Rear 12" wheel lost a spoke somehow and the rest are variously loose,
bent etc. Wheel wobbles side to side quite badly but they still manage
to ride it! good practice for something!!

So is it worth messing to fix it and how? or can you e.g. buy a
replacement for a £reasonable amount?

Bike is a Raleigh bought new -- can't say I'm impressed.....I reckon
it's only done 2 or 3 miles ever

Cheers
Jim K

"Jim K" wrote in message
...
Rear 12" wheel lost a spoke somehow and the rest are variously loose,
bent etc. Wheel wobbles side to side quite badly but they still manage
to ride it! good practice for something!!

So is it worth messing to fix it and how? or can you e.g. buy a
replacement for a £reasonable amount?

Bike is a Raleigh bought new -- can't say I'm impressed.....I reckon
it's only done 2 or 3 miles ever

Cheers
Jim K


I'm not sure if any bike shop would stock ready-made spokes in that length,
but smaller more traditional bike shops should be able to cut down longer
spokes (which they will stock) and tap a suitable thread onto them.
Out-of-the-box spokes cost less than a pound.

From my (not always successful) experience of re-spoking and trueing on
adult bike wheels, if replacing and tensioning the broken spoke makes the
wheel reasonably true, then that's probably good place to stop. Trueing
wheels has always seemed to be a bit of black art to me, so I prefer to
adjust as few spokes as possible.

On Sun, 1 Aug 2010 11:14:01 -0700 (PDT), Jim K wrote:

So is it worth messing to fix it and how? or can you e.g. buy a
replacement for a £reasonable amount?

You probably can from a decent bike shop. But truing up a wheel
really needs a proper jig and a bit of skill/knowledge. I managed to
pull a buckle out my daughters rear wheel but that was only a single
buckle and only a couple of mm. Not only do you have to get the rim
round and buckle free, it has to have the axle at the center of
rotation and the plane of the rim perpendicular and passing through
the center of the axle.

Bike is a Raleigh bought new -- can't say I'm impressed.....I reckon
it's only done 2 or 3 miles ever

Manufacturing defect... take it back and get them to repair it at
their cost.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Mr UPVC" Mr lid wrote in message
...

"Jim K" wrote in message
...
Rear 12" wheel lost a spoke somehow and the rest are variously loose,
bent etc. Wheel wobbles side to side quite badly but they still manage
to ride it! good practice for something!!

So is it worth messing to fix it and how? or can you e.g. buy a
replacement for a £reasonable amount?

Bike is a Raleigh bought new -- can't say I'm impressed.....I reckon
it's only done 2 or 3 miles ever

Cheers
Jim K


I'm not sure if any bike shop would stock ready-made spokes in that
length,
but smaller more traditional bike shops should be able to cut down longer
spokes (which they will stock) and tap a suitable thread onto them.
Out-of-the-box spokes cost less than a pound.

From my (not always successful) experience of re-spoking and trueing on
adult bike wheels, if replacing and tensioning the broken spoke makes the
wheel reasonably true, then that's probably good place to stop. Trueing
wheels has always seemed to be a bit of black art to me, so I prefer to
adjust as few spokes as possible.



You'll also need:
- a spoke key (the "deep" type machined from a block of steel are less
likely to round-off the spoke nipple than the type stamped from sheet
steel).
- If the broken spoke is on the freewheel side, you will need some kind of
freewheel remover tool. Adult bikes have a range of freewheel fixing
systems, not sure about childrens bikes.

"Jim K" wrote in message
...
Rear 12" wheel lost a spoke somehow and the rest are variously loose,
bent etc. Wheel wobbles side to side quite badly but they still manage
to ride it! good practice for something!!

So is it worth messing to fix it and how? or can you e.g. buy a
replacement for a £reasonable amount?

Bike is a Raleigh bought new -- can't say I'm impressed.....I reckon
it's only done 2 or 3 miles ever

Cheers
Jim K

Easiest to get a new wheel, or scavenge one from the numerous dumped bikes
your kids will find in their travels, or from the local tidy tip.

If there are no big dents in the wheel and it has just worked loose, new
spokes are cheap and you can have a go at truing the wheel yourself. There
have been a number of progs on push bikes on tv this last week, and one did
go into a fair bit of detail on truing up wheels. Ideally you want to get
the wheel out and the tyre off and set it so you can spin it up held in a
jig so that you can monitor the side to side and up and down play as the
wheel rotates. It is quite fiddly though. and if the wheel has been badly
deformed, even if you can get it to spin true, the tension on some of the
spokes can make them quickly break again (been there!). Usually easier to
find another wheel in the long run, but not a bad thing to try if you like a
challenge.

