Riding with a broken spoke

[RickH]

This discussion brings to mind a tour in the late 70s, when I was a youth.

At the time I was riding a 26" wheel bike (as in 26 x 1¼). The day before a friend & I set off for 3 weeks in France, the hub disintegrated in my front wheel. All was not lost as there was a spare I could use in my friend's garage. So far so good.

A couple of days into the tour a spoke broke in said wheel. We tried to find a spare but to no avail. The wheel seemed to be all right apart from the gap so we carried on. then another spoke broke, and another...

By the time I got home I had 8 missing spokes. But the wheel still seemed to be reasonably round and reasonably true, albeit with a bit of tweaking - we didn't want to fiddle too much in case we made things worse.

Rick.

[Rhodrich]

Thankgs again for everyone's advice.

I've gone back to the wheel, and had another go, this time being a bit more 'brutal' with tightening the 3 spokes (the new one, and the ones either side that I'd slackened off). This seems to have done the trick, and the wheel now seems radially and laterally true, to the best of my abilities. It was definitely the rim, and not just the seating of the tyre, as you could see the effect on the brake track. You're right Colin - I've never had to deal with any significant radial truing, and it's a great surprise to me quite how many turns are needed!