Grahamlund, My touring bikes have Shimano Alivio through LX bits and they're trouble free. So much so that I haven't a good excuse to upgrade anything and I really like upper tier bits on my roadies.

Until I move them to my back-up touring/beater bike I use Sun CR18 rims on Alivio hubs with straight 14 gauge spokes. Not an "ultimate" wheel set, but bullet proof over the last three years.

Gearing is very personal and generally a range of 20-100 GI is the most suggested. Two things to remember is that a FD from a mountain bike group is incompatible with an indexing road group shifter and a DynaSys RD in incompatible with an indexing road group shifter.

Brad