Broke a spoke and when checking the wheel I noticed a small knick in my wheel as well as small cracks around some of the spokes. I’m currently 4 months in a tour wich should last another 6-8 months. Should i get this wheel trued or is it a lost cause? (WTB STi23, 32 spokes, fully loaded, decent amount of offroad)
by studentath-O-lete
4 Comments
Rim is done, you need a new one.
Replace
Truing that wheel will have no positive effect – it will only cause more of the nipples to pull through the rim face, creating more, bigger cracks. That kind of cracking is a sign that the rim’s fatigue life has been exceeded.
Since aluminum tends to respond more strongly to high mean stress while steel responds more strongly to high delta stress, you can *generally* assume that cracking of the rim face is caused by excess tension or excess load (which increases tension on each cycle). If the spokes break, that is more likely caused by under-tension (which causes the spoke tensions to go up and down larger amounts during each cycle).
Same thing happened to me a couple years ago. Was told here that it was due to over-tensioned spokes. Was bummed, but I bought some entry level DT Swiss wheels and went tubeless. Don’t regret it one bit.