A customer left me the rear wheel of their theoretically ultimate
NomuLab Wheel No. 5 for repair.
It's a 28-hole 4-cross lacing pattern, with the non-drive side featuring true tangent lacing.
Besides this one, the customer also has a regular 24-hole 4-cross NomuLab Wheel No. 5 rear wheel,
but they say this 28-hole version gives them
"the sensation of accelerating before even finishing the pedal stroke."
However, with a 28-hole 8-cross pattern, the spoke heads on the non-drive side
overlap and contact with the drive-side spoke trajectories,
and we know this creates a risk of spoke breakage at that point,
so normally we don't build it that way.
And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
Spoke fractures occurring anywhere other than at the neck are
extremely rare occurrences.
Even at the time this wheel was built,
we anticipated this would happen,
but the customer still insisted on it
so we built it 4-cross anyway.
This was about 5 years ago, by the way.
To replace this broken spoke,
we'd have to loosen the adjacent final crossing as well,
and to loosen that, we'd have to loosen the next one over... and so on,
so we'd have to loosen the entire non-drive side
just to replace a single spoke—
that's what I've been saying, but technically it's not entirely accurate.
Fixed it.
↑The tape I marked shows
where the replacement spoke is,
at the root of that spoke head where the first crossing occurs,
including the non-drive side spoke,
at the final crossing marked with tape.
If you completely loosen and remove the nipples on these two spokes
(you have to remove both),
you can recover and replace the broken spoke.
If you don't want to completely loosen and remove the nipples,
and insist on only loosening them somewhat to manage it,
then you'd need to loosen all the non-drive side spokes.
Going back in the timeline a bit,
when it was in a state where you'd wonder "how on earth do you replace this?",
if you completely loosen the nipples on the spoke overlapping inside the flange
and its partner's final crossing pair,
you can recover it like this.
The fracture was caused by contact with the opposing spoke head,
and there are also contact marks on this spoke head side from the opposing spoke.
Separate from this, with regular spoke breakage too,
sometimes it's as if a "breaking habit" develops, and afterwards
subsequent breaks happen frequently,
in which case it's actually less work to replace all the spokes.
I suggested that if similar fractures happened again not long from now,
they should have me rebuild the non-drive side to a 6-cross pattern,
but they said they want to keep using 8-cross despite knowing the risk,
and that they don't mind paying for a complete one-side spoke replacement if needed.
Hmm.
NomuLab Wheel No. 5 for repair.
It's a 28-hole 4-cross lacing pattern, with the non-drive side featuring true tangent lacing.
Besides this one, the customer also has a regular 24-hole 4-cross NomuLab Wheel No. 5 rear wheel,
but they say this 28-hole version gives them
"the sensation of accelerating before even finishing the pedal stroke."
However, with a 28-hole 8-cross pattern, the spoke heads on the non-drive side
overlap and contact with the drive-side spoke trajectories,
and we know this creates a risk of spoke breakage at that point,
so normally we don't build it that way.
And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
Spoke fractures occurring anywhere other than at the neck are
extremely rare occurrences.
Even at the time this wheel was built,
we anticipated this would happen,
but the customer still insisted on it
so we built it 4-cross anyway.
This was about 5 years ago, by the way.
To replace this broken spoke,
we'd have to loosen the adjacent final crossing as well,
and to loosen that, we'd have to loosen the next one over... and so on,
so we'd have to loosen the entire non-drive side
just to replace a single spoke—
that's what I've been saying, but technically it's not entirely accurate.
Fixed it.
↑The tape I marked shows
where the replacement spoke is,
at the root of that spoke head where the first crossing occurs,
including the non-drive side spoke,
at the final crossing marked with tape.
If you completely loosen and remove the nipples on these two spokes
(you have to remove both),
you can recover and replace the broken spoke.
If you don't want to completely loosen and remove the nipples,
and insist on only loosening them somewhat to manage it,
then you'd need to loosen all the non-drive side spokes.
Going back in the timeline a bit,
when it was in a state where you'd wonder "how on earth do you replace this?",
if you completely loosen the nipples on the spoke overlapping inside the flange
and its partner's final crossing pair,
you can recover it like this.
The fracture was caused by contact with the opposing spoke head,
and there are also contact marks on this spoke head side from the opposing spoke.
Separate from this, with regular spoke breakage too,
sometimes it's as if a "breaking habit" develops, and afterwards
subsequent breaks happen frequently,
in which case it's actually less work to replace all the spokes.
I suggested that if similar fractures happened again not long from now,
they should have me rebuild the non-drive side to a 6-cross pattern,
but they said they want to keep using 8-cross despite knowing the risk,
and that they don't mind paying for a complete one-side spoke replacement if needed.
Hmm.