strain on the bike, especially considering there's no suspension!

Trailradar

maybe better set of rims with better spokes.

crapchicken

Find out what type of spokes they are. My Marin had useless thin guage spokes on the wheels that came with the bike and I was always breaking spokes.

DT Stainless spokes seem to be very tough and reliable, I've recently got back on the bike after a 4 year lay off and was 18st (I've put on a stone a year!) no broken spokes though so your weight should be no issue at all.

A good tip is to buy a set of spare wheels also, very useful to keep you rolling whilst waiting for damaged wheels to be repaired.

fungus_the_muffin_man

I have the same wheels and have used them in all weathers since getting the bike a year ago. They have hit potholes and all manner of rough roads with no problems at all :?

skyd0g

If you can afford to do so, get a pair of Planet X model B's for iro £99 for a pair. They will probably work out cheaper than forking out for spoke repairs as often as you're needing (and almost definately be better wheels overall than the current set).

rake

full respoke of both wheels with dt swiss will be cheaper.

Monty Dog

I'm making the following assumption because I haven't seen the exact mode of spoke failure. Repeated spoke breakage is often attributed to poor finishing on the hub around the spoke holes, creating a stress-raiser under the spoke head leading to failure. Such problems with rims are far less common. Just replacing the spokes is unlikely to resolve the problem unless you eliminate the cause - a decent wheelbuilder should be able to identify and resolve the problem.

rake

Monty Dog wrote:

I'm making the following assumption because I haven't seen the exact mode of spoke failure. Repeated spoke breakage is often attributed to poor finishing on the hub around the spoke holes, creating a stress-raiser under the spoke head leading to failure. Such problems with rims are far less common. Just replacing the spokes is unlikely to resolve the problem unless you eliminate the cause - a decent wheelbuilder should be able to identify and resolve the problem.

depends on which type of spoke is being used. a lot of oe wheels use cheap spokes to keep the cost down. they are under more stress at the elbow anyway with no defects in the hub, which is why that portion is thicker on double butted spokes. i have resolved the issue with decent quality spokes ie dt swiss double butted.

felgen

I had the same problem with a set of cheapie commuting wheels, which I knew the history of as they came from my brother. Unfortunately I broke spokes regularly on the rear wheel, so I took advice of someone on here and got some Mavic Aksium's to commute on. Not only were they faster but they have been reliable. Staying true for about 3000miles (I ride over 250 miles a week on them) until I did manage to break a spoke on them too but once I spent one pound replacing that spoke I have done a couple of thousand more miles without trouble. Remeber that the Mavics have straight pull spokes, and so there are less stress riser problems with the design, but even the best designs suffer from the fatigue associated with constant battering of British roads. Remember too, that commuting means wearing a backpack and 5kg of extra weight for them to deal with.

As for the cheapie wheels - well I just fixed them again, and then put them to use as a set of turbo trainer wheels - so I killed two birds with one stone.

As for bombproof wheels, I did have a set of those Rodi Airlines from kinetic-one, which were just that - really strong, and I had no problems with any failures or indeed them going out of true for the thousands of miles that I owned them.

back-on-two-wheels

My Trek 1.5 has SSR wheels (20 spoke front and 24 spoke rear) which until recently hadn't grumbled a bit. I had one rear break on the drive side at the hub about a month ago and last night, same again. Luckily (though I don't see what's lucky about it) both hppened while the bike was stopped. Not that it would go far anyway. Was quite surprised how far out of true the wheel popped with only 1 broken spoke.

Wasn't sure if it's because I stuck a rack and use a pannier (though I'm relatively light so hoped the combined weight would be ok) for my commute but after reading a little into causes, it seems more like a domino effect after one's gone.

On a similar note, might I be better off upgrading the wheels - or using the Bike to work scheme to get a more commuter sturdy beast for the winter? (about 15 undulating miles each way, mostly A and B roads)