Broke spoke...

[Lobo]

An interesting one. Was changing the rear bearings today (K2) and took the opportunity of deep cleaning the various bits including the hub. Blow me, a spoke was broken - VERY hard to spot; I’m honestly wondering how long it’s been like this. I went to get a spare... came back to the wheel... and spent another 2 mins searching again for it!

Q - is this a common occurrence, and (2) Bryan / Trig - is this an MOT check item and  would you likely spot it in a test?

I’m gonna have to start a personal wheel tappers club for the 5 bikes 🙁.

[Bryanj]

Not common
Yes a test failure and i would hope to spot it

There are two different spokes, one is easy to fit(head on inside of flange) the other is a swine to fit

[Trigger]

As Bryan said, defiantly a MOT fail. I am seeing more and more spoke broken these days, due to corrosion and a 50 year old part.
You will have to take the tyre off, strip the wheel down and seeing you are at that stage you, may as well fit a set of stainless steel ones. Stainless is not so brittle and give a little flex.

The worst spoke to have is chromed, they seen to break for fun.   

[Lobo]

Got lucky Trig, it was the short one with inside flange... as Bryan describes. I let a bit of air out the tyre to allow the head back up into the rim a bit, and bingo... was able to thread the new spoke.

Sadly, these spokes are SS, and only about 8yo - which is why I had a spare having rebuilt the wheels myself (& no comments there...!)

On an MOT gents, do you have an infallible trick for finding broken spokes - my guess is ya simply run a screwdriver across them?

[Bryanj]

Turn the wheel with a hand on each side sqeezing pairs of spokes together worked for me all the time i was doing tests