The Hub of the Problem

Sometimes things on a bike break in a way which is beyond a bit of fiddling and faffing to get them to come back. I was all lined up for a tricky but satisfying bit of nipple tweaking to get a wheel back into shape after I noticed a bit of a wobble on a quick ride out earlier in the week.

Something very quickly didn’t seem right as I started to look at the wheel, the wobble seemed a bit more fundamental and not a truing issue, so much as maybe a loose quick-release. But I’d been careful about the QR and so my heart was starting to sink as I looked further. Maybe it was lose cones in the hubs, although over the years that I’d had the bike this seemed unlikely when they’d never loosened before, so it was narrowing down to a bad situation.

Sure enough there was no mistaking the rough edges on the two parts of the axle which made it clear it had broken. So, given the cheapness of the hub, I was looking at a new one, and realistically a new wheel as well. Annoying.

In order to demonstrate here is a diagram.



To finish on a high note this week, here is another video. I’ll give you three guesses which Scottish trials star it features…


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