Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 9,797
Likes: 1,763
From: Northern California
Bikes: Cheltenham-Pedersen racer, Boulder F/S Paris-Roubaix, Varsity racer, '52 Christophe, '62 Continental, '92 Merckx, '75 Limongi, '76 Presto, '72 Gitane SC, '71 Schwinn SS, etc.
Too much tension (times spoke count) can potato-chip a singlewall rim on the truing stand, and even 36h dbl-walled rims could suffer the same.
I once pulled an eyelet out of a Module-E rim at about 100kg, but it happened months later while just sitting in storage.
The other day I added a mere 2mm spacer to the right side of my new SR Maxima's Superbe Pro rear axle to accomodate a wider-spaced Uniglide freewheel having better ratios replacing a U-6 freewheel.
After dishing and equi-tensioning, I ended up with a uniform 80kg on the driveside, and that is plenty for the Araya narrow clincher rim. Be assured that this is better tension than OEM bike wheels almost ever come with or came with.
I bought generic carbon wheels recently having 24 spokes on the rear wheel. Drive-side tension was only 70kg, and not particularly uniform at that!
High-grade, low-spoke-count carbon wheels often have their very thin spokes tensioned up around 140kg, off-road wheels like this take a real beating for years without problems. Usually they are brought to me when the nipples start failing from corrosive sealant having entered the rim cavity, and it's a lot of work removing all of the crumbly nipples while saving the expensive spokes for my re-assembling.