I rigged up the Gravel Roadster with a 9-speed cluster, a Suntour Cyclone derailleur, and a 7-speed bar-end shifter. So gears. I put gears on the old Big Apple one-speed.
I’m setting it up for my brother, who’s moving out here in August, after 20 years in the Navy. He ought to have a bike to ride, and I’m doing the shakedown cruise by riding it with roadies on the lunchtime ride at work.
One of them noticed my rear wheel was out of true, and when I went to fix it (after not finding my truing stand anywhere), I saw that a spoke was broken. There are a few silver spokes mixed in with the black already, so the wheel probably took some damage at one point, and other spokes may fail.
The downside of the disc brake, is that you can’t really get a new spoke in there without pulling the rotor. I poked at it, then just pulled out the DeWalt and the Torx bit and started dismantling.
The new spoke went in easily, and I thumbed it down to into the hub flange to angle it correctly, and peeled up the rim tape to drop in the new nipple.
A few turns with the spoke wrench (and a little slipping and rounding – what’s up with that?), and the wheel is now acceptably true. I failed to mount the tire in the “correct” direction again, though.
