Originally Posted by
carlos danger
Back in the good old days they raced on 36 spoke wheels because that was the only thing that could handle the stress.
now its like 18/20 spokes front and rear or at most a 24 in the rear. and sometimes they use alu for the spokes. lets just say these things aren't really built to last. they are pretty much disposable.
Back in the good old days, they kept building frames with level top tubes despite the fact that dropping the seat cluster a few inches gives you a stiffer and lighter frame with a better ride, because they only made seatposts so long, because they only made frames with level top tubes. Because traditionalism. Bike tech was behind the times for decades until the 90s.
They could almost certainly have made wheels strong enough for most riders in 24/28 using the same rim sections (at least down to a 420g clincher), but they just weren't that into optimising back in the day (it was an ad-hoc backyard practice, remember drillium?). The way a wheel hangs together, it either works or it doesn't - riding stresses actually reduce the tension on spokes.
In fact, high numbers of spokes are actually responsible for spoke breakages, in a way - the more spokes, the lower tension they're at. How do you prevent spoke breakages? High tension, because fatigue is what gets them. Wheels with lower spoke counts have no choice but to have high and even tension and therefore are automatically built to a higher standard. I've inspected dozens of pairs of Shimano's 16/20 wheelsets, and never found a loose spoke.
But hey, if you want to rag on hubs using cartridge bearings, I'm happy to jump on board.