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 =A3reasonable 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 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.
Manufacturing defect... take it back and get them to repair it at their cost.
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.
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
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).
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.)
Broadly, yes.
The information on bike spokes is:
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.
Try Edinburgh Bicycle for halfway decent kids bikes.
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 =A35 bike very easily, and its quicker, easier, and the result will be better.
NT
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