Unusual spoke amount

bobbydigital

I recently bought a used set of wheels, the wheels where cheap and I just wanted the mavic rims nothing else, the weird things is these wheels had 53 spokes of 260mm and 19 spokes at 258mm, any reason for that?

I would have expected the front as it wasn't running disc hub to use 16 260mm on the left and 16 260mm on the right.

I would have expected the rear to be running shorter spokes on one side (258mm)to deal with dishing and the cassette offset.

Would the extra 3 spokes be a mistake?

The Rookie

as that is 72 spokes in total I'd expect the front to be 2x18 spokes unless the rear wheel is 40 spokes?

It does sound like a short was used in error for one for the 'long side' rear spokes.

Even if it a was 32 front 40 rear its stil only one spoke the wrong length?

bobbydigital

Yes you're correct, I just assumed they were 32 holed as that's what I'm used to dealing with.

I reckon it was just 2 36 holed rims. So just the one spoke then, which doesn't seem too unusual.

I listened to your advice from a previous topic I did on lacing and truing wheels, I built my self a few sets of Mavic 26's so far, it's a long process to learn but suddenly becomes much easier task after many hours failing!

The Rookie

Wheel building is very satisfying, but yes it takes time when you are learning!