Spoke problem

aFlabbyPanda

After my ride home today I noticed that something was rattling in my back wheel. On closer inspection it looks like the spoke nut (?) came lose and had fallen in.

Is this something I can fix myself or is it a trip to my LBS, and if its the LBS is it ride-able in the mean time? Need to get to work tomorrow.

ford2600

TopSideControl wrote: »

After my ride home today I noticed that something was rattling in my back wheel. On closer inspection it looks like the spoke nut (?) came lose and had fallen in.

Is this something I can fix myself or is it a trip to my LBS, and if its the LBS is it ride-able in the mean time? Need to get to work tomorrow.

It's a spoke nipple . Is it a hanbuilt wheel or factory wheel?

On drive side of rear wheel? Having learnt the hard way nipples usually fail like that when spoke are a little too short, leaving top of nipple unsupported before it reaches inside of rim.

You could just replace it but I'd be inclined to ask lbs to check spoke length and make sure wheel is properly tensioned

aFlabbyPanda

Factory wheels, cannondale synapse tiagra. Its rear non-drive side.

doozerie

Non-drive side rear spokes are invariably tensioned less than the drive side ones. The drive side spokes take the pressure that the drivetrain puts into the rear wheel, the non-drive side are essentially there just to make up the rest of the wheel so they don't need to be tensioned as much as the drive side ones.

Due to being under less tension the non-drive side spokes can be more prone to problems like spokes loosening or snapping. It tends to happen more in poorly built wheels, where the spokes were under-tensioned to start with and the spoke nipple works its way loose over time as a result.

If the bike, or wheels, are within warranty then the retailer should take responsibility for fixing it. Otherwise you are left with the two choices of paying for the repair or doing it yourself. I'm a fan of doing it yourself but bear in mind that the first few times you tackle a wheel you might find that you introduce problems with other spokes. After a while you get used to it and get better at it by getting the tension across all spokes (on one side of the wheel) within the same narrow range of tension. But until you get to that stage you may find you have to fettle the spokes a number of times. If the time, effort, and patience required for that are not for you then better to pay a bike shop with a reputable wheel builder to do it (not everyone who sells their services for wheel repair or building are really up to the job, there have been threads on here before where decent people have been recommended).

If you use the wheel as is then you'll find more and more spokes losing tension in the same way. It's still repairable at that stage, it just becomes a bigger and trickier job. So the sooner it is fixed the better.

aFlabbyPanda

Thanks for the info, I took the tyre off and then spotted the rim tape, etc and just though 'ah feck it'. Going to park it for now so and drop it to lbs on tuesday.