Broken Spokes

Toward the end of June I took the road bike out for a ride for the first time in a while. I was going down a small hill not far from home slow with hands on the brakes because of the stop sign ahead and because of the cracks in the road. Halfway down I heard the distinctive “PING” of a spoke breaking and I could see the front wheel wobble in a singular spot. I opened the front brake so the rim wouldn’t scrape against them and turned for home.

I dropped the wheel off at the the local bike store to get it fixed and they said it would be done later that day or at worse tomorrow for a total cost of $37 ($36 for labor and $1 for the spoke. True to their word, early the next day I received a text to let me know the wheel was ready. I brought it home and stuck on the bike, but things were busy, so I didn’t take the bike out for a spin.

A couple days later I had time for a ride, so I got all dressed and ready to go, but when I went to roll the bike out of the garage the back tire was being tugged at by the brakes. I lifted the back wheel off the ground and spun it. The rim was contacting the brake pad in one spot. Sure enough, there was another broken spoke! I only heard one “PING”, did the two spokes, on different wheels, break in sync?

I took the second wheel down to the bike store. This time the repair was going to take week because they were backlogged. I bought this bike, used, in 2016 and from my research it was actually brand new in the year 2000 based on the color, so probably these rims are 22 years old. Wondering if this broken spoke problem will continue because of their age, I asked how much it would cost to have the wheels rebuilt using all new spokes. So, the total would be: 32 spokes per wheel, 2 wheels $64 plus the labor of $90 per wheel equals $244. This makes it, based on the fairly inexpensive group set of the bike, a better to just buy a new set of wheels.

The back wheel was ready yesterday afternoon, so this morning I got to go for a ride. I didn’t break any new spokes so maybe that whole conversation about new spokes or wheels is moot.