Originally Posted by
Squeezebox
I'm not trying to say that I know more about wheels than the Trek engineers know and have tested. Those guys get paid well to know more than I do. Sure I was surprised at 28 spokes. My road bicycle does very well with 20/24 radial. Another example, look at the spoke count on some of the tandems now-a-days. I was surprised about that also. I trust that Trek knows what they are doing.
Trek outfits commuter and ebikes with 32 spokes, yet what is supposed to be a heavy duty go anywhere offroad adventure bike has 28.
A couple things in response to your post.
- Those who spec a product often times do so within a price range and/or image. Perhaps a higher quality wheel was cost prohibitive. Perhaps a higher quality wheel wouldnt meet the company's marketing look. I have no idea, those are just guesses, but they are the only things I can think of since outfitting it with 28 instead of 36 or at worst 32 is just so odd.
- Why would you trust that Trek knows what they are doing? If ever ignorance was bliss, this is that time. Please dont ask me to list the thousands of times when a company's design team created a flawed or faulty product. I could list a dozen in the bike industry off the top of my head, and way more if I actually looked them up. Cars which start on fire. Cars which dont turn. Toys which melt. Toxic materials which leech.
Those are all fatal flaws in products and all we are talking about is a poorly spec'd bike, so not even some fatal flaw. Thousands of bikes are poorly spec'd. Often times its because of a cost constraint, but at $2000, this shouldnt be due to cost.
My wife's new Cdale had terrible brake pads. I mean awful. They were poorly spec'd. I switched them. Based on your logic, Cdale engineers knew what they were doing and I should have kept the originals. Thatd be pretty absurd in my mind.