Routinely tightening spokes

jamespalmer100

I ask the question do you routinely tighten your spokes? The reason I ask is recently my wheel went out of true whilst cycling along sending me over the bars. Wheels in question are Fulcrum R3s, bought new in September. They had done around 6000 miles.

The wheel hadn't developed a buckle or a loose spoke so I didn't see any reason to get them serviced. So do people on here get their spokes tightened even if they don't show any visible signs of loosening?

drlodge

No.

ElectronShepherd

How does a wheel going out of true send you over the bars? The usual effect is that you get rubbing on one brake pad as the wheel revolves, and it's annoying, but nothing more, long before it gets dangerous.

I did 6000 miles on a set of wheels before changing them, and never tweaked the spokes once.

vorsprung

jamespalmer100 wrote:

I ask the question do you routinely tighten your spokes? The reason I ask is recently my wheel went out of true whilst cycling along sending me over the bars. Wheels in question are Fulcrum R3s, bought new in September. They had done around 6000 miles.

The wheel hadn't developed a buckle or a loose spoke so I didn't see any reason to get them serviced. So do people on here get their spokes tightened even if they don't show any visible signs of loosening?

What you seem to be saying is that your wheel went suddenly out of true and this somehow caused a crash

Wheels don't usually do this but might if you hit a pothole

High spoke count wheels would not have a problem from one spoke loosening (or two)
Low spoke count wheels have such high tension that it is unlikely to happen in the first place

Maintenance (or lack of it) was probably not the cause

ugo.santalucia

jamespalmer100 wrote:

I ask the question do you routinely tighten your spokes? The reason I ask is recently my wheel went out of true whilst cycling along sending me over the bars. Wheels in question are Fulcrum R3s, bought new in September. They had done around 6000 miles.

The wheel hadn't developed a buckle or a loose spoke so I didn't see any reason to get them serviced. So do people on here get their spokes tightened even if they don't show any visible signs of loosening?

FIrst of all congratulations for clocking 6 K miles in 7 months, that's very good going by any standard, that puts you in a part time-PRO category...

Your story sounds a bit bizarre, a spoke (or more) that suddenly loosens resulting in an accident sounds more like a rim or hub flange failure.
Spokes might lose tension over time and 6000 miles is a long way, so it is entirely possible, but it doesn't happen all of a sudden and the consequences are typically not so severe

rjkflyer

I am probably going to incur some wrath here, but... ...spokes should NOT *materially* go out of tension unless they are seriously UNDERtension to start with. Which seems a little odd on a Fulcrum/Campag wheel.

The ONLY wheel I have ever had loosen on me was a 1980s racer I bought where the (unused) hand built wheels were vastly under tensioned. One spoke came loose after a test ride and prompted me to look at the wheels, which resulted in me finding them at about 50% of correct tension. A rebuild followed...

The R3 is a pretty light wheel set - does it have a weight limit? In theory very light wheels with heavy loading might cause loosening.