Originally Posted by
Peterpan1
Cool. Well said.
"What's the problem? You need a wheel that can support you & your cargo over the terrain you ride."
My feeling is that neither of us is doing big miles, and the problems show up over the Nancy kind of long haul which is the type of experience Beckman claims as underpining his recommendations. They also show up on the one in one hundred kind of thing. In the White case he is fighting returns, he needs a near zero rate of return. I trust absolutely he knows what he is saying there, but I don't know whether the return rate is some negligible rate like 1/1000, or 1/25. I think the discussion is like comparing the reliability of a Pacer to a Mercedes for the sole purpose of a one time only short trip to the mall. The fact that both cars are more than adequate mechanically does not make the pacer the equal of the Mercedes, Or make the Mercedes necessary for the trip. If there was no reason to question the reliability of low spoke wheels we wouldn't be talking.
In regards to riding big miles my LHT's wheels have seen thousands of KMs of use, but not 10's of thousands. I will keep riding them and I'll let you know if anything happens. If I was going on a 20,000km paved road tour tomorrow I'd use the same wheels. The other thing I'd say is that 32H certainly isn't a low spoke count wheel.
Looking at a few rims:
CXP = 470g
A719 - 565g
Velocity Dyad = 480g
All in the same ballpark.
I'm a bit confused about your determination of who
wins. I've got a bike that meets my needs, is efficient to ride and has been absolutely reliable.
Does Jobst get 300,000 miles on a set of rims with rim brakes or is he using disc brakes? Is he replacing rims every X miles and you are calling that the same wheel set? Personally I'd consider the life of a wheel the miles up until you replace something [rim or hub] or have to do a major retensioning of the spokes.
In my case I'm not going to even bother building a wheel with a goal of 300,000 miles since I'll be doing a rebuild/replacement at a much shorter interval. I'd be good with 15,000 miles. I suspect my LHT's wheels will last that long without any problems, but time will tell.