Any help on this ? I recently bought a set of wheel from eBay, one selling point was they had been respoked, also look new too, first ride the nipples started to pop. To which I found out there aluminium nipples, it’s been suggested that I change them to steal or stronger metal?

Now after a quick search, I can’t seem to find any other type other than alu?

Thanks

Brass…always brass

I’d recommend brass (aluminium or brass are the only choices I know of) but I also wouldn’t expect aluminium nipples to break when new.

Brass.

Yeah, from what I’ve found out it’s more the skill of the craftsmen when using alu nipples

Ali nipples are generally total crap. Brass all the way. They’re marginally heavier but in 6months time you’ll actually be able to true the wheels.

As others have said…brass.

For day to day use and long term reliability brass is best but I always build my own with alloy nipples and some of the wheels are years old now and still fine.

But I’m light and don’t do crazy stuff

Oh and im a huge weight weenie

Unless it’s a carbon rim in which case brass unless you like regular rebuilds , carbon and aluminium react badly

I just put alu nipples in a new wheelset but a) I can fix it when it goes wrong and b) I’m a known idiot. For everyone that doesn’t fall under at least one of these categories, brass is just the way to do it.

(with proper spoke depth, and decent parts outright strength with alu shouldnt be an issue, but when they crop up in cheap/oe wheels you can’t really assume either of those things is true. The real bollocks is corrosion and seizing- it’s an evil combo, they’re both more likely to sieze, and more fragile when you try to unseize them, so you come to true a wheel and snap.)

I’ve had alu nipples split due to corrosion. Brass for me.

Unless it’s a carbon rim in which case brass unless you like regular rebuilds , carbon and aluminium react badly

Very interesting. I’d always been happy with aluminium alloy nipples until I had a few break recently. They were getting on for a couple of years old and were in my first ever set of carbon rims. I had not realised that the carbon could increase galvanic corrosion. Really good to understand what caused my problem and therefore avoid it in the future

https://www.corrosionpedia.com/2/1556/corrosion/galvanic-corrosion-of-metals-connected-to-carbon-fiber-reinforced-polymers

with proper spoke depth, and decent parts outright strength with alu shouldnt be an issue

Seen plenty of well built wheels with DT spokes and DT alloy nipples fail!

Sounds (as others have said) like too short spokes. I would check spoke length and use brass – more for the ability to true them later on than due to strength.

There is some weight saving to using Al nipples, and I would use good quality ones if I was building up a set of race-only wheels.

Seen plenty of well built wheels with DT spokes and DT alloy nipples fail!

On the flip side dt’s own wheels all use Alu nipples and they have a pretty good reputation for being robust and not problematic beyond the normal truing issues on older wheels.

cynic-al – Member

Seen plenty of well built wheels with DT spokes and DT alloy nipples fail!

Through outright lack of strength (ie bottom breaks off nipple) or through corrosion/wear and tear/bad engagement? I’ve seen lots of the latter but never the former- the nipple itself isn’t much less substantial than the rim

Mine weren’t DT spokes or nipples but the heads snapped off at the point where I’d guess there is most friction with the (carbon) rim. The heads of all the spokes had a soft white coating which I assumed to be a bit of Stan’s residue or similar but having read my own link above was most likely the byproduct of corrosion. The wheels had been reliable for almost two years then nipples start popping.

By contrast I recently gave away a set of 20+ year old wheels with alloy nipples that I was able to re-dish (came off an offset frame) and they are still going strong.