When your spokes start talking to you, listen!

[NealW]

Recently I noticed that some of the spokes on our 21 touring were getting loose. I decided to use my spoke jack and shims to tighten up a few of them, but after putting three in one rear wheel alone, I thought that this is not a good long term fix. I also saw some small gaps forming between spokes in the "pie shaped" section of the spokes by the hub. I realized that it was time to stop kidding myself and pull the wheels off and send them to Stutzman's for respoking. I talked to Noah this week and he still charges $165 per wheel to respoke wheels with metal fellows. What a bargain. That's about $21 more than just buying a set of spokes from any of the suppliers.

Over the past few days I pulled the wheels, stripped the part, primed them and will ship them of to Stutzman's tomorrow. I didn't look over all the spokes closely, but a few came out pretty easy. One caught my eye because the paint was cracked near the hub. I sanded the paint off that area and saw that it was partially cracked which can be seen in the attached picture. That was from one of my front wheels. Someone once said that "the easiest person to fool is yourself". I can see how it would be easy to try to talk yourself out of fixing your wheels if you have any loose spokes. My spokes appeared to be original. Spokes are under a lot of load, and age aside, many T's saw a lot of rough roads in there early years. Keep a close eye on your spokes and when they start talking to you, listen!

[TWrenn]

Good that you're replacing them. Can't beat Noah's work either. That spoke looked like an accident waiting to happen. Whew!

[Burger in Spokane]

So, 1" of side-to-side sway .... is that too much ?

[Norman Kling]

Burger,
Yes!
Norm

[TXGOAT2]

Getting loose is addictive to spokes. Once they get a little loose, they'll rapidly get looser.