Some wheels are more durable than others, but no wheels are forever. If you ride wheels until they fail, then all your wheels will strand you sometime or another. Just decide what compromise of weight, durability and cost you are comfortable with and go for it.

All wheels will eventually fail ie break a spoke or have it go through the rim but a bike should still be ridable with a broken spoke. I've ridden a 32 spoke wheel with a broken spoke and all I had to do was open the brake. With a 20 spoke aksium it was not able to be ridden even with adjustments and a spoke wrench. That is unacceptable to me. My friend had a Ksyrium hub fail at only 4k miles and leave him stranded (close to home fortunately). I'll stick with 32 spoke wheels.

SO far I'm looking at TheBikeHub store's Kinlin XR200's 32 spoke rear with their generic hub and Dan's Comp sells Sapim double butted spokes for 0.40 each. I may need to purchase an Aksium just as a backup to get me through the rest of the season. This wheel build is more of a winter project.

Why should a wheel be rideable with a broken spoke? Why should a bike be any different than a car. I mean, it isn't wrong, but it isn't necessary either. You have a problem, you get help.

But don't get me wrong. I support your decision completely. If that is what works for you, that is what you should do. Personally I value the low spoke wheel more than the assurance of being able to get home. I can deal with a little inconvenience.

You can get Laser spokes for not much more. They are far superior to regular double butted spokes. Much more durable besides being much lighter.

Seriously********** Maybe for you Houstonites, but out here in the mountains some of the best places to ride there is no reliable cell service--mountain peaks and all...

Exactly. I was fortunate to be able to pay someone with a pickup truck some cash to take me 30 miles back to my car. Where I broke down even Uber wasn't available. If I had been someplace really remote the result could have been life threatening.

You guys probably know this, but with respect to being stranded due to a breakdown, the AAA in the US and the CAA in Canada will rescue you and your bike if it's a mechanical breakdown. Might be worth the cost of membership. The car that I bought last year comes with free roadside assistance but I kept my CAA membership active for when I'm on the bike.

Worst case of broken spokes I had was touring on a cheap CCM "10-speed" in my late teens, with a friend, between Fort Erie and Niagara Falls. Bike was laden with packs. One rear spoke broke, I went a few km. Another broke, went a few more km. When the 6th broke, the wheel completely warped and jammed in the stays. A good samaritan took me the rest of the way to Niagara Falls where we camped and I where I found a bike shop to repair the wheel.

I'm now a wee bit on the heavy side (195 lbs) and a broken spoke significantly increases the load on the others.

Or, you could just train on wheels built for reliability and not have to worry about it all together... Good everyday wheels are the ones you don't have to think much about.

I want to know more about these broken Mavic wheels. Mavic's aren't known for being particularly light, or particularly aero, or having great hubs, but they are known to be overbuilt and solid wheels that last years. You're more likely to wear out a brake track or bearings on a Mavic than have issues with spokes breaking or pulling through. (As an aside, a good shop has Ksyrium spokes in stock. The wheels are so common that it makes sense for a shope to have a few spokes on hand. I know my LBS does.)

I'm curious, how exactly this issue happened? Did you hit something?

I'm sure there was a bar within a few hundred yards.

I ordered a set a 28 spoke Velocity A23/Origen formula hub wheels from Velomine. 28 is close enough to 32 and I need to get back in the game. For $200 I can't come close to building a set for that.

Nope I was riding and heard a ping and thought I deflected a rock then all of the sudden felt something was wrong and when I checked it out the spoke had pulled through and just touching it came right out along with a small circular chunk of the rim surrounding the spoke. Wheel came with the bike and had 12k miles. No ammount of adjustment could make the wheel ridable.

My friend has a Ksryium Equippe S which came with his. He was just riding along with the club and heard a ping. The hub had cracked on the drive side between two spoke sections (a large section was cracked and separated). He only had 4k miles on it. I was going to take his rim but found a small hairline crack on both sides of an eyelet/spoke-hole on the drive side so even if his hub wouldn't have failed the same thing would have happened to him as me.

Over-tensioned spokes?