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The myth of the quick spoke replacement
Everyone says swapping a broken spoke is a 20 minute job. I had a rear wheel spoke snap on my commuter last Tuesday. Figured I'd fix it before dinner. Three hours later, I was still trying to get the wheel true. The problem wasn't the new spoke. It was that the wheel had been out of true for so long that the other spokes were under weird tension. I had to loosen almost every other spoke on that side just to get the new one in without pulling the rim way out of line. My cheap spoke wrench kept slipping, rounding off a nipple. Had to walk to the bike shop the next morning for a better tool. The whole thing took me two evenings and a lot of muttered words. Has anyone else found that a 'simple' spoke job turns into a full wheel rebuild?
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andrew_sanchez946d agoTop Commenter
Oh man, this is so true and it's like everything in life. The one small fix you plan for never exists in a vacuum, it's connected to a whole system of other problems you ignored. My old car was the same way, a simple belt change showed me a cracked mount that led to a whole weekend. It's always the hidden tension in the other spokes that gets you.
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