Bent CX Ray New Spokes - Usable or not?

Steve-XcT

I'm building some wheels for my kids 24er and had lots of issues just finding spokes. I started off because a retailer had a sale on CX Ray's at 99p.... (otherwise wouldn't have gone for such expensive spokes)

Anyway...... to cut along story short I ended up getting spokes from 3 suppliers (given the less than common lengths needed)

8 of these came from one ebay supplier and ALL 8 are bent about 10 degrees (in the direction of the flat part)

Is this anything to worry about or will they pull straight under tension ?


I've got the hubs, rims and nipples .... and waiting to lace but wondering if I should or not!

poah

get the spoke replaced.

I thought about the C-Xrays from on-one but went for normal DB spokes as they are a pain to work on

The Rookie

They'll be fine, the tension in the spoke will pull it straight out.

I can only assume POAH has never built a wheel from his comments.

Steve-XcT

The Rookie wrote:

They'll be fine, the tension in the spoke will pull it straight out.

I can only assume POAH has never built a wheel from his comments.

The funny thing is the split opinion amongst wheel builders....I think it's as much use arguing over it as the 29er's or fatt bikes are best....

Sheldon seems to prefer to work with them.... others don't ..... perhaps because professionals who cut to size are more limited or perhaps because they figure paying 3x per spoke costs they reckon they can just charge more for labour ???

Same goes for alloy nipples.... they seem to go from no harder to work with to "I charge 50% more to work with them)
My last wheel-build the builder didn't even want to discuss alloy nipples... and this was on carbon rims..

I'm actually wondering if the reason these are bent is due to them being cut from a longer spoke .. otherwise its hard to see how they could be bent in the strongest direction? and the bend starts towards the screw thread end





I laced up the front (as it's unaffected by these 8) and personally found them easier... but perhaps that's because I didn't build 1000 wheels with round spokes .... (Indeed my sum total before this is 1 rebuild)

Steve-XcT

POAH wrote:

get the spoke replaced.

I thought about the C-Xrays from on-one but went for normal DB spokes as they are a pain to work on

Any pain to work on has got to be minor compared to dealing with one-on/planet x!!!

After stock said they only had all I needed for one size but only 7 of another and non of the 3rd size I ended up ordering 8x then another 1x ....

Then they contacted me to say they had a stocking mistake and couldn't supply the 238mm's....
and would I like a different spoke instead ???? I'm no professional wheelbuilder but surely no-one would mix aero and round spokes in the same wheel!

So I went and ordered the other 7 elsewhere..... and replied to cancel ALL the 238mm.... as I'd already ordered them elsewhere.

Then I got an order update to say they were supplying 6 of the 238's.... and an email reply contradicting ... Some bloke called Will who seems to have no idea about the difference between a spoke and spokes

So it ended up costing me an extra £40-50 ..... down to their inability to actually answer straight questions..
Quite frankly I wish I'd never even dealt with them....

step83

Where did On-One/PlanetX come into this?

Anyway spokes, should be fine they will pull out an tension into the correct shape anyway. CX Rays are very strong when under tension so I cant see it being an issue building them up.

Steve-XcT

Step83 wrote:

Where did On-One/PlanetX come into this?

Had it now been for their clearance and offering them at 99p I'd not have bought CX RAY...
However, this turned into a real saga... thanks mainly to their customer service supplying incorrect/vague information...

So the idea of £63 something for 64 CXRay's turned into way way more as they kept getting back with inaccurate info

Anyway spokes, should be fine they will pull out an tension into the correct shape anyway. CX Rays are very strong when under tension so I cant see it being an issue building them up.

Thanks ...