As in the title i’ve got a pair of wheels that only got put together about a month ago but i fancy using the hubs on something else. Is it possible to extract the hubs and re lace the wheels with the same spokes.

Will i die if it all goes wrong 🙂

Iain

A month old?

I’d re-use them happily…

If they were years old it’d be a different matter.

Spokes fail in two ways, either being stretched beyond their limit of elasticity (you crash, or land heavily and buckle the wheel), or through fatigue (riding enough times they eventually go ping). For an average double butted spoke, something like a DT comp, it’s fatigue life is up somewhere round 1,000,000 cycles (that is to say can be stretched to anything inside its elastic limit) before they go ping. At a month old, your current spokes aren’t likely to be approaching that!

Though you may need different length spokes for a different hub/rim combo of course, which would totally negate all I’ve just said.

1’000’000 cycles fatigue life seems low. at roughly 2m per revolution that’s 2’000’000M or 2000km.

I’ve got a pair of touring wheels with somewhere around 15000km on them with no spoke failures. Sapim not DT Comp though.

Will be fine, why wouldn’t it?

Spokeswill last much longer than that assuming the spoke haven’t been badly stretched in a crash then they will be fine.

Older spokes will probably break while tensioning if they are going to go. I still have a pair of wheels that are in great shape after 20 years, must have at least 5000 miles on them, probably a dam site more.

I just had a 5 year old rear wheel rebuilt with a new rim as the original was cracking. The LBS was quite happy to reuse the original DT butted spokes with new nipples as the replacement rim was identical.

I did tell them to replace any spokes that they felt should be replaced due to damage, but none were AFAIK. Over the years I probably had 3 or 4 spokes replaced due to damage; one had broken.

If yours are only a month old, I wouldn’t hesitate at all to reuse them unless they are damaged by a thrown chain or something.

So long as the lengths are right go for it.

I’ve rebuilt a few wheels with old spokes. Not had any issues.

I ve built quite a few wheel wih old spokes before. Only cheep spokes have broken, all three of them. Wouldnt old spokes be stress relieved from being used?

As long as the new rims have the same ERD (Effective Rim Diamiter) then it should be fine to re-use the spokes, if the ERD is different you may find you need longer or shorter spokes to build the wheel.

If the ERD is the same your esiest way will be tape the new rim onto the curent one side by side and then swap a spoke at a time over. You will need to slacken them all off to start but this will keep all the spoke crosses in the same place and the orientation of the spokes from the hub will also remain the same.

Too much info here….mmkey.

by reusing old spokes theres a strong chance that you won’t die.

You’ll be fine.