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New wheel or rebuild?

1K views 9 replies 8 participants last post by  jayjudy13 
#1 ·
I crashed at a mountain about a week ago and broke 1 spoke from hitting it. The next day I noticed there were 5 spokes broken and a bunch of very loose ones. The rim is slightly bent too.

Would it be worth it to have the whole wheel re-laced ( It's an outlaw so it's not a super nice wheel) or should I just buy a brand new wheel?
 
#2 ·
If the rim's bent, it should be easy to fix with an adjustable wrench or buy a specific tool like Morningstar. If you flat-spotted it, that may be trickier. I haven't had luck trying to remove mine from a hard case landing.

If it's only a bent rim, I say you should just replace the broken spokes (sometimes its the nipples that get their threads ripped, not the spokes), start truing your wheel (dish, vertical and horizontal truing) and check tension. OR pay someone to do it. =)

If you flat-spotted it and if it becomes a question of replacing the rim, then buying a new wheel isn't such a bad option especially if you're paying someone else to do it (new rim+new spokes+new nipples+labor = new (cheap) wheel).

Good luck.
 
#4 ·
I've trued up a wheel with broken (then replaced) spokes in the past. Give it a shot, really depends on how bad it is. And I would always replace a rim before replacing the whole wheel. The hubs are the most expensive part and those last the longest.

But if a shop does it for you the cost may not be worth it. I suppose you could sell the hub to help cover the cost of a new wheel. I'd check out all your options; it could go many ways.
 
#9 ·
I've seen a lot of people break a spoke followed by more spokes and they keep replacing spokes and keep breaking spokes. When you break a spoke, you send a shockwave around the wheel while the rest of the spokes have to nearly instantly redistribute the tension among themselves. This causes a drastic reduction in spoke life which leads to breaking more spokes.

Sounds like you have hit this point and the only solution is to rebuild the wheel with new spokes. If the rim isn't in bad shape you could re-use it but while it's off you should consider how much money it will be to replace the rim now vs replacing it down the line. You're going to have to pay for wheel building labor (or a new wheel) one way or the other, I would get new spokes and a rim (or a new wheel) and not have to worry about things.
 
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