Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Rim weight has nothing...or very little...to do with wheel strength. Rim breakage is a rather rare occurence and usually results from having the spokes too tight or too loose. How often do you hear someone complaining about a rim breaking? How often do you hear about spoke breakage?....
Correctly built wheels don't break spokes.
When a correctly built wheel fails, it's due to hitting large obstacles (potholes, curbs etc). The failure I am speaking of is permanent out-of-true rim, not breakage.
Heavier rims directly correlate with resistance to deflection when hitting obstacles. This assumes modern design, any of the rims I listed are correctly designed so the weight does correctly with increased resistance to permanent deflection.
Thicker spokes also strenghten a wheels resistance to permanent deflection due to potholes/curbs.
I've built over 1000 wheels and even built Lon Haldemen's 24 spoke wheels he rode in RAAM.