A customer brought in the front wheel from a 404 for repair.
A spoke has completely snapped off.
If it had broken at the hub end, I might have been able to handle it without removing the tire,
but since the nipple fractured and fell into the rim,
I need to remove the tire to recover the nipple fragments and install a new nipple.
There's an oval steel washer under the nipple head, and
the fracture was occurring at the contact point between that and the aluminum nipple.
I thought the nipple fragments were nowhere to be found,
but after searching thoroughly (shaking the rim around), I found them.
I just wanted to make a "404 equals Not Found" joke. Sorry about that.
Simply replacing one spoke and truing the wheel would be easy enough, but
the situation I'd been dreading had happened...
The flange ring (a name I made up) had come loose.
Before spoke tension is applied to the flange, this ring clicks in lightly and easily,
but once you seat it and then apply spoke tension to spread the flange outward,
you absolutely cannot remove it by hand.
I just wrote "absolutely," but
when a spoke snaps, the impact can sometimes knock the ring loose.
And once it's in that state, you absolutely cannot reseat it by hand.
(This "absolutely" is really, truly absolute)
The customer did try giving it a decent effort,
but it was no good, as expected.
To reseat it, I had no choice but to loosen all the spokes on one side temporarily.
The annoying part about this job is that I had to touch areas other than where the spoke actually broke.
It's fixed now.
It's the exact same spoke at the exact same length,
but since I didn't have black spokes in stock, I did a temporary fix with a silver spoke.
I say temporary fix, but honestly,
in this mismatched state, it looks incredibly cool—like an outfit worn by a stylish burglar!
Why not just forget about the "temporary" part and
use it like this permanently? (※)
Man, this really brings a fresh wind to the ZIPP's look—
it's a truly innovative design!
Lots of people would probably think, "Wait, does this come like this stock?! This thing is awesome!"
(※) Rejected.
A spoke has completely snapped off.
If it had broken at the hub end, I might have been able to handle it without removing the tire,
but since the nipple fractured and fell into the rim,
I need to remove the tire to recover the nipple fragments and install a new nipple.
There's an oval steel washer under the nipple head, and
the fracture was occurring at the contact point between that and the aluminum nipple.
I thought the nipple fragments were nowhere to be found,
but after searching thoroughly (shaking the rim around), I found them.
I just wanted to make a "404 equals Not Found" joke. Sorry about that.
Simply replacing one spoke and truing the wheel would be easy enough, but
the situation I'd been dreading had happened...
The flange ring (a name I made up) had come loose.
Before spoke tension is applied to the flange, this ring clicks in lightly and easily,
but once you seat it and then apply spoke tension to spread the flange outward,
you absolutely cannot remove it by hand.
I just wrote "absolutely," but
when a spoke snaps, the impact can sometimes knock the ring loose.
And once it's in that state, you absolutely cannot reseat it by hand.
(This "absolutely" is really, truly absolute)
The customer did try giving it a decent effort,
but it was no good, as expected.
To reseat it, I had no choice but to loosen all the spokes on one side temporarily.
The annoying part about this job is that I had to touch areas other than where the spoke actually broke.
It's fixed now.
It's the exact same spoke at the exact same length,
but since I didn't have black spokes in stock, I did a temporary fix with a silver spoke.
I say temporary fix, but honestly,
in this mismatched state, it looks incredibly cool—like an outfit worn by a stylish burglar!
Why not just forget about the "temporary" part and
use it like this permanently? (※)
Man, this really brings a fresh wind to the ZIPP's look—
it's a truly innovative design!
Lots of people would probably think, "Wait, does this come like this stock?! This thing is awesome!"
(※) Rejected.