Today I'm doing inspections on two Racing Zero Carbon bikes for different issues,
and one of them had a bent spoke that needed replacing.
There was noticeable wobble in one spot,
and I found the issue when I felt the spoke directly below it.
↑This is with the tension released,
so the deformation is much more obvious visually.
It's definitely deformed from some external impact,
and the customer remembers what happened too.
With the black nipples, I think these are the later-model nipples with nylon anti-loosening,
and some thread-locker compound was also applied,
so the nipples were quite stiff to turn for a bike with only about 1,500 km of use.
All fixed.
While fixing it, the customer also asked me to add some cosmetic touches.
The bent spoke was on the right side,
but since we're making the spoke next to the valve hole on the left side red,
I'm using the black spoke that was there for the repair
and installing a new red spoke in its place.
↑The replaced spoke
There's almost no deformation in the front-to-back direction,
so I could technically straighten it and reuse it in a pinch.
If we didn't have spare spokes in stock,
that's probably what we would have done (without planning to replace it with a new one later).
But we virtually never run out of spare spokes for these wheels at our shop anyway.
and one of them had a bent spoke that needed replacing.
There was noticeable wobble in one spot,
and I found the issue when I felt the spoke directly below it.
↑This is with the tension released,
so the deformation is much more obvious visually.
It's definitely deformed from some external impact,
and the customer remembers what happened too.
With the black nipples, I think these are the later-model nipples with nylon anti-loosening,
and some thread-locker compound was also applied,
so the nipples were quite stiff to turn for a bike with only about 1,500 km of use.
All fixed.
While fixing it, the customer also asked me to add some cosmetic touches.
The bent spoke was on the right side,
but since we're making the spoke next to the valve hole on the left side red,
I'm using the black spoke that was there for the repair
and installing a new red spoke in its place.
↑The replaced spoke
There's almost no deformation in the front-to-back direction,
so I could technically straighten it and reuse it in a pinch.
If we didn't have spare spokes in stock,
that's probably what we would have done (without planning to replace it with a new one later).
But we virtually never run out of spare spokes for these wheels at our shop anyway.