It’s always depressing to get off the bike and find something’s broken. Even more so when you hadn’t even felt it break. I was recently putting the bike away when I noticed a snapped spoke, which can only have been the explanation for the taut twang I’d heard sometime in the few days before.
Due to various laws, it was obviously on the back wheel, as opposed to the easily-removed and not-behind-a-singlespeed-conversion-kit front wheel. Still every snapped spoke has a silver lining and I can now bring you more real world mechanics from the FMFT repair school.
1. Identify the broken spoke. It will be the one not attached any more.
2. Remove the offending wheel.
3. Strip the tyre and inner tube form the wheel, and remove the rim tape.
4. Remove the nipple (insert childish giggling here) from the rim along with any attached spoke.
5. Unthread the spoke through the hole in the hub flange (more giggling). Pay attention to where the spoke goes and which other spokes it goes over or under.
6. Take a new spoke (I like to keep some from old wheels that have died) and thread it back where the old one came from.
7. Tighten the nipple initially with a screwdriver…
8. …And then with a spoke key to a tension that vaguely matches the surrounding spokes (here a better mechanic would check the tension and ensure the wheel was trued properly, I’m hoping for a bit of luck).
9. Refit the rim tape, tube and tyre and pump up the tyre.
10. Repeat stage 9 when you realise that, like me, you’ve punctured the inner tube putting it all back together. Swear a lot.
Happily ride away on your fixed bike feeling like you can achieve anything.
A
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