Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Zipp CSC dead on arrival - spoke pulls through rim

Tonight's events.

I rode from work to the train, 7 miles in 19:30. Pretty fast. If my rear wheel was in this condition at that point, I would not have ridden that fast...

Zipp CSC DOA - grr on Twitpic

One of the rear spokes has pulled through the rim.

After the ride, I took the train to SF. Certainly on the Caltrain there is some bumping, but my bike was pretty isolated on a rack with other "nice bikes". I rode
from the train station to meet my wife in Potrero Hill and didn't notice anything, nor did I notice the wheel ramming the brake while walking the bike to put it into the car. The bike was in the back of the Pilot sort of haphazardly. I just wonder, if you whack a spoke could it result in something like this? I'd be more accustomed to a spoke breaking, not pulling through the rim. Not that I haven't had a spoke pull through a rim before. Perhaps just par for the course for putting in a lot of miles at 210 lbs.

Aside from the curiousity of trying to figure out what happened, the next question is "what now?". I had this same thing happen to a machine built Mavic open pro built on an Ultegra Hub with double butted spokes. A rebuild would cost more than a new wheel (if you can buy a rim and build a wheel it's about 1/2 the cost of a wheel). But this is a $500 wheel. Where's the value? Hub? Spokes? Rim? Do I try to get this thing rebuilt? Or am I shopping for a new wheel? And if so, what wheel might avoid this issue? Don't bother saying Ksyriums - on my old Ksyriums I broke 5-6 spokes and with the last break I decided to throw in the towel. I rode to PA bikes, bought the Zipps, told the store to repair the rear Ksyrium so I could sell the wheelset to a flyweight. They called me the next day and said "The nipple has pulled through the rim..."

5 comments:

djconnel said...

I just refinished rebuilding a VeloMax wheel, rebuilt another not so long ago, and replaced a spoke on my Reynolds Powertap wheel. And I have another rim I may need to do next! (although may have the shop handle that one, since they have the wheel already).

If the hub is good, I'm a fan of rebuilding. It's not that hard, and sort of fun.

Metal rims which are marketed as lightweight eventually fail. Except, that is, for the mondo box-rim ones which weigh like 500+ grams each.

The issue is getting the spoke tension nailed down. That's a bit tricky. Wheels I build never stay quite as true as new wheels do.

Still, it feels good to fix stuff.

renevatio said...

Like DJ says it feels good to fix stuff, I’m just not that handy I guess. In any event I’ve had this exact failure and in my case I’m highly confident it was a combination of lots of miles, me being a heavier cyclist and perhaps a touch too much spoke tension. Given the nature of the failure I also think you can be confident it didn’t result from the train or car ride.

Zipp sourced the CSC hoop from DT Swiss so you have a couple of economical options available to repair your wheel. First you could look for the DT Swiss RR 1.1 hoop or the Zipp badged equivalent. The DT Swiss hoop is 415 grams, single eyelet and costs about $75. That and new nipples plus rebuild costs will probably run you $125 to $150. If you wanted to match your front wheel you could get out your hair drier and remove the DT Swiss decals and get replacements from Zipp.

DT Swiss has made a double eyelet version of this hoop and is another option I’d recommend. It weighs a little more, 465 grams, but is stronger and cost is similar. There are 2 versions, the older version is badged RR 1.1 also (ask for the double eyelet version) and the new version is the RR 465. You might also consider the DT Swiss RR 1.2 or what is now marketed as the RR 585. It is a bit heavier, 585 grams, but is super strong and has a 30mm aero profile.

All of these options would get your wheel repaired for less than $150 and if it were me I’d go with the double eyelet version DT Swiss hoop, the RR 465. Good luck.

Russ

murphstahoe said...

Russ -

Amusingly, I went into PA bikes and got basically the same advice last night. They are rebuilding the wheel as we speak, on a double eyelet rim. Alan even asked "do you care about these decals? Same rim, but with two eyelets".

It will probably cost closer to $200, but I went into the shop yesterday and I'm picking the wheel up tonight. Given I spent a total of 30 minutes and no money on logistics (got off one Caltrain in PA and had the deal done in time to get the next train), I'll take it.

I have an Ultegra 32 hole hub sitting at home with the same issue (that one almost certainly caused by me overtensioning the spokes). I am going to try to build it up with an open pro rim in my spare time. If I screw it up I'll chalk the $$$ up to "entertainment". If not, I have a serviceable backup - or better yet a wheel I should use when I'm just commuting on the crappy bayway roads from SF->Sunnyvale.

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