I received the rear wheel of a Bora Ultra 50 from a customer.
The customer has placed a marking tape on the wheel, but
one of the spokes on the freewheel side in the opposite-hedgehog direction has a broken neck, and when you shake it with this spoke,
it moves with a rattling sound.
This rear wheel has 14 spokes on the freewheel side,
and of those, 7 are in the opposite-hedgehog direction spokes, but
it's only those that are experiencing broken necks—
this is the fourth one.
Including this fourth time, all the previous locations where they broke are different.
The customer keeps detailed records, so there's no mistake.
During the first repair at a nearby shop,
they apparently replaced about three spokes including the broken one,
but for the second and third times, they only replaced the broken spoke itself.
When a spoke neck breaks, there's a phenomenon called "breaking habit" where it continues to happen after that.
If just one breaks and doesn't break afterward,
there's a high chance it hasn't entered breaking-habit mode, but
if a second one breaks in a short time,
from my experience, they tend to keep breaking one after another.
So this time, it was clear that the breaking-habit mode had set in,
and I decided to do a complete replacement of all the spokes on the freewheel side.
I needed 14 spokes for the repair, and
spare spokes come in boxes of four,
but the shop didn't have 14 spare spokes in stock,
so I ordered 5 boxes (20 spokes) together with what we normally keep on hand.
Some were on production backorder, so we had to wait for delivery, and
since we use these spokes frequently at the shop,
I tried to make sure to secure them for this wheel
the moment we had 14 or more in stock.
When 3 boxes (12 spokes) arrived,
combined with our shop inventory, we had 14 secured,
so the repair became possible.
I replaced the spoke where the tape was placed,
and trued the lateral run-out using only the nipple on that location.
The wheel in the image above is spinning.
There are other fine lateral run-outs, but
if the rule is to only turn the nipple of the replaced spoke location,
this is the goal.
I don't know if the center is perfectly true,
but at this point, the wheel should be usable if you install it on the frame.
The interim center with just one spoke replaced
was pretty much true.
It was off by about 0.5 sheets of paper to the right,
but given the fine lateral run-out, if you change where you apply the centering gauge,
you can get a dead-on reading—it's that small.
↑First, I placed a marking tape on the spoke where the broken-neck spoke was located.
Next, I'm replacing all the other spokes,
but I also replaced some nipples because
some of them had their corners rounded off.
The particularly bad ones are the nipples in the image above—
it's obvious they were damaged during spoke replacement attempts,
but they were left as is.
The freewheel-side spokes are hook-on type,
so they can be attached to the hub flange afterward.
At this point, all spokes except the one with the tape
have their threads showing to some degree.
The nipple on the spoke with the tape is at
a thread engagement length that has the center pretty much true,
so it functions as a guide.
The way the round part of the spoke appears from the nipple at that point
looks like this.
Using this as a reference, I'll now proceed with wheel truing
using only nipple adjustments on the other 13 spokes.
After roughly evening out the nipple tightening
and truing the lateral run-out to a reasonable degree
outside the phase of the taped spoke,
here's the interim center.
The centering gauge is being applied at roughly perpendicular to the phase of the taped spoke.
In theory, from here I just need to keep tightening
13 of the 14 freewheel-side nipples until the center is true, but
directly below the phase of the G3 lacing pattern,
at 3 out of 7 locations, spanning almost half the wheel,
the rim had radial run-out protruding toward the outer circumference.
This is an amount that shouldn't exist in a hanging state.
Centering by tightening the freewheel side
is something that wouldn't happen on a normal wheel with equal spokes on both sides.
That's because you adjust on whichever side ends up with higher tension.
However, with G3 lacing, which is a variant of 2:1 lacing,
spoke tension is nearly equal on both sides,
so it wasn't particularly difficult.
By the time I'd trued both radial and lateral run-out,
as shown in the image above, some center deviation remained,
but I forgot to take a photo of the final state.
Because I did radial run-out truing with a tightening tendency,
and the taped spoke wasn't completely left alone either—
toward the end, I tightened it slightly with a tightening tendency—
spoke tension has increased slightly from when I received it.
I completed the full replacement of the 14 freewheel-side spokes.
↑Replaced spokes
↑This is what a broken neck looks like.
A little bit is still remaining, so it catches on the hub flange
and doesn't come off, but the tension is gone.
↑The remaining 13 spokes that haven't broken.
The stamp on the spoke head is a capital A.
Probably Alpina or ACI manufacture.
It's definitely not Japanese Asahi (they went out of business long ago).
I didn't find any spokes that looked like "this one's about to break any minute."
I returned these 14 spokes to the customer.
↑Replaced nipples
The particularly bad one is the nipple on the far left
in the image above, which I showed earlier.
The hex grip has deformed into a diamond shape.
These are all old-style nipples.
Speaking of which, the valve bush at the rim's valve hole
was the second-generation type (the current version is third-generation).
The new-style nipple is
on rims with no holes on the outer circumference except the valve hole,
designed with a hex grip that will absolutely never be grabbed and turned.
