As Ben noted when he fixed my broken spokes during the recent Lejog attempt, more spokes had been mangled and I should replace them as soon as I got the chance. (He didn’t have enough spares to replace them all.) I’m glad to report that I didn’t have any more failures over the next three days of riding, but when I got home and took the wheels out of the travel bag, one more spoke had snapped in transit.

I’ve ordered a complete replacement set for that side, but meanwhile I have a few spares. I needed a couple of extra tools to remove the cassette, but I had everything else on hand.

The first order of business was to remove the tire and tube, and then the rim tape.

Next I removed the cassette and the broken spoke.

With the cassette off, it’s easy to see the damage to the remaining spokes. There’s also some damage to the hub which I hope is just cosmetic. (Hunt doesn’t list hubs for sale separately on their site, but they do sell rims.)

Putting the new spoke in meant verifying the direction and the number of spokes to cross. (I hadn’t checked until I ordered the replacement spokes: It’s 28 spokes, cross 2.) The only real challenge was getting the nipple to start to thread in, as the rim is rather deep and the nipple is not notched for a screwdriver. I’m glad I remembered a trick from a video I’d watched on wheel building: I threaded another spoke into the opposite end of the nipple and used that as a tool to get it started.

Once I got enough thread in for the nipple to emerge from the inner portion of the rim, I tightened up the spoke until it felt about the same as its neighbors when I plucked it.

When I picked up the tire to put it back on, I had an additional surprise: there was a thorn through the tread! The tube proved to have a hole as well. This must have happened on the last day of riding, en route to Carlisle, but the tire was not flat on arrival, and I didn’t notice it had lost air when I packed the bike up for the return home several days later. (I let the air out of the tires when I pack the bike.) No problem as I still had one unused tube remaining.

With a good tube on and the tire remounted, I put the cassette and brake disc back on. Now I’m ready to finish unpacking Kuroko and give her a good washing and lube, after which I’ll check this wheel for trueness.