Snapping occasional alloy spoke nipples problem...

[alcatraz]

Hey fellow WW's.

I built a set of 58mm 20/24 carbon wheels with front+nds radial and ds 2x lacing. Mac 424 spokes and Pillar alloy nipples.

I'm noticing a tendency to snap alloy nipples and I've located the problem to be the spokes not being long enough to run through the whole nipple. This problem goes throughout the whole wheelset but as DS spokes are highest tension thats the only place of failures.

An observation is that it's always DS spokes "pulling" the wheel that seem to have their nipples fail (from fatigue I guess).

Seeing as DS spokes have the highest tension I consider replacing them with a few mm longer ones. The dealer I get my spokes from don't have enough of the required length and I wanted to ask you if you think it would be a fair compromise to just replace the 6 "pulling" spokes instead of all the 12 DS spokes?

(I've snapped 3 or 4 nipples so far. It's not that I ride with ticking time bombs. I have
been changing rims and changing total spoke tensions and it's around those times I've had a nipple fail. During the year I don't do any changes I don't have failures.)

/a

[joejack951]

6 out of 12 is better than 0/12. It isn't like it is very hard to swap a spoke at a time versus all of them at once so I'd start there and do the rest when you can. Or not. The wheel isn't going to fall apart on you and you aren't the first to build a wheel with the spokes too short.

[mdeth1313]

If your dealer doesn't have enough, why don't you purchase the remaining 6 elsewhere? Shouldn't be that difficult with the internet.