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Finally hit 1,000 spoke repairs without a single revisit
Been keeping a log for about 3 years now. 1,000 spokes trued or replaced and nobody came back saying it wobbled again. That felt pretty good, honestly. I mostly work on commuter bikes here in Austin where curb hops kill wheels fast. Anyone else track their repair stats or am I just weird about it?
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brooke_jones15h ago
Kept a similar log when I was building wheels at a shop in Denver. Found that using a spoke tension meter on every repair cut my comebacks way down. Also started replacing the nipple if it was crusty even if the spoke was fine. Took notes on frame alignment too because a bent dropout would wreck a true wheel every time. Ended up with about 98 percent success rate over two years before the shop closed.
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violag8011h ago
Oh man @brooke_jones that spoke tension meter tip is golden lol. A buddy of mine used to fix bikes out of his garage and he swore by that thing, said it saved him from re-doing wheels way too often. I tried it once on a old cruiser and honestly just ended up getting frustrated and eyeballing it haha.
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Wait, how do you define "revisit" though? If someone brought their bike back for a different wheel issue on the same bike, does that count? @violag80's story about the buddy getting tripped up on the tension meter kind of reminds me of something similar. The real trick isn't just the spoke, it's checking that the rim itself isn't bent from the impact that broke the spoke in the first place. I had a guy come in three times for a wobble until I realized his rim had a flat spot you could only feel under load. Had to swap the whole hoop.
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