Originally Posted by Caincando1
Man you guys are scaring the crap out of me with all this talk about wheels. My LBS(Trek, GF, C-dale, LeMond) doesn't seem to concerned about throwing me on any wheel in the shop. These people have been doing this for a long time and know there stuff, and I've told them what I weigh(320) and they assure me that they've dealt with much bigger. They said that the two brand of wheels that come on most of their bikes(I forget the brand, bontrager and something else) have no weight limit and they've had little or no failure with guys my size. They also said to not be concerned with spoke count, they said it's the rim and how it's built that mean more. In fact one of the sales guy goes 240 ish and is running a 12 spoke wheel and has over 1000 miles on them already. In fact the weekend before he completed a one day 400 mile round trip ride
The Trek folks are VERY proud of their wheels, and they back them well. So if the shop is telling you that you are going to be fine, trust 'em on it. Mine said the same, and after it became apparent that I was too hard/big for the stock wheels, Trek gave a refund for my rear wheel and the LBS built me a new one. That's right, even though my size caused the wheel to bust spokes and go out of true, they still gave me a monetary refund for it.
In fact, they have some lighter 28h wheels on their MTB's that apparently are "stupid" strong. Strong enough that after seeing me they still let me take that "stupid strong" wheel attached to a stupidly expensive MTB out on a stupidly rough off-road course. And, lo and behold, true as the second I left when I got back.
Take 'em on their word, but also common sense tells me to avoid anything less than 28 spokes.