11/30 Hola Ecuador and adios Colombia! I can’t say I’ll miss Colombia that much but I did get to see a couple really unique places that I’ll remember for a long time. I’m certainly not going to miss the stares of death, the crazy drivers or the insane dogs.
Crossing the border was easy. I got a little nervous on the Colombian side because the immigration area is up some stairs so my bike was out of sight. The money changers kept an eye on it for me. They tend to do everything possible to help as long as you remember to come back to them when its time to exchange currencies. Ecuador uses the US dollar which suits me fine since I’ll be needing them in 8 days.
It wouldn’t be a normal day unless something broke and sure enough I lost another spoke on the rear wheel. It happened yesterday. I just didn’t realize it even though thinking back I did hear something weird but just thought I ran something over. The wheel stayed true so it wasn’t until this morning that I happened to catch that one had snapped up near the nipple.
This is about the worst thing that could have happened because now I know the wheel is crap. The further south I go the less likely I’m going to run into decent bike shops which means I have to deal with this quickly. I just wish I knew why they were breaking. This bike manual PDF I have says a million things could cause it which helps a lot. I’m either going to find a really good bike mechanic in Quito to check it, take a repair course in Florida so I can fix it myself or order a brand new wheel. The only people I know that build good wheels are the criminals that sold me the bike in the first place. Maybe I can get someone else to order it so they don’t know its for me.
Froze my butt off today. I’m still up at 9500 feet and its a bit chilly. No rain though.
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I’d hate to ride up this road.
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Hi Scott!
Buid the wheel yourself! Roger Musson has an excellent manual for cheap download: http://www.wheelpro.co.uk/wheelbuilding/book.php
I built my wheels in Tucson, Arizona (nearly 17000 km ago) and didn’t have a single broken spoke since then although I used the old spokes again and didn’t have a lot of experience (only built one wheel before that without knowing at all what I was doing). On my first wheelset I used from Alaska to Tucson I had 3 broken spokes in 10000 km.
Go to the casa de ciclistas of Santiago Lara in Tumbaco near Quito – It’s a really nice place and Santiago has a truing stand and a lot of experience building wheels!
Greets from Peru,
Phil
Thanks for the suggestion Phil. The problem may be what Eric mentioned below. I´ve never checked he tension on my wheels. The first set were never checked after 12k miles so I didn´t think I´d have a problem with the new ones either. A couple days ago I checked all the spokes and two on the rear were loose. I tightened them up to be the same as the rest. Hopefully that fixes things.
Wheels should be retensioend after a hundered miles or so, probably less with you riding fully loaded. Check for any spokes feeling looseby grabbing two spokes and giving a little squeeze. Tapping on the spoke with a wrench you can hear the tone and you will hear spokes that are looser then others.