My spokes are damaged behind the cassette, likely due to the chain dropping over the big cog. I’ve seen comments that these can still be okay for miles. Opinions?
by Free_Evidence_8012
My spokes are damaged behind the cassette, likely due to the chain dropping over the big cog. I’ve seen comments that these can still be okay for miles. Opinions?
by Free_Evidence_8012
7 Comments
Could the spokes fail eventually? Yes.
Do we know when? No. Might be in a decade or two.
Would it be catastrophic if they failed? No, they won’t all fail at once. If a spoke breaks, it will make the wheel wobbly, and if you adjust the spoke tension you can get home.
Would the best practice be to replace 8 spokes? Yes.
Would I be lazy and just ride it as is, trusting in the elasticity and tensile strength of steel? Yes.
Will some armchair Reddit engineer tell me I am wrong? Quite possibly…
Not safe, happened to me before. Chain came off and stuck to rear cassette and snap away one of my spoke. Even carved away the rear hub. I had to replace that one spoke and ride on. In your case, the hub looks fine. I would just replace all of the spokes or ask LBS to rebuild for you. While it’s ok to ride on with 1 broken spoke but what if that spoke got caught between the wheel and make you fall or worse.
I would inspect them closely and replace any that have deep cuts. Ones that are just dinged or scratched are fine.
I would also not hesitate to ride this as is. As another commenter noted, they won’t all fail at once.
I had this on one of my old wheels. I just replaced the spokes as they snapped. As someone else said they could last years may go in a week no way of knowing. Keeping the rim true can be a bit of a hassle though.
Those are pretty bad. If you have the skills, I would replace.
For future reference, this is why you usually lace the wheel with those spikes going the other direction. So when the chain gets dropped it doesn’t get sucked down.
depends on the rider. If these are mine I replace. I weigh 210 pounds and I am strong. I could break every spoke there just taking off from a light.
I’ve had much smaller scratches and the spokes (first one then a second) failed a few hundred kilometers later 70km away from home.