Blew a spoke on the Burke-Gilman trail and it changed my whole wheelbuilding approach

I was riding home from work last Tuesday near the UW campus in Seattle when my rear wheel started wobbling real bad. Got it home and found a broken spoke on the drive side, but what got me was how uneven the tension was on the other spokes. I picked up a Park Tool TM-1 tension meter and checked everything - some spokes were at 80 kgf while others were barely 50. Now I never build a wheel without checking tension on every single spoke first. Anyone else find a big spread on factory wheels like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

matthewh2810d ago

Yeah, that sounds about right for factory wheels." Your comment about 80 to 50 kgf is actually not that bad. I had a stock wheelset once where one spoke was so loose I could twang it like a guitar string and the one next to it was so tight I thought the rim would fold. My first attempt at truing that wheel ended with me just buying a new one out of frustration. Now I'm the guy who checks tension on every wheel I touch, even my buddy's department store bike that's probably not worth the effort.

milar4610d ago

At this point I'm convinced my spoke tension meter is just there to make me feel better about my bad decisions.