Originally Posted by
FastJake
I've seen brass nipples get stuck and not be able to be adjusted but I've never seen them crack and turn to dust. Like the aluminum nipples on the 6 year old bike I just bought (and on plenty of other wheels). It needs a new rear hub and I tried loosening them. Most of them just disintegrated. The rest of the bike has no rust or corrosion anywhere.
It's foolish and pointless to use them on anything but a dry-weather racing bike.
32 brass nipples weigh ~30g, and aluminum weighs ~30% as much as brass. So you're saving what, 21g per wheel? To me that's well worth it when building a wheel, to know that it won't fall apart.
Brass isn’t impervious to salt corrosion. The zinc in the alloy can be preferentially leached out by the salt significantly weakening the spoke. Zinc chloride absorbs water from the atmosphere at amazing levels even going so far as making solutions. In solution is it also acidic which means that it will work on the copper in the brass as well.
Yes, chloride is hard on aluminum as well but both will corrode and lose strength as well as seize over time. I’ve ridden a lot of winters on bikes with aluminum spoke nipples and have few problems. I wouldn’t use square aluminum spokes for the reasons I’ve said above, however.
But we are putting the cart before the horse. MyRedTrek hasn’t said if the bike is all weather or not.