S

On 01/08/2010 19:14, Jim K wrote:
Rear 12" wheel lost a spoke somehow and the rest are variously loose,
bent etc. Wheel wobbles side to side quite badly but they still manage
to ride it! good practice for something!!

So is it worth messing to fix it and how? or can you e.g. buy a
replacement for a £reasonable amount?

Bike is a Raleigh bought new -- can't say I'm impressed.....I reckon
it's only done 2 or 3 miles ever

What's the rim made of - Al or steel? Steel is harder to straighten.
Sounds like the wheel was crap to start with though - it's quite hard to
make a 12" wheel fail.

I've built a few wheels (front and rear). Sheldon Brown's instructions
are pretty good for that (as with so many things bicycle related).

http://sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html

In the past I've used the stamped spoke keys, and the ones machined from
a bit of hex. The former were crap, the latter hurt my fingers. Best by
a long way IMHO are the red plastic disk based ones - they grip the
spoke better than the others, and they're comfortable to use.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/M...?ModelID=19098

(dang, out of stock of the red one - though I don't know what size your
nipples are)

Most important is to get the spokes tight and even - loose spokes will fail.

I've never used a jig - the bike serves for that, with
fingers/pencil/brakes for truing pointers. Obviously a jig will be nicer
to work with, but it's not a necessity.

Not sure where to get tiny spokes though - smallest wheel I've built is
16" Brompton.

Re replacement - if it's done bugger all, got to be worth a visit to the
vendor. It shouldn't fail in that time unless it's been jumped with flat
tyres. If you get a replacement, might be worth tightening + stress
relieving the spokes. But a 12" kids bike wheel is probably a good thing
to learn on - ought to be very forgiving.

(do your changes in groups and taper the ends, and keep the changes
small - eg +1/4, -1/4 or +1/4 -1/2 +1/4 or +1/4 -1/2 +1/2 -1/4. Don't
worry too much about hop (vertical true) - unless you've screwed up
big-time, it'll be about right.)

On 1 Aug, 19:14, Jim K wrote:
Rear 12" wheel lost a spoke somehow

So is it worth messing to fix it and how?

Broadly, yes.

The information on bike spokes is:

* Jobst Brandt's book on the topic. More theory than you ever wanted
to know, or even realised was possible. Not great on simple
instructions though.

* Sheldon Brown's website. Just follow the instructions, it's
everything you actually _need_ on truing, strain relieving and
building wheels from scratch. You won't understand things as you might
with Jobst, but you'll get the job done.

* Google for a spoke length calculator. Or do it yourself, as it's not
terribly hard with a bit of Excel.

For tools you need a good spoke key - Spokey looks like cheap rubbish,
but they're the best I've found. Basic bike tools, and good quality
spokes. DT double butted stainless are under a quid from any shop
(cheaper mail order in sets), and they don't give you any grief. Any
decent bike shop carries spokes (otherwise QED, you're probably in a
Halfords)

You also need a wheel truing stand. In extremis, just turn the bike
over and tape the chain and brakes out of the way. Running your thumb
nail on the rim is accurate enough - touch is better than sight for
this.

Measuring is tricky, and you need to do this before calculating spoke
length. You need hub, rim and wheel offset details. Read Sheldon.

Building and truing is then pretty easy. Make sure you strain relieve
properly (Sheldon), it's the difference between good & bad finished
wheels.


Bike is a Raleigh bought new -- can't say I'm impressed.....I reckon
it's only done 2 or 3 miles ever

Try Edinburgh Bicycle for halfway decent kids bikes.

On Aug 1, 7:14*pm, Jim K wrote:
Rear 12" wheel lost a spoke somehow and the rest are variously loose,
bent etc. Wheel wobbles side to side quite badly but they still manage
to ride it! good practice for something!!

So is it worth messing to fix it and how? or can you e.g. buy a
replacement for a £reasonable amount?

Bike is a Raleigh bought new -- can't say I'm impressed.....I reckon
it's only done 2 or 3 miles ever

Cheers
Jim K


Fixing it by tensioning, not too hard, as long as youre not looking
for perfection. If you are.... ugh. Its quite possible to run a wheel
with a spoke missing, though it'll always be weaker like that.

Is it worth it? No. If it were a very expensive ali wheel, perhaps,
but a 12" wheel can be gotten from the tip, freecycle or off a £5 bike
very easily, and its quicker, easier, and the result will be better.


NT