A customer brought in the front wheel from a CLX64 for repair.

One spoke is missing.


↑Right here. When it came in,
the broken spoke was still attached, but


after removing the spoke, I secured the nipple with tape
so it wouldn't fall inside the rim.
This front wheel is set up as a tubed wheel, but
if you accidentally drop a nipple into the rim,
and want to recover without peeling off the rim tape,
for a tubed setup you'd need to remove the tire and tube,
and for tubeless you'd remove the tire and tubeless valve,
then use a magnet to retrieve the nipple.



Fixed.
I didn't remove the tire during the repair.
That's because we inspected this wheel
at our shop about six months ago.
Just adjusting the nipple tension on the replacement spoke
eliminated almost all the wobble.
The slight truing I did after that
didn't throw off the centering.


↑The replacement spoke
The spoke breaking wasn't from natural fatigue—
something got caught in the rotating wheel.
When a spoke breaks, round spokes or
flat spokes can deform in the thin direction (left-right),


but it shouldn't bend this much in the thick direction (front-back).
This required an instantaneous, massive force—
there's no way hand strength alone could bend a spoke this way.
Even with just one pair of pliers, it would be tough.
You'd probably need two pairs of pliers to do it.