It’s quite annoying because I go away for a week tomorrow morning and won’t have time to repair it. I broke the spoke closest to the ground when in normal hopping position.
So will it be alright if I ride on it for the next week? I won’t be doing any sorts of drops or anything, only practising tricks such as unispins on flat ground.
Also, I broke the nipple (bit that screws onto the top of the spoke) not the actual spoke and it pulled through the rim and the spoke got a bit bent. Will I just need to buy a new nipple and bend the spoke back? I think a nipple will be a lot easier to buy than a spoke to fit a 19" rim, especially where I live. Unicycle.co.nz only sells 13 gauge spokes and I need 14 gauge for a nimbus rim.
Should be fine, but I’d rotate the cranks so the spoke is in line w/ one of the cranks (the 3 o-clock position when hopping), make sure the rim is true, and all the other spokes tight.
On fixing it, I think a new nipple and a new spoke would be needed.
If the Nipple pulled through the rim you might not be able to fix it. Riding with one spoke missing is probably ok for a while but you are eventually going ot have to get a new rim. (Assuming that the nipple pulled through and you can’t fix it.)
Buy a crank puller, they’re cheap and very useful. If you never rotate your cranks it is very likely to break spokes, bend rims and wear off the tire right in that spot because you always put most pressure on that same spot of the wheel. I usually reposition my cranks (rotate them til the next possible setting) about once a week in order to distribute forces more evenly.
Taking your cranks off especially ISIS ones can wear the splines a little after a while, i’d say every week is definately execsive. but it’s probably a good thing to do every month maybe even less, as long as you rotate your tyre enough. (or get punctures often )
Yeah I just rotate the tyre. It started showing threads today
But I agree that it’s probably worth rotating the cranks every month or so. I’m going to buy a crank puller when I next order from unicycle.co.nz.
So I’m gonna ride it for the next week. Can I take a nipple off another 14 gauge spoke to fix it? Like a random bike spoke? I haven’t been bothered to take the tyre off yet and the broken piece is rattling round in there somewhere lol. I’ll take it off and have a look tomorrow.
just buy a cranck puller there. Try and get a good one, no name ones are abit crappy, i’ve got an icetoolz one and it works really well, dan’s got a parktool one which is not quite as good but works well. You can wreck you’re spokes and cranks with a bad crank puller, make sure if you have isis cranks that it works for isis cranks.
Where did it break? The most common failure is between the shaft (thin part) and head (thick part). This is caused by having spokes which are too short and don’t thread all the way up into the head of the nipple. The shaft is just there to turn the head; the strength comes from the spoke engaging the head.
Remove your tire and rim strip (on some wide tires, you can just deflate it and push it aside) and inspect the back side of the other nipples. Ideally, the spoke ends should be flush with the bottom of the screwdriver slot in the back side of the nipple. If they are more than about 1mm short of this point, that is cause for concern. If may make sense to rebuild the entire wheel with the proper length spokes.
Yeah, I know people do that, but I like to keep my tire pressure the same. Actually I think deflating the tire, then rotating and inflating it again would take me about the same amount of time as rotating cranks, plus I’d have to figure out the right tire pressure all the time. Anyways, it works for me until now, to each his own:)
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