Technical > Wheels, Tyres and Brakes

Sapim Spoke failure

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Tonydem1:
Had a problem with my Raven Tour last week.  Broke a spoke on the front wheel after 7300km.  I decided to re-spoke the whole wheel which was a very wise move.  Every single spoke had gone very brittle and snapped with very light pressure.  Most went whilst removing them from the rim.  I decided that I had better re-build the rear wheel as well, and chose to fit an Andra CSS rim (because i could!) at the same time.  Rear wheel had absolutely no brittle spokes.  All good and solid.  I rebuilt anyway as I had brought the parts!

Has anybody else experienced this type of issue (brittle spokes) with Sapim?  The spokes look like they had corroded through...

geocycle:
Sorry to hear of the problem, sounds bad and could have been dangerous or at least difficult.  I'm sure SJS would want to know.

Tonydem1:
The bike had been in storage since November 2017.  It was washed and lubed before being put away.  I'm just glad that I didn't hit a pothole when I took it out.   I have never seen a set of spokes do that.  They were originals that came new with the bike.  They can only have been a bad batch.  If so, somebody else must have experienced this!


On the plus side, I enjoyed rebuilding them.

mickeg:
I think there was a bad batch of steel or some other problem some time back.  I did a quick search and found this link too.
http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=10885.0

I see that I made a few comments at that other thread too. 

I live in USA, Sapim spokes are pretty rare here, thus I use a different brand.  I have nothing against Sapim, in fact I used Sapim nipples on the last two sets of wheels I built.  But I usually use Wheelsmith spokes, they are made 90 miles from my home.

Tonydem1:
Hi Mickeg,  That sounds exactly the issue.  The spokes seem to break anywhere.  You can take half of one that is already broken and easily snap that piece in half, and then snap those pieces again in your hands using no tools.  They are a bit like dried spaghetti!  Obviously the combined strength of the 32 in the wheel was sufficient to get me the 8 miles I managed (and the remaining 31 the return journey.)

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