I’m not happy. Today as I was preparing my bike for a ride tomorrow evening and commute on Friday morning I fitted the Continental TravelContact tires that I prefer for pavement riding. As soon as it was all together I took the bike for a quick ride around the parking lot to check for problems when I started hearing something odd out of the rear wheel. Pulling back into the garage and checking the trueness of the wheel I found that another nipple is broken and my wheel is now rather out of true.
This really disappoints me. The wheel was just taken to Fraser Bicycle and Fitness who supposedly fixed the other nipple and checked the wheel over and trued it. Since that I’ve ridden it only 50 miles or so, none of it being particularly rough offroad.
In order to deal with this I think that my next project after the SDrive NUXX will be to build a wheel truing stand and build myself a set of wheels. Brass nipples, nice spokes, decent rims, and decent hubs will hopefully result in something excellent. Also, this way if anything goes wrong I know that I’m to blame and where things may have gone wrong.
Now, to figure out what to do about the current nipple… I guess I could try sorting that out myself. It’s almost tempting to buy new spokes and nipples then disassemble and rebuild my existing wheels. As long as the rims aren’t trashed (which they shouldn’t be) that’d sort them out nicely. Presuming I do a good job, of course.
Maybe I’ll just ride the single speed in the mean time.
As someone who has built several sets of wheels and worked on many others, I can tell you, one broken nipple often means a second broken nipple. And a third. Replacing every nipple is an option. But it won’t be easy. You’ll still need to tension it, true it, etc. It will be nearly as complicated as building the wheel from scratch. There are good resources online. Check out Sheldon Brown. Also, I recommend a drop of linseed oil for lubing the nipple threads and head during installation.
Jessie: More broken nipples and a seriously out of whack wheel during longer rides is exactly my fear, and the reason I’m going to replace all the nipples. I figure this will also be a good way to get me into building wheels, as this will be the tensioning / truing practice. I just have to build a truing stand first. That may very well happen tomorrow.
What are you using to build a truing stand?
Jesse: Check out this post which shows it made from plywood and various off the shelf and custom metal bits.