How to fix your dirt bike spokes when they are froze.

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Sandblaster
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How to fix your dirt bike spokes when they are froze.

Post by Sandblaster » Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:00 pm

How to fix your dirt bike spokes when they are froze.
Ever tried to adjust your spokes only to see them spin round and round to no avail?
Unfortunately it does not take spokes very long before the nipples freeze solid to the spokes.

It's a real bummer but, all is not lost.
A lot of times you can recover them,
And, if your wheel is fairly straight to begin with you can maintain that or even make it better with little extra effort.

First, you need to remove your tube, tire, rim locks, and tube band.
As you can see, this rim is a mess inside.
It is also fairly typical of a rim of this age.
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The first thing I do is clean it up on a wire wheel.
There are many different ways to do this but the wire wheel takes just a few minutes and removes the Oxide from the rim in a hurry.
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Once that is done I use a quality penetrating oil such as Kroil.
I put it in from with ends of the nipple.
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Once the oil has set for a few hours I attach some Vice Grips at the hub end of the spoke using a rage doubled over a few times for protection.
Then I try to adjust it.
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Still won't adjust?
Here is your best friend:
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You need to be careful not to over heat.
If the nipple is made from aluminum this is especially true because it's easy to melt it right off the spoke..
Once you get it hot, put your spoke wrench on it and turn.
It should now come off like this one did:
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I like to take the spoke back to the wire wheel and clean it up.
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When you are done you can reinstall the spoke and tighten it up to the manufactures specs.
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Once that is finished you can go ahead and do each spoke individually.
When you have done all the spokes you should have very little fine adjusting to do.
And as a bonus, your spokes will look much much better.

Hope you found this helpful.
If bikes are for kids I'll never grow up.

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