bigfred 

A messege to all of you who would like to comment on spoke tension in my thread, "Find someone who isn't already a member of the choir to preach to."

I wasn't unhappy with my Open Pro's. They had lasted years. They usually got an annual 'touch up', if that. For all my skills, wheel truing had never been one that I took the time to perfect. Instead, I believed it was best performed by someone who did it everyday and was "current" so to speak. I chose my wheelsmiths carefully and had good results for the most part. When I moved here, I went through great effort to find a wheelsmith who would respect the fact that the result they would be able to attain would be limited by the condition of my rims and the neccessity of maintaining reasonably even tension. Several, proceeded to declare that my rims would be "perfect" when returned to me. Rims that had been oh so slightly less than perfect for years but strong and reliable, had now become constant headaches. I looked around and finally found a new shop with a newish mechanic who while not as experienced listened to me and delivered the result I asked for, a well tensioned and balanced rear wheel that wasn't quite perfect. After all the thing has 20,000 or better miles on it. The result lasted about a year. When a 'friend' lead us on a ride that resulted in returning along an estuary during high tide. Hello mother ocean, good by corrossion resistance. Rebuilt most of the bike, but continued to have dissimilliar metal issues at the rim/eyelet/spoke junctions. Finally solved this by stripping wheels, including rim tape, and liberally applying WD40 to all spoke eyelets, nipples and through the valve hole. Cured corrossion issues, but, also eliminated spoke prep that had kept non drive side nipples from backing off. Voila, loss of wheel reliability. Possible solution could have been to delace and relace said rim with existing spokes while applying spoke prep. But, with old spokes and a decaying rim, that solution really didn't make sense. So the OP is being replaced with an MA3. Because, I happen to have a set of unsued MA3's that had been sitting around for a long time.

CXP 11's were take offs from my wifes bike. Took them into shop to get them tensioned. They came undone. Took them in again. Same result. Tried a different shop that I hadn't previously used. Explained, got a wheel back that seemed to have WAY more non drive side tension than I'd seen before. One week after putting back into service broke non drive side spokes for the first time in my 25+yrs of cycling.

Dead set to learn how to true and service my own wheels, set about truing the CXP 11's to find that they had used perminent loc tite. Can wind a spoke up to the point it breaks without getting the nipple to release. I've declared the wheel a candidate for rim replacement.

I'm glad for all you guys that have found lower spoke count or lighter wheels that work for you, your weight, riding strength and style. I'm really not to concerned about the weight of my training wheels. I don't care how few spokes they have. What I do care about is having strong reliable hoops. And with that in mind, no one can argue that more spokes can't/won't build a stronger wheel. The people who design, market and build wheels certainly agree. Every company that markets a wheel for 'heavier' use, uses more spokes than they do in their comparable "lighter" use wheel. Often without varying the rim or hub.

So sue me. I'm going to build some overkill and get back to cycling again, like I used to.