A customer brought in a front wheel from a Racing Zero.

They missed engaging their cleat properly and drove their toe into the front wheel,
bending some spokes in the process.
There's marker tape on two spokes,
and the spoke on the right side of the image


is clearly bent and needs to be replaced.


The spoke to the left of that one doesn't appear deformed to the eye,
but there are scuff marks from the shoe on it, so they asked me to check it out anyway.


Since this wheel was previously given a complete overhaul at our shop,
we had removed some spokes back then and returned them to the customer,
so we'd be using one of those spares for the repair.


I completely released the tension on both the bent spoke and the questionable one,
then removed them from the hub.

Both spokes follow roughly a radial path from the rim side.
The questionable spoke on the left reaches straight to the hub,
but the bent spoke on the right
is deflected away from where the spoke head should seat.


The questionable spoke showed no deformation and could be reused,


but the clearly bent spoke
deformed quite a bit once I released the tension.


All fixed.


The suspect spoke also needed to keep its tape on as a marker
since it was temporarily removed, so the tape stays until work is complete.
I adjusted the nipples on both marked spokes and did some minor truing afterward,
but when I first applied the centering gauge after finishing, it was dead-on.
Since I did precise work when we gave this wheel its previous overhaul,
the rest of the wheel couldn't have drifted much except for those two spots we touched, so that's expected.


↑The spoke that was replaced


↑Laid out next to the spoke the customer provided.
This photo was taken before installing it on the wheel.