BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I'd have to say your creaking and broken spoke are unrelated. Unless you have a lot of loose spokes.

Replacing a broken spoke is fairly straight forward.

Remove the wheel

Remove the tire

Remove the cassete/freewheel

remove the broken spoke

Using a ruler, measure a good spoke on the wheel or hold spokes up to the wheel till you find one about the right size. You want the threads to just disappear into the spoke nipple.

Install the spoke using the existing spokes as reference.

Tighten up the spoke and true the wheel as you normally would.

Reinstall everything you took off.

Riding on a broken spoke should be OK as long as you take it easy. Loosen the two spokes right next to the broken spoke and the wheel should straighten up a bit.

A loose spoke can tick, or creak when it rubs across its neighbor.

On a related note -- anybody here ever have luck straightening a rim that's too far gone to manage with spoke tension alone? I've got a wheel that isn't THAT far out of whack, but I am unhappy about how uneven the spoke tension has to be in order to make it round. I'm afraid I'm going to wind up either (a) breaking a non-drive spoke because it's too loose or (b) pulling a drive-side nipple through the rim because it's too tight.

Jerry Kraynick has a wheel roller. It's a device that holds a wheel horizontally and has rollers under one sector of it's rim. Another roller comes down from the top and lets you work a portion of rim back towards flat. Not perfect, but better.

Probably geared towards steel rims with all the tension still present, Jerry can talk you through dropping most of the spoke tension, identifying the offending sector and which side to place downward so the work of the tool reduces the wobble-inducing out-of-flat spots.

Worth a try and likely to get you back from the cusp of tension-induced spoke breakage.

Lyle, make sure that the joint isn't compromised, either. I spent hours trying to straighten up a pretty wobbly wheel about a month ago, only to realize afterwards that the joint was completely effed up and unusable.

since most of that flew over my head, and I realized I don't have a spoke, I may just pay to have it replaced, and hope I don't need a new wheel or something ridiculous that I can't afford.

The only "luck" I've ever had with straightening a rim that is bent is to purchase a new one.

That wheel straightener at Kraynicks is for old steel rims.

I'm really hoping I don't need a new wheel.

Nope that was in response to Lyle.

You just need a spoke.

If you live where you were walking from a week or so ago, we're about a block apart. Email me at brad@urbanvelo.org if so. I have a ton of spokes here at the house, and will be here until this afternoon.

thanks, I will contact you.