Another broken spoke on back wheel

Its pretty common for companies to change specs on their wheel sets, so showing an Alex rim but then sourcing another one, is a pretty common thing. Unless the rim was a very high end rim (its not) I wouldn’t have any issue with them using another rim on their “stock wheels”.

Now, I guess you are focusing on the Alex DA-16 spec’d wheels as potentially being superior. I wouldn’t count on it. All spoked wheels require lacing, truing, tightening, and the best wheels (here to fore) require a human element to make a really well built wheel. So, I guess Im saying its all a crap shoot to buy a new wheel. Your only defense is a buying from a reputable dealer who will stand behind his product in case spokes start to break. How do you get this? Deal locally and pointedly ask them.

If thats not what you care to do, buy some spokes and learn to fix it yourself. As I’ve noted though, a broken spoke is usually a sign of a badly built wheel, and they will continue to break. Case in point. I purchased a high-end ($5k) tandem bike. We biked, and were planning on a 1200 mile trek. While tooling around town, I had 4 spoke breaks in the first 400 miles. Sigh. Broke out my tools and found … an undertensioned, poorly built wheel. By the time I retensioned the wheel though, the damage was done. Another spoke popped. The company fussed, and was gonna stand behind it, but it was gonna take some time. My solution? Bit the bullet, bought spokes and rebuilt the wheel, and Im proud to say that years later, and having suffered 380 lbs of bikers and 70 lbs of gear not one problem.

Now, rebuilding your wheel is probably beyond you. But if you retension (i.e. check your spokes and tighten them) and just deal with changing them as they break, you should get by.