Originally Posted by
roseml
What do you mean have their wheels gone over? It's a new bike. You mean to look for factory defects?
It comes with a wide tire by default, but I was thinking I'd switch it to thinner road tires and put the thicker ones on it when I'm going off-road. Bad idea?
what makes a given wheelset strong are a number of factors, the spokes, the rim, and a new bike has wheels made generally by a machine , that may be or may not be well done tension wise etc. After riding the bike for a while, it works the spokes and so before your trip, not a few days, but a number of weeks or whatever, you want a good mechanic who builds wheels and knows wheels, to go over the tensions and possibly tighten things up a bit.
This will mean that the wheel is as strong as it can be, given the various parts factors.
How you treat the wheel re weight on it, tires, tire pressures, how you ride into and over bumpy stuff, holes etc etc etc will be a big big factor too, but making sure by a real person who knows touring wheel that the spoke tensions are good will always go a long way to hopefully reducing wheel problems down the road.
I dont remember what tires the sutra comes with, but again, my opinion is that wider is better for rough roads. But then one persons wider is another persons narrow, but thats a whole other topic, and you can get into that topic and tire choice when and if you do this trip.