[Closed] All my spokes came loose today.

I'd call whoever supplied the wheel and get them to pay a local shop to retension it. My mate, who's been trying to get me wheelbuilding, reckons do it yourself

Who did youget the wheel from? It a poorly tensioned wheel from the start IMO

Stuff sorting someone elses cock up.

I build my wheels

I'd happily increase tension on a new set but once its been ridden loose i'd pass them back

Why should you have to pay for postage?

Can we guess who built these ?

No I get that, it is superstar, and I’ve always had great service if anything needs to go back, (this is wheel set no 6 off them) but I’m not sure if it’s worth the faff.
What do shops charge for a re-tension? £20?

I’ll ring them tomorrow see what’s what.

I had this with a set of Superstar. 2 or 3 rides and they where all over the shop.

They expected me to pay to return for a free true. I pointed out it was a warranty issue and not case of them simply needing a true and made them arrange a courier.

The carbon wheels I sent back to them for being poor quality I just paid to send them back to get shot of them.

I too now build my own wheels instead.

Yeah I quite fancy wheel building.
Are those Park tension meters useful?

I noticed a loose spoke when we were in wales last year, then another one, then another one, and then it turned out half the spokes went PUNG when they should go PING. God knows how long I'd been riding it like that. Couldn't be bothered to do it properly so I just tuned them back up to PING by ear, lo and behold wheels were perfectly straight and 6 months on they're still perfect. All you need is PING.

And it's a good idea to think of superstar wheels as basically a good value build kit that just happen to be screwed together for ease of posting. My last ones weirdly had perfect tension but a load of bent spokes in- there's no way it happened after they were built, they'd tensioned it up with visibly bent spokes. They sorted it no bother though and the wheels were outrageous value, literally the entire wheelset cost as much as I was going to pay for the rims. Even if I'd had a pro fix them it'd still have been a massive bargain.

Yeah, all mine have been incredible value, i’ll Have a go at getting to ping.
Do you just go round doing say a quarter turn at a time until ping is reached?

donthey not pre-stress the wheels

Park Tool tension meter isn't the most accurate, but mainly what matters is the tension of each spoke relative to the others - X-Tools one is less than half the price for the same design, otherwise you'll be spending £100+ for a dial-type.

If you are an iPhone user there is an app that uses the sound made when you pluck the spokes to tell you the tension.

There is a lot of information on the web on building wheels. I've enjoyed it when I've done it, but, as a novice, it isn't something to be rushed.

The rim is a Stans Arch, which seems to be problematic for others as well due to its low tension limits for spokes.

In have Arch 29er rims on one wheelset. There's nothing particularly extraordinary about them and no reason they shouldn't build into a good, robust wheelset.

If you are an iPhone user there is an app that uses the sound made when you pluck the spokes to tell you the tension.

That sounds pretty neat, but I'm skeptical about the way it works?
I would think that the length of the spoke would have an effect on the sound, and also the lacing pattern... or am I being dumb?

Are those Park tension meters useful?

Vaguely, but it's not just a question of adjusting all the spoke tensions to the same level and the wheel then being true and ready to go.

I found the Roger Musson book - you can download it as a paid for PDF from his web site - really useful for building wheels and understanding what you're doing when you're truing and tensioning them. It's all relentlessly logical, though a glass of red wine helps as well...

That sounds pretty neat, but I'm skeptical about the way it works?
I would think that the length of the spoke would have an effect on the sound, and also the lacing pattern... or am I being dumb?

I don't know about the iPhone app - what's it called btw - but by ear, it's a good way of finding obvious differences in tension between spokes and, particularly, pairs of spokes.

Bear in mind too that spokes always loosen rather than tighten themselves with use, which is blindingly obvious when you think about it, but people sometimes don't seem to grasp that.

@ littlenose, seriously - plucking spokes and matching the tones is a legitimate method of wheel tensioning. The iPhone app simply combines the idea with a chromatic guitar tuner and a lookup table of tensions.

Bear in mind too that spokes always loosen rather than tighten themselves with use, which is blindingly obvious when you think about it, but people sometimes don't seem to grasp that.

I had a little bet with myself it would be superstar.

I had a little bet with myself it would be superstar.

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There's a lot more to building wheels it's lacing them correct for the disc (often overlooked even expensive stuff) & drive side torque,also taking the stress/twist out during build reason they loosen if it's not done right.

Ive both built my own & had a few wheels built by Harry rowland you get what you pay for he uses Sapim db spokes,nipples.

Stans are far from the best out there pain in the ass getting shwalbe to fit yet specialized go on by hand ?

Ah, I see a twisted spoke then unwinds!

Interesting about stans arch, had exactly the same. I'm not the most experienced wheel builder, probably done about a dozen, never had any issue, some have now done many years service.

I built up my MTB wheels with arch ex rims, tensioned to 125kgf on ds as per spec. Went for ride and when checked spokes again they had detensioned. Turns out when you stick the tyre on, they lose about 20kgf of tension, making them very loose on the nds. I've since added a little more tension and it's been fine since.

