Quick Spoke Replacement

Man, I've been breaking a lot of spokes lately on my fixed gear's rear wheel.  It's using some poor quality 14g spokes, and it serves me right for buying a pre-built wheel instead of building it up myself.  Broken spokes are no big deal to fix, so I thought I'd show how easy it can be.

Spokes almost always break at the elbow bend, which makes replacement pretty easy.  Here's what I did, and it took about five minutes to get the spoke replaced and wheel trued up:

First of all, you can usually make the fix without removing the tire.  Check the spoke nipple for cracks or rounded edges.  If it's okay, keep it! 

Get a spoke of the same size.  If you don't have a stash of spokes in your garage, they're very cheap at your local bike shop.

I just unscrewed the nipple by hand, which is sometimes doable when they break.  You can bend the broken spoke 90 degress to hold on to, to ensure it doesn't spin as you loosen.  The nipple is a nut, and the spoke is a bolt...lefty loosey:

You should put a drop of lube in the nipple.  Very important.  Always do this:

Spokes alternate in/out of the hub, so check the neighbors of the missing spoke, and do the opposite.  Here, I'm inserting the spoke in towards the flange.  And hey, It's okay to bend spokes!  Don't worry, you can't hurt them.  I was too lazy to remove my cog (this is a fixie wheel) so I just bent the spoke to pull over it.  You can also use pliers, but be careful with the spoke threads:

Now you'll need to really bend the spoke to get it where it needs to go.  Here, you may be able to see I need to fish it between to intersecting spokes on the opposite side of the wheel.  No biggie, spokes can bend quite a bit, as you can see.  It will be obvious where the spoke goes (the only nipple without a spoke in it).  Make sure you follow the same overlap pattern, too.  I went under two spokes, and over the last.  It's really important.  Check the neighboring spokes pointing in the same direction as the one you're replacing for the overlap pattern.

Now I screw on the nipple by hand for a bit.  It's easy, since we oiled it:

Finish up with a spoke wrench:

And then true the wheel up.  I used a stand, but you can also just put the wheel back on your bike and use the brakes or frame as a point of reference, too.  Obviously, tightening the spokes that go to the left side of the hub will pull the wheel to the left, and spokes going to the ride side of the hub will pull the wheel to the right.

See?  Easy Cheesy.