230# + bike = 260# ready to ride. My wheel set is a Shimano RS10 with 16/20 spokes.
4K or so miles with no problems. None. However, I've never hit a pothole, jumped a curb or anything like that. The roads around here are smooth. If I were to consider another set of wheels it would be the Shimano Ultegra 6800s because they are lighter. I have enormous respect for Shimano's engineering and construction quality; their wheels are superb.
I plan on building a loaded tourer starting with a Surly Disc Trucker frame. I'll use Shimano MTB wheels for that.
I have a lot of experience in the motorcycle world including their wheels. Before motorcycles, I studied, built & tuned bicycle wheels. My experience indicates that broken spokes are almost always a result of flexing at the elbow of the 'J' bend. This flexing, in turn, is due to loose spokes. By loose I mean that the spoke elbow can and does move in the hub's spoke hole causing large peak loads that can quickly fatigue an already stressed and perhaps weakened part of the spoke.
A sufficiently tensioned wheel does not allow relative movement between the spoke head (elbow/J-bend) and the spoke hole and its spokes do not break.
Harley-Davidson uses J-bend spokes and has had more than a little trouble with their aluminum-hubed wheels breaking them. First, they were not tensioning the spokes enough to prevent load cycling movement and, secondly, the soft alloy hubs were deforming around the spoke holes such that the spokes were losing tension. They never had this problem with their old steel hubs.
On the other hand, I have never, ever seen a BMW with loose spokes, never had to true one and I have been working on them for more than fifty years. All BMW wheels use straight spokes with no bends (we used to call them 'nail-head' spokes). All BMW wheels use aluminum hubs and rims. All of them have (or had) a small steel reinforcing plate between the spoke head and hub. They are the most reliable motorcycle wheels I know of.
I do not believe that my 16/20-spoked wheels would carry my fat (230#) ass around if they were made with J-bend spokes. In any case, I have no intention of personally discovering the truth of the matter. If I wish to add flex to my wheels, I'll do it with spoke diameter selection and cross pattern, not wiggling the J-bend in a hub's spoke hole. Straight spokes are superior to those with bent ends in a couple of ways, but, are not versatile. Straight spokes cannot be mixed and matched between hubs & rims; the hubs, rims and spokes must be machined to fit together.
Joe
Oh Yeah, regarding Jobst: He got most things right but not all. I can't understand how he thinks gyroscopic forces have little more than a minor roll in bicycle stability. He was occasionally bone-headed.
Last edited by Joe Minton; 05-02-15 at 10:20 PM.