Originally Posted by
elcruxio
It's not quite as simple as that. I could easily ride 24 spoke wheels unloaded and I'm heavier than you are. But putting load on the bike changes things quite drastically. You can shift your weight, lighten the front and the back of the bike on bumps, maybe even lift the wheels when there's a really heavy hit. But the load you put on the bike can't. All of the gear you put on the bike is going to be hitting directly at the wheels on every bump, hole, ridge and unevenness you ride over. If you pack very lightly this might not be an issue, if you pack heavy it's going to be a problem. Also taking weight off the wheels becomes much, much harder to do when you have even a small load on the bike. All of that contributes to wheels wearing down and that's why more spokes on a tour bike is the consensus.
Well, I will be a guinea pig....if I have to push my bike miles and miles because of a wheel failure..you can say "I told you so". I will weigh my rear panniers and trunk bag and video tape it and post the stuff on this board. I had actually called TREK support a couple weeks ago and said I planned to ride my bike 600 plus miles in May and was there any concern for riding with loaded panniers on the 28 spoke rim. He said that as long as the weight of the rear rack wasn't exceeded(50 pounds), it would be fine.I know, they wouldn't probably tell me anything else, but what the heck. To be honest, I had considered doing a trailer with all the hubub about this 28 spoke wheel, but I am looking at it as an experiment at this point.