The customer has placed a marking tape on the wheel, but
one of the spokes on the freewheel side in the opposite-hedgehog direction has a broken neck, and when you shake it with this spoke,
it moves with a rattling sound.
This rear wheel has 14 spokes on the freewheel side,
and of those, 7 are in the opposite-hedgehog direction spokes, but
it's only those that are experiencing broken necks—
this is the fourth one.
Including this fourth time, all the previous locations where they broke are different.
The customer keeps detailed records, so there's no mistake.
During the first repair at a nearby shop,
they apparently replaced about three spokes including the broken one,
but for the second and third times, they only replaced the broken spoke itself.
When a spoke neck breaks, there's a phenomenon called "breaking habit" where it continues to happen after that.
If just one breaks and doesn't break afterward,
there's a high chance it hasn't entered breaking-habit mode, but
if a second one breaks in a short time,
from my experience, they tend to keep breaking one after another.
So this time, it was clear that the breaking-habit mode had set in,
and I decided to do a complete replacement of all the spokes on the freewheel side.
I needed 14 spokes for the repair, and
spare spokes come in boxes of four,
but the shop didn't have 14 spare spokes in stock,
so I ordered 5 boxes (20 spokes) together with what we normally keep on hand.
Some were on production backorder, so we had to wait for delivery, and
since we use these spokes frequently at the shop,
I tried to make sure to secure them for this wheel
the moment we had 14 or more in stock.
When 3 boxes (12 spokes) arrived,
combined with our shop inventory, we had 14 secured,
so the repair became possible.
I replaced the spoke where the tape was placed,
and trued the lateral run-out using only the nipple on that location.
The wheel in the image above is spinning.
There are other fine lateral run-outs, but
if the rule is to only turn the nipple of the replaced spoke location,
this is the goal.
I don't know if the center is perfectly true,
but at this point, the wheel should be usable if you install it on the frame.
The interim center with just one spoke replaced
was pretty much true.
It was off by about 0.5 sheets of paper to the right,
but given the fine lateral run-out, if you change where you apply the centering gauge,
you can get a dead-on reading—it's that small.
↑First, I placed a marking tape on the spoke where the broken-neck spoke was located.
Next, I'm replacing all the other spokes,
but I also replaced some nipples because
some of them had their corners rounded off.
The particularly bad ones are the nipples in the image above—
it's obvious they were damaged during spoke replacement attempts,
but they were left as is.
The freewheel-side spokes are hook-on type,
so they can be attached to the hub flange afterward.
At this point, all spokes except the one with the tape
have their threads showing to some degree.
The nipple on the spoke with the tape is at
a thread engagement length that has the center pretty much true,
so it functions as a guide.
The way the round part of the spoke appears from the nipple at that point
looks like this.
Using this as a reference, I'll now proceed with wheel truing
using only nipple adjustments on the other 13 spokes.
After roughly evening out the nipple tightening
and truing the lateral run-out to a reasonable degree
outside the phase of the taped spoke,
here's the interim center.
The centering gauge is being applied at roughly perpendicular to the phase of the taped spoke.
In theory, from here I just need to keep tightening
13 of the 14 freewheel-side nipples until the center is true, but
directly below the phase of the G3 lacing pattern,
at 3 out of 7 locations, spanning almost half the wheel,
the rim had radial run-out protruding toward the outer circumference.
This is an amount that shouldn't exist in a hanging state.
Centering by tightening the freewheel side
is something that wouldn't happen on a normal wheel with equal spokes on both sides.
That's because you adjust on whichever side ends up with higher tension.
However, with G3 lacing, which is a variant of 2:1 lacing,
spoke tension is nearly equal on both sides,
so it wasn't particularly difficult.
By the time I'd trued both radial and lateral run-out,
as shown in the image above, some center deviation remained,
but I forgot to take a photo of the final state.
Because I did radial run-out truing with a tightening tendency,
and the taped spoke wasn't completely left alone either—
toward the end, I tightened it slightly with a tightening tendency—
spoke tension has increased slightly from when I received it.
I completed the full replacement of the 14 freewheel-side spokes.
↑Replaced spokes
↑This is what a broken neck looks like.
A little bit is still remaining, so it catches on the hub flange
and doesn't come off, but the tension is gone.
↑The remaining 13 spokes that haven't broken.
The stamp on the spoke head is a capital A.
Probably Alpina or ACI manufacture.
It's definitely not Japanese Asahi (they went out of business long ago).
I didn't find any spokes that looked like "this one's about to break any minute."
I returned these 14 spokes to the customer.
↑Replaced nipples
The particularly bad one is the nipple on the far left
in the image above, which I showed earlier.
The hex grip has deformed into a diamond shape.
These are all old-style nipples.
Speaking of which, the valve bush at the rim's valve hole
was the second-generation type (the current version is third-generation).
The new-style nipple is
on rims with no holes on the outer circumference except the valve hole,
designed with a hex grip that will absolutely never be grabbed and turned.