Kerb Your Enthusiasm
NEW CLASS: How to Replace a Spoke and True a Wheel
Broken Spokes Are Breaking My Heart
TLDR: riding off kerbs is BAD for your wheels. Stop doing it. Right now.
Entropy is the nature of the universe, and there is no better place to see this in action than with your bike. It WILL fall apart. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to mitigate this fall. But the fall is inevitable (anyone else watched Foundation?)
Not a week goes by where I am not chastising someone for riding off a curb.
I don’t blame them; it was probably something they did in their youth, on a smaller bike with smaller (stronger) wheels and wider tyres, as a smaller human being.
But as adults we have gotten heavier carrying the weight of our burdens (both real and imagined), and our tyres have gotten narrower, and we have gotten less pumpier with our tyre pressure (pump up once a month, minimum! Don’t know how or where to start? Here’s a previous newsletter all about pumping).
A couple things happen when you ride off a kerb:
Air is compressed by your weight and moves away from the bottom of the tyre which means that 👇
If there’s not enough pressure in your tyre to buffer this impact, your rim will hit the ground and cause a snakebite puncture and 👇
The impact itself wiggles and jiggles all the tiny parts in your wheel, both the moving (the hub) and the stationary (the spokes & nipples). And it could damage the rim as well.
This impact speeds up the entropy process, shaking nipples loose (don’t free the nipple!), jostling J-bend spoke angles, clunking cones against bearings, and angling axles too severely.
All these things will result in:
Broken spokes
Damaged hub shells (for loose bearing hubs - sealed will be fine - more on that in another newsletter…)
Broken axles
Damaged rims
Snakebite punctures (learn about these in our Intro to Maintenance classsss 🐍)
As ever, there is no way to completely prevent these things, but you CAN slow the process down by:
Keeping your tyres pumped (we teach how to do this in our Intro to Maintenance class). Do this once a month, minimum.
Squeezing your spokes to see if any of them are loose or broken (also taught in our Intro to Maintenance class)
STOP RIDING OFF OF KERBS (UK) / CURBS (US) (unless you have an MTB - in which case ignore everything I’ve just said 😜)
BEHOLD THIS SPECIMEN
Guess how many broken spokes this wheel has?
Nine. A new record, the previous one was six. I’m impressed. They broke in even numbers on either side so the rim was vaguely true and the wheel was still able to turn - but I’m sorry to say that it’s a writeoff.
You see, once a spoke breaks, it throws off the rest of the spoke tension, setting off a slow motion chain reaction. Once 4 spokes break, it will need a total rebuild (if the rim/hub are worth it) or it’s new wheel time.
Wheels that are hand built will be stronger, as spokes are individually checked for tension to make sure that no one spoke is wildly off the mark. Machine built wheels’ spokes are almost never at an equal tension, and so they have a head start on their entropic journey into chaos.
If you’re interested in getting some hand built wheels, get in touch! We have nimble-fingered wheel builders on staff. Our favourite build is the new Shimano Cues sealed bearing hub (perfect for fending off wear from our moist climes), a Ryde Sputnik or Andra rim, and Sapim Race (double butted 🍑) spokes, coming in at £131 for a rear wheel. Pretty good for an affordable, hand built, weather resistant wheel if we do say so ourselves!
(And I will do another newsletter soon about the new Shimano Cues lineup and why you should care…)
FIGHT ENTROPY NOW!
Add to your stockpile of knowledge in the war on entropy (the only real war, well, besides class war.) We are restarting our Wheel Building class series, revamped for our brave new world. We're big believers in scaffolding knowledge, so classes are broken up thusly:
Level 1: How to Replace a Spoke and True a Wheel
Level 2: How to Lace, Tension, and True a Wheel
Level 3: How to Measure Spoke Length, Lace, Tension, and True a Wheel
You must take each class, in this order. No skipping allowed.
This is not a marketing tactic, it is a pedagogical one.
Each class builds upon the previous one, reinforcing prior knowledge, further cementing it in your brain and building up your finger muscle memory.
TEST CLASS
We are holding a test class for Level 1: How to Replace a Spoke and True a Wheel.
You will leave knowing:
The root causes of spoke related issues
The methods used to measure and replace a single broken spoke (not for the entire wheel)
How to remove and replace parts blocking spoke entry (i.e. cassette, disc)
How to true a wobbly wheel to get it nice and straight (and when truing won’t help)
How to prevent future spoke problems to save some moneyyyyy
Test class tickets are £50 instead of £75, as you are helping us trial our course content. We will be asking for your feedback after the class.
When: Friday 27 October 11am - 2pm
Where: LBK, 28 Whitmore Road, N1 5QA
Snap up your ticket before you snap a spoke!
💪 BUILD YOUR BRAIN 🧠
Build some new synapses by learning how a bike is taken apart and put back together. Go as shallow or as deep as you like: just replacing pedals? Covered! Need to replace rim brake pads? Covered! Extracting a bottom bracket? Covered!
Makes a great gift for the bike-curious and the seasoned vets.
As sadly expected, things have taken a turn for the worse in Gaza, now with hospitals targeted and bombed, and the IDF not showing any signs of stopping. Jewish Voice for Peace has created a template email to send to elected representatives. While they are US based and the email is US centric, it’s easy to copy and paste the bulk of it and send it to our representatives here in the UK. You can find out who your local reps are here at They Work For You.
Here is an achingly beautiful piece about Gaza by
War is a great distraction. I wonder what the UK government is up to now…
Crying trying,
Jenni x
Great post as always, you are very good at writing and drawing us in. You're a force for good
Love the spoke kitty 😺