Newish bike, broken spokes after wheel truing, whose fault?

[Yellow Saddle]

This. 100%.

In future, take your new bike back to the shop after 100 miles to have the wheels (and everything else) checked and tensioned. All reputable retailers offer this for free. Why didn't yours?

I'm afraid this is 100% false.

The type of preventative action taken to counter spoke breakage can only be done at the build stage. Nothing a mechanic does afterwards can save a poorly built wheel other than true it a bit.

Tension has nothing to do with it.

 

[Custom24]

I have a Whyte Suffolk with stock wheels. 2 years old now with thousands of miles. I broke 3 spokes within a few weeks of each other about six months in. I replaced them and on the third replacement I trued the wheel myself with a truing stand and a dishing gauge. I also stress relieved the wheel and retrued. No broken spokes since. So I would say it's worth a retrue before a rebuild or new wheel.

 

[Rohloff_Brompton_Rider]

I'm afraid this is 100% false.

The type of preventative action taken to counter spoke breakage can only be done at the build stage. Nothing a mechanic does afterwards can save a poorly built wheel other than true it a bit.

Tension has nothing to do with it.

Calling you out on this. A fatigued spoke which is then put under tension will break sooner.

 

[mickle]

Then we di

I'm afraid this is 100% false.

The type of preventative action taken to counter spoke breakage can only be done at the build stage. Nothing a mechanic does afterwards can save a poorly built wheel other than true it a bit.

Tension has nothing to do with it.

Then we disagree. Again.

I wonder if you've spent very much time in a bicycle shop workshop assembling Taiwanese bikes out of their shipping boxes. The whole industry works on the basis that every bike needs to revisit the workshop after a period of running in. Indeed, without a FFS a bike doesn't qualify for warranty. One of the tasks undertaken on a FFS is checking the wheels for straightness. Sometimes the spokes need to be tightened to straighten the rim. I don't know what you call this if not retensioning.

Hand-build and/or high quality wheels generally require little to no spoke tensioning at the FFS stage. The wheels on a £250 bike are neither.

 

[Ajax Bay]

A fatigued spoke which is then put under tension will break sooner.

Sorry - don't quite comprehend the relevance of your perfectly reasonable statement (above). What would you expect the mechanic doing the '100 mile' check to do besides checking that the wheels are reasonably true? Are you suggesting as part of the this check the spoke tension should be made more equal or just all increased? How will a (your term) "fatigued spoke" be recognised? All spokes are already under tension anyway, so do you actually mean 'more tension'?

 

[Rohloff_Brompton_Rider]

Sorry - don't quite comprehend the relevance of your perfectly reasonable statement (above). What would you expect the mechanic doing the '100 mile' check to do besides checking that the wheels are reasonably true? Are you suggesting as part of the this check the spoke tension should be made more equal or just all increased? How will a (your term) "fatigued spoke" be recognised? All spokes are already under tension anyway, so do you actually mean 'more tension'?

I'm sorry, you seem to be reading too much into my post. I was just calling out the statement Yellow made, not any mechanic. AFAIK the mechanic seems to just have done his job as per customer request.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Calling you out on this. A fatigued spoke which is then put under tension will break sooner.

You are right but you are contradicting something I didn't say. My comment was in response to Mickle's which implied that the problem could have been prevented by extra tension in the wheel. Something to the effect of [paraphrasing with risks here but the comment was vague] if the wheels had been taken to the bike shop for a wheel true (tension) after 100 miles this would not have happened. Truth is it would still have happened because the wheels were not stress relieved.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Then we di


Then we disagree. Again.

I wonder if you've spent very much time in a bicycle shop workshop assembling Taiwanese bikes out of their shipping boxes. The whole industry works on the basis that every bike needs to revisit the workshop after a period of running in. Indeed, without a FFS a bike doesn't qualify for warranty. One of the tasks undertaken on a FFS is checking the wheels for straightness. Sometimes the spokes need to be tightened to straighten the rim. I don't know what you call this if not retensioning.

Hand-build and/or high quality wheels generally require little to no spoke tensioning at the FFS stage. The wheels on a £250 bike are neither.

Don't assume I haven't spent time in a bike shop and don't assume time in a bike shop substitutes for metallurgical knowledge. However, my experience has no bearing on the physics of the matter. Wheel straightness and regular re-truing has nothing to do with wheel life. Fatigue doesn't care about that, it only cares about cyclical stresses in parts of the spokes close to yield. Only by stretching the spokes beyond yield and then relaxing them again can you prevent spoke fatigue. A little fiddle with a spoke spanner doesn't do that.

The OP wasn't complaining about wobbly wheels, he/she was complaining about short spoke life.

 

[Rohloff_Brompton_Rider]

You are right but you are contradicting something I didn't say. My comment was in response to Mickle's which implied that the problem could have been prevented by extra tension in the wheel. Something to the effect of [paraphrasing with risks here but the comment was vague] if the wheels had been taken to the bike shop for a wheel true (tension) after 100 miles this would not have happened. Truth is it would still have happened because the wheels were not stress relieved.

Ah, sorry. I didn't realise it was an answer to a specific post. I've read it out of context.