Porous spokes, really ?

So, DeeMax rear wheel in for a new rim, hoping to use the same spokes as its in good nick and Mavic spokes are a bit dear… no problem said the bike shop.

Mail today, wheel needs a full set of new spokes as the old ones are porous and cant be used…. Obviously, used a bit of Google fu and cant see any reference to this…

Anyone shed any light on this, or is this a bit of mis info to sell new spokes ?

Load of rubbish. If they are metal spokes they can be re-used many times over unless they are damaged in some way.

I’m bound to ask the question: has something been lost in translation?

Dont think so Colin, its the same word in German and translates exactly..

Für Ihr Deemax Laufrad benötigen wir neue Speichen inkl Nippel. Da die alten verbauten Speichen/Nippel porös und nicht wiederverwendbar sind.

Any chance they mean aluminium nipples that are pitted and need replacing?

For your Deemax impeller we need new spokes including nipple . As the old built- spokes / nipples are porous and not reusable

Nipples would be what I’m wondering too. porös also means perished?

They are for the Mavic ust rims with the nipple that threads into the rim…. is this the alloy bit ?

It’s certainly possible that the spokes have “welded” themselves into the nipple (or nipple beds I think they’re called).

aluminium spokes on those wheels aren’t they? a friend has crossmaxes or something with aluminium spokes and they’re a nightmare, constantly need spokes replacing, they’re kind of white where they snap.

Hmmmm I can understand that… Dont want to go into the shop as I have a bit of contentious trail to check with a good forecast tomorrow… will mail them for more info on exactly what they are looking at.

Not had a lot of breakage Jim and we have 10 Mavic wheels across the fleet, they have in the main been very reliable. Even the ST ones will the fat spokes that actually rub and try to cut through each other…

I rebuilt some SLRs with old spokes and they’re still going strong 3 years later. The nipples can corrode and become brittle but they only usually crumble when a crappy spoke key is used.
The park Mavic key is probably the best I’ve used,the Lezyne is also pretty good.

Can you rebuild them yourself? They are the easiest wheels to work on as the spokes and only go into one rim hole.

Agreed, I should have had a shot myself though never built a wheel before. Got the Park tool to deal with the odd breakage. Hope they dont just cut them all to strip the old ones out as having a few spares is always handy.

I was once told that the Alloy head of an engine was porrous

Its not a word that one would expect to apply to a metal

I’ve goggled it engine heads to go porrous 😯

Further googling frequently refers to Aluminium defect as Porous. I think meaning any holes

Mavics are bad for the spokes/nipples seizing, for which the only solution is a pair of wire cutters and new spokes.

I would expect any decent bike shop with experience of Mavic wheels to warn you about that when you dropped it of.

metal castings can be porous (hence problems with engines) but the manufacturing of bike parts would be very different.

Must be a translation problem meaning a problem of some sort.

Having a porous engine part could be troublesome because they’re full of fluid, pressurised gas and explosions. Having a porous spoke, I am not so concerned about.

It’s not impossible that there’s a genuine issue though. And some people really dislike reusing spokes- and some wheelbuilders can be, er, characterful 😆

Probably a bit of not wanting to reuse spokes – another thing that can go wrong and leave the wheelbuilder having to rebuild for free and probably some lost in translation.

Anyway google says they are building you an impeller so I’d be more worried about that

For your Deemax impeller we need new spokes including nipple . As the old built- spokes / nipples are porous and not reusable .

Hope they dont just cut them all to strip the old ones out as having a few spares is always handy.

Seriously pick up the phone and give them a call, you will get to the bottom of it much faster and probably get your spokes back or find they are properly knackered and only worthy of the bin.

50p is a translation thing – and its corrosion.

assuming these are not this years model and crash damaged and that the rim has died of a few years of abuse its highely likely that the spokes are corroded into the rim. I never did a ksyrium SL rim change that didnt need spokes cutting out even with the park spoke key – 2 years of salt will do that

Could be related to this.[/url]

Deemax have the Zircal spokes don’t they? The coarse alu ‘inserts’ on those, which are integral to the spokes, really don’t like being rebuilt. Mavic will make you have new spokes every time.

The joys of factory wheels!

It sounds genuine to me.

When you take work in at a bike shop, you give it your best guess, because you cannot DO the job before you Do the job.

It is also in the nature of things that quite often the person on the desk who takes your work in, knows less than the person who will do the job, and therefore your initial point of contact doesn’t know what the common stumbling blocks might be, and therefore isn’t able to pre brief the customer of possible issues. Then again the most brilliant bike mechanics can be less than communicative……And, with the best will in the world, when you come to do any job, problems that you could not see before sometimes become evident, and you have to change the game plan.

If it is alloy nipples involved, and especially the fangled Mavic ones, then I think you’d be very optimistic if you were trying to use them twice. Stainless steel spokes and brass nipples are usually no problem, but best practice would be to go for new every time.

I would guess they mean the nipples are furred up with alu dust and not reusable. I doubt they are trying to have you over.

Not sure I’d ever want to reuse spokes*. They are prone to failure if not treated right so previously stressed/stretched/fatigued spokes don’t seem like a good idea to me. Also – now I’m in no way a professional wheel builder, but I’ve done a couple and trying to re-use the old spokes was made hard work by the fact that they were slightly different lengths due to being banged about in the old wheel. Mind you that was a wheel that had seen a fair bit of abuse and truing.

* also been told not to by people who I’ve paid to build wheels and who turned out to seriously know their stuff.

🙄

Even with stainless/brass I don’t re-use spokes, IME they ‘age’ and once one spokes snapped, the rest start to go in quick sucession, so rebuilding a wheel with old spokes, means re-building it again shortly afterwards.

I’d be even less inclined ot re-use spokes if I was having to pay someone to do those wheelbuilds, at least in my own time the building is free so re-using spokes might buy a couple of months of ‘free’ spokes.

ive rebuilt plenty wheels with the same spokes.

i will rim swap for customers but if a customer came in with a bunch of old spokes in a pile and asked me to build a wheel i wouldnt do it.

if the spokes are rebuild INTO the same orientation they will be fine.

if you stick em in willy nilly you will most likely find they start to break at the shoulder.