Repetitive Spoke Breaks

Guy Ellis
Guy Ellis Posts: 3
edited July 2012 in Workshop
I have some Easton EA50 wheels which have done about 1700 miles. In the last 3 weeks I have had 2 spokes snap on the rear wheel in separate occasions. I'm about 95kg and 2.00m tall which may not help. Is having 2 breaks bad sign or just unlucky? The wheels aren't obviously over tensioned and are still true.

Comments

  • onbike 1939
    onbike 1939 Posts: 708
    Guy Ellis wrote:
    I have some Easton EA50 wheels which have done about 1700 miles. In the last 3 weeks I have had 2 spokes snap on the rear wheel in separate occasions. I'm about 95kg and 2.00m tall which may not help. Is having 2 breaks bad sign or just unlucky? The wheels aren't obviously over tensioned and are still true.

    The wheels may be true but I suspect that the spokes are not evenly tensioned. If that is the case then the spoke with the lowest tension is likely to break in time (and at the bend too). Best to have the wheels trued, re-tensioned and properly stress- relieved by someone who knows his business.
  • Guy Ellis
    Guy Ellis Posts: 3
    I'll do that. Great -thanks.
  • ugo.santalucia
    ugo.santalucia Posts: 28,318
    I always find this quite amusing...

    Quote from Easton website:

    "In order to guarantee durability and incredible trueness, every wheel that you’ll see from Easton is 100% hand built and trued using our proprietary acoustic method. That’s right, our trained builders don’t judge a wheel as straight and round simply by watching it glide through a truing stand. No, they listen to the tone that each spoke makes when plucked. Even tones make for a wheel that’ll stay straight and round much longer than other methods."

    In simple words, instead of investing in spoke tension meters (which cost money and require periodic calibration), they prefer to trust their musical ear... which would probably be OK if they were all former empolyees of the Berlin phylarmonic, but I suspect rather not...
    left the forum March 2023
  • onbike 1939
    onbike 1939 Posts: 708
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Extraordinary. Owning a spoke tension meter has improved my wheel-building no end. Knowing that the tension is even instead of just making some sort of guess makes all the difference.
  • mallorcajeff
    mallorcajeff Posts: 1,489
    have just received my park tension tool as im suffering the same thing on some s80s. Upon checkign the tensions should all be 17 on the rear drive side mine were all between 19 and as low as 7! you could tell they were different tensions but you would not have thought they were that far different from touch alone. Just got to work on the truing up now should only take me a few months! Belive it or not, not one shop in mallorca i took the wheel to could tension the wheel as they dont have the tools? amazing so i gave up and bought my own.

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