I have had some bad bike luck lately. I had a flat tire a few days ago which was not that bad although I do not usually get a lot of flat tires. Then yesterday I had a very unusual bike break down at the end of my ride.
I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. I was just riding down a hill on a neighborhood street and all of a sudden I heard a terrible noise and my pedals would not work. I kind of thought that my chain just got hung up but there was some noise from the back wheel too. I stopped (I didn’t really have a choice about that) and took a look and my rear derailleur was bent and hitting the spokes on my back wheel.
I also noticed that one spoke was completely ripped out of the wheel and wrapped around the cassette on the back wheel. The pedals were locked and would not move. I tried to bend the derailleur back but could not get the pedals to work although I did get it so the back wheel would turn freely so I could walk the bike home. You can see the mangled spoke and where it was ripped out of the wheel in the photo.
One little side note. It was starting to rain so I wanted to get back home a little faster and discovered that I was able to use my bike as a scooter (by standing on one pedal and pushing with the other foot). This is actually a lot faster than just walking if you get stranded and if the bike will still roll.
My best guess at what happened is that maybe my rear derailleur was too close to the wheel and somehow got hung up on a spoke that might have been sticking out or something. Then when the derailleur caught the spoke it ripped the spoke out and pulled the derailleur into the wheel.
Why did this happen? I have no idea. It was a weird thing to just happen randomly after everything was working just fine for the last 12 miles.
I’ll be bringing my bike in to my LBS later today to see how much this repair is going to cost me. I suspect that this will be an expensive repair.
I just wanted to leave an update on the status of my bike repair. I have had my bike repaired and it required a new back wheel, a new rear derailleur and cost $240.
After taking a little more time considering what might have happened (and after talking to the guys at the LBS) I believe that this was caused by my rear derailleur being bent (and possibly a bent spoke). I think this may have happened the last time I transported my bike.
I probably could have prevented this in a few different ways. First, to be much more careful when transporting my bike. Next, as so many cyclists recommend, by doing a closer inspection of my bike before my rides.
I’m sure that I will never do a full detailed inspection of my bike before each ride but just a quick visual check (and maybe a little more than that once in a while) may prevent problems like this. I’m sure I’ll be doing better bike inspections, after this, on long trips especially.
The other thing that I learned is that “paired spoke” wheels are not for me!
I asked the mechanic at my local bike shop what the big advantage of paired spoke wheels are and he said that the main advantage was the lighter weight. Since I do not race, the small weight difference is not important to me.
The other part of the paired wheel story is that if you break a spoke like I did (actually ripped out of the wheel and not replaceable) then the wheel is pretty much shot. I could have probably gotten away with one spoke missing on a regular wheel.