replaced a spoke with the tire still on

[vintwing]

I replaced a rear spoke today without taking off the tire or the wheel. I wasn't sure if this was possible since the 5 inch spokes don't have a lot of bend to them. Here is how I did it. The old spoke was broken near the hub, and the nut was still good in the rim. I unthreaded the old broken one. The tricky part is getting the new spoke into position, the brake rotor is in the way. The spoke in question was an outer, I'm not sure if this would be possible with an inner. I had to cut off about 3/16th of an inch off the threaded end of the new spoke. (That is about 4 millimeters in metric) I pushed the new spoke into the hub hole, and had to do some twisting and turning and slight bending to get it into position. I did some tapping with a piece of wood and a hammer, but not too hard. The bend that was required to get past the rotor did not stay permanent and the spoke returned to being straight. Then I let out most, but not all of the air pressure in the tire, it's the right amount when the nut can be pushed in, but will come back out from the inner tube pressure. This is important, because if the nut goes into the rim and won't come back out, you will have to remove the tire to finish the job. A tip is to keep the nut at the top of the wheel to let gravity help too. Then I held the end of the spoke next to the nut, pushed the nut in, got the spoke over to the nut and then released the nut. It went onto the end of the spoke quite easily, and from there I tightened it up. Done. Except don't forget to re-inflate the tire.