I want to know why?

[bits n pieces]

I laced this wheel myself, i took out the m.t.b. hub and relaced this shimano hub into it. I twisted the spokes, tightened and trued it. I rode the bike for a few weeks. I started hearing noise from the rear wheel.(Loose spokes). Then on the way home, i hit a big pothole, busted a bunch of spokes and had to carry/push the bike for over an hour to get home. What did i do wrong?I think i used a cheap rim and garbage spokes. Besides hit the pothole, you cant avoid them out here.If you look in the pics you can see some of the spokes twisted and are not flat against the hub anymore.Thank you for any and all help.

 

[FunkyStickman]

Off the top of my head, I'd say cheap spokes... good 14G stainless spokes wouldn't snap like that unless you didn't bend them gently. I haven't built a snowflake wheel yet, but I've always been concerned about how much stress the spokes can take before they go.

Do you know what kind of spokes they were?

 

[deorman]

I'd be inclined to think over-tensioned corroded cheap spokes were the cause. I'm surprised you found that particular hub in working condition. You can't tell by looking at it, but they only used that shell for a couple of years, because it was the worst Shimano product ever. The drive side can't handle the slightest abuse.

 

[bits n pieces]

Im cheap and reused the spokes just to see if it would work. The hub actually works great for me, or it did when the wheel would roll on a bike. I put the bendix gear on it and rode it till the rim broke.Next time use better product so it wont backfire on me. It does look like they were ripped out of the nipples. 2 did snap in half too.Thank you .

 

[Cruisinforburgers]

everything I have read on doing a snowflake pattern has said that they are very prone to breaking when hitting potholes and such in the road. The spokes don't have any movment in them on a lacing pattern like that, it also mentioned to use good name spokes with the snowflake twisted pattern. It definatly looks kewl, but would keep it on a bike that is more for riding around a car show or short rides around town and not on a long hauler.

 

[karfer67]

i agree using old spokes in any wheel even if it is just a rebuild and paint can have bad results. think of all the stress that is on a spoke and if it is used it has been tensioned in such a way for a long time. then some hot rod greaser comes along and changes the way it is pulled. yea it will break and when you see them snap at the nipple for sure the spoke is to blame. oh dont mind that comment about hot rod greasers by the way get some new spokes, and rim and try it again!!

 

[2manybikes]

IMHO the failure probably has more to do with all of the tweaking that was done to achieve the snowflake pattern than the use of old spokes. I have reused old spokes in mountain bike wheels that were then ridden pretty hard and haven't had any problems.

Glad you didn't do a swan dive to the street :shock:

 

[Herman]

With a normal laced wheel due to the length and lacing pattern when you hit a bump the force is evenly distributed to the sides of the wheel(not the top or bottom),with the snowflake pattern the force is more concentrated to the bottom only because of the "shortened" spoke pattern at the twisted spots,resulting in a much smaller stressed area on one part of the rim only

 

[onelesspedestrian]

one thing that may help in getting by with used spokes is to label everything upon disassembly - make 2 piles: inside of hub flanges, and outside of hub flanges. when you rebuild, you can pull from the correct pile as you lace so that way you will be putting the same stresses back in as they always had, and they might last longer. of course that's meaningless once you've changed the spoking pattern.

The other thing that might be a factor is the hole size in the hub. I can't tell if you had some heads break off at the hub from the pictures. I had a rear wheel once that was build with a coaster that was made for heavy duty (thick) spokes. I was running regular 14g spokes, and they broke out all the time. The reason why is that there is too much slack in the hub holes. when you ride, the spokes can then relax completely and come back to tension with every turn of the wheel. This is what breaks spokes - kind of like bending a piece of wire back and forth until it breaks. The same thing will happen if you don't have enough tension on the wheel. There needs to be enough tension that the spokes will never see zero tension while riding. If you are hearing noises from the spokes as you ride, that is a good indication that it needs to be tightened. You'd be hard pressed to make a wheel "too tight" using cheap nipples - they'll strip the wrench flats off first.

I also agree with what the others have said - better quality spokes will make a difference. in particular, the high quality nipples, like DT, are a pleasure to work with, unlike the cheap ones which are practically rounded out right from the box.

 

[bairdco]

i know i'm new around here, but i've built hundreds of wheels, and spokes just ain't supposed to get tweaked that way.

i mean, they hold up your entire bike, plus the weight of the rider. you wouldn't smash your car rims with a hammer to make them look cool, would you?

they broke, because they weren't designed to work that way, new spokes or old.

if i did the same thing to a coat hanger, i'd wake up with all my coats on the closet floor.

all that negativity aside, that pattern would look cool if you never rode the bike, and only showed it off.