I have 27" wheels on my 72 Falcon commuter. I carry my laptop, cloths, lunch and papers in my panniers so the bike wieghs about 50 lb loaded. I weight 170. After 4000 commuting km, the original rear wheel gave out. It started popping spokes and the rim developed some unrepairable flat spots. I didn't figure the wheel would last too long because when I got the bike, the spokes had lost a lot of thier tension from sitting idle for 30 years. They would ping and flex when I really put down the power on them. I tensioned the spokes but they were already pretty weak. I built a new rim around the original hubs with new spokes last summer and all has been well since. I'm still running the original front wheel/hub/spokes without any problems.