Ideally, you've detensioned the wheel fully while building (usual methods involve repeated hard squeezing of bunches of spokes together, but throwing the wheel at the floor, bouncing it and standing on it aren't unheard of) before bringing it up to its full tension.

If the wheel pings and drops tension when you mount a tyre, there's more to happen and you'll end up with the OP's scenario where the wheel just loses tension after a few rides.  As Spaniardclimber says, a properly built wheel should hold its tension.  If it's coming loose, there's a problem and you won't always solve it simply by tightening things up.

Pretty well everyone that's ever built wheels will have had this happen at some point, you just reassess how much effort you need to put into the detensioning as a result.

After my first few builds I got the Park squeezy tension gauge as a mate was selling one cheap after deciding he didn't like wheel building.  It's a useful tool that can speed things up, but it's not a magic bullet for not knowing what you're doing.  I'd say it's worth building a few twanging the spokes and listening not using a phone app while you get the hang of it.  It's far too easy to surrender to following a machine and not learning...

Learn to true and tension yourself, only cost is a spoke spanner and bit of your time and you'll be able to fix and tune your wheels whenever you need to without finding a shop and arranging for them to do it etc.

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<p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2em;">Bear in mind too that spokes always loosen rather than tighten themselves with use, which is blindingly obvious when you think about it, but people sometimes don’t seem to grasp that.</p>

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<p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: 1.2em;">If they wheel is properly built: high tension and even tension on each side, that should never happen.</p>

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In the real world, even well-built wheels need truing occasionally. All I was saying is that if you are truing a wheel - not rebuilding it, which is what the OP is basically going to do - then it's worth, as a basic principle, bearing in mind that spokes loosen over time rather than tightening. If you hammer a mountain bike wheel repeatedly, it will, at some point, need re-truing.

Obviously you shouldn't be in a position where the whole wheel disintegrates, but with mountain bikes in particular, wheels do tend to go out of true occasionally, even if they're well built in the first place.

EDIT: That cut and paste went well 🙂

+1 for the wheelbuilding PDF - easily the most cost effective purchase in my recent bike build. the first 70odd pages are preamble but they set you up brilliantly for being confident about the building process when you eventually get to that. Haven't ridden mine yet but using his simple techniques both wheels were true and tight in not very long and I'm confident I'll know what to do if there are any issues in the future.

https://www.wheelpro.co.uk/wheelbuilding/book.php

I have built several sets of wheels myself over the last few years. I learnt loads about it beforehand by reading the posts by 531colin on the Cycling UK (formerly CTC) forum. Until recently he was the wheel builder at Spa Cycles and had a great rep for building bomb proof touring and trekking wheels. He writes a lot about the need to de-stress and retention the spokes repeatedly, until the de-stressing attempts have no effect on the spoke tensions. His argument is that otherwise they will continue to de-stress whilst in use and lose tension. He does, however, assert that spoke wind-up is a non issue, just causing spokes to go ping in first use, but not actually to lose tension.

I have used this method of squeezing pairs of spokes together by hand but I am not that strong in the hand department and have a slight tendency to arthritis in them so tried a another method involving laying the wheel flat and putting my weight on each of the spoke crossings in turn by stepping on them wearing soft soled trainers. I found this fine with double wall trekking and MTB rims but skinny road rims or single wall rims can get distorted by being pushed against a hard surface in one area, so I invented a special device to support the rim evenly and gently all the way round, or rather I rest it on an old car tyre. This works a treat and I pride myself on helping clean up the countryside at the same time as the tyre was retrieved from a nearby hedgerow 😉

Blimey, that sounds serious.

Superstar will cover the postage, but for ten quid I’m getting Ty Cycles in Chipping Norton to do it.

They are small  workshop only outfit with a good reputation.

X2 for the Roger Musson book.

Careful you don't overtighten though. You can pull the eyelets through, or the wheel can shatter on a sharp impact. Plus, you need a bit of flex to make a more comfortable ride. Too tight and you get a right harsh ride that leaves you exhausted. I still carry my old friend on rides, the red Spoke spoke key.

Double post 🙁

Plus, you need a bit of flex to make a more comfortable ride. Too tight and you get a right harsh ride that leaves you exhausted.

Spoke tension makes no difference to wheel flex (unless they're so loose that they're completely detensioning, but then you just have a rubbish wheel build like the OP's).

Not that wheel flex makes any significant difference to comfort compared to 2.5" of tyre and 5" of suspension travel.

Yeah, I can imagine modern, wide tyre suspension bikes don't need it.

Also imagine you left england when xc riding was hardtails with 80/100mm forks, or full sussers with similar travel for rich people, to live in a desert in a developing country. Then you come back years later, pull your hardtail out of the back of the shed and go out to find people out riding on what look like the hardcore freeride bikes you used to ride off bungalow roofs on.....