Chalo wrote:
jim beam wrote

i'm down to 200, & i'm still riding 16 spoke wheels to no detriment.


That depends on what you consider a detriment. Low spoke count wheels
are, at best, no stronger than wheels of equal weight with
conventional spoke counts. They are also more flexible and a lot more
difficult to true and service. They become unrideable from damage
that is tolerable to a conventional wheel.

--All this in exchange for benefits that lie in the range between
unmeasurable and insignificant.

Chalo Colina

well, there's one huge advantage of low spoke count wheels - that of
wind resistance. let's ignore the arguments about "makes no difference
to speed" a moment and look at a much more tangible example. i commute
by bike most days by bike across the golden gate bridge to san
francisco. it's almost always subject to significant cross wind on both
the approaches and on the bridge itself. riding a normal 32 spoke
wheelset, my bike is somewhat squirrely when the wind is bad. riding 16
spoke wheels however, the effect of cross winds is substantially less.
my low spoke wheels are shimano r540's and they have much deeper rims
than my ma3 32 spokers, so if rim alone were the factor, the ma3's would
be the less susceptible ride. given the fact that the r540's are
better, it can only be that the lower wind resistance /is/ a result of
lower spoke count, yes? and i'm not talking a little gust of wind here
- i'm talking gnarly stuff that blows the glasses off your face - as has
happened. trust me, in those conditions, you want wheels which you
/don't/ have to wrestle with the whole way home.