I want a robust rear wheel for touring
 

I have been on three tours with my 32-spoke rear wheel (on a Windsor Tourist) but can't stop worrying about it when riding fully loaded. I'm concerned about breaking a spoke. I think I would like to upgrade to a more robust touring-specific rear wheel (I guess with 36 spokes) but am not sure how to go about ordering one. The bike is 700 x 38 with disc brakes. Any recommendations about how to find and order a suitable wheel?

I just run 28 spoke gravel wheels for numerous month long tours. I am well into Clydesdale category no issues. Wheel technologies have changed substantially thus the lack of high spoke count wheels out there. Bring a spare spoke or two if you are nervous. Rather than bringing a cassette cracker just use DT hubs and you can pull cassette off by hand if needed for spoke replacement.

LBS might have a wheelbuilding service. If not, they could recommend you to one. You could get a 4 cross 36 spoke wheel if you wanted, but as Atlas Shrugged says, that could be overkill. Only reason I could think of is if you wanted to use a super thin gauge spoke and wanted some stiffness back. On a properly built wheel, spokes break from fatigue at the head and nipple and a thinner butted spoke will flex more in the middle and less at the ends leading to longer life.

Have you actually broken a spoke ever, or are you just fretting?

Three fully-loaded tours sound like good evidence that your wheels are up to the task. If you've got the urge to "do something" I would take your wheels to a trusted wheelbuilder and have them check the true, make sure the spoke tension is adequate and even, and do a good stress-relieving.

I would say that it’s only evidence that the wheels are up to the task so far. Fatigue is cumulative. Buttressing the spokes by increasing the diameter of the head…i.e. using triple butted spokes…goes a long way towards increasing the time it takes for fatigue to start taking its toll.

Velocity makes rear wheels with 40 spokes. https://www.velocityusa.com/home/
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3e50779fb7.jpg

This.

Personally I'd rather have 36 spokes for loaded touring, but the most important thing on any wheel is that the spokes are properly tensioned. Get the wheels to a good wheelbuilder and have them trued and tensioned, and you should have nothing to worry about. It's important to realize that not every bike shop has a good wheel guy.

If getting a new wheel would make you feel better, get one. You do not want to worry about your equipment on a tour.

I do not recall if the Windsor Tourist has a 135mm rear dropout spacing or 130mm. If it is 135mm, that is better as the rear wheel has less dish. If I recall correctly, the WIndsor Tourist frame is steel, if so and if the rear wheel is 130mm, you can pull the stays apart when you put a 135mm wheel into the frame. It is my understanding however that you should not do that with aluminum frames, but some feel that you can, on that topic I do not think there is common consensus. My point is that if you can use a 135mm rear wheel, I would do that. I have been running a 135mm rear wheel in my rando bike which has a frame with 130mm dropout spacing ever since I built up that bike eight years ago.

I have Velocity Dyad rims on my light touring bike, very happy with them. Get it with 36 spokes. That is not a tubeless rim, but I suspect you are not using tubeless tires.

On this forum Cyccommute has often suggested a specific spoke for extra strength, ask him. A big bike shop with a good size repair shop should have a competent wheel builder on staff. Some suggest four cross, but that is not needed, use three cross lacing pattern.

Modern hubs are all pretty good. For my light touring bike I wanted an XT hub with a steel axle, quarter inch ball bearings. I have been using those for almost two decades without any trouble. Shimano M756A model number, that is a disc type hub but if you have rim brakes, you can still use a disc type hub.

If getting a new wheel makes you more comfortable on a tour, you will enjoy the tour more.

This, although... How do you find a trusted wheelbuilder? I ran across three on a cross-country trip, but I don't know if they're still where they were back then. I've even had "the best wheel man in town" detension a good wheel so he could true it easier.

My recommendation is to buy the tools and the book (The Bicycle Wheel) and learn how to do it yourself. Short of that, ride your bike until a problem pops up.

I'd suggest that on a cross country tour you probably are looking for someone to replace one or maybe multiple spokes and tensioning those spokes to bring the wheel back to true. That doesn't necessarily require a master wheelbuilder. Certainly you are in a position where you have to settle for what you have available unless you can do it yourself.
​​​​​​That may not be a terrible approach if he built the wheel building tension in layers as Sheldon Brown used to say. If you wound up with a well trued wheel with even tension that was nicely stress relieved that might have been a great way to go.

I don't know that particular book, but learning to build your own wheels is a good idea. I have heard some folks practiced by taking old wheels apart and putting them back together, It doesn't sound like a bad way to practice some skills. That or just detensioning an old wheel and retightening and truing it up. If you can do that reliably and have some spare spokes you will have some confidence on tour.

There were suggestions to replace it, and suggestions to keep using it.

If you decide to keep using your existing wheel, buy a Fiber Fix emergency spoke and carry that on tour. If you break a spoke, you can use that to repair your wheel until you get to a good bike shop. I got mine at Amazon, but they apparently do not have any at this time.
https://www.google.com/search?client...eplacement-Kit

Then you can feel better about your wheel that if a spoke goes, you can fix it temporarily on tour until you get to a bike shop. A Fiber Fix spoke is cheaper than the tools to remove and install a cassette, so it is a very low budget option too.

There are a few youtube videos to watch on how to use it. Here is one.

It is also possible to put it on the drive side without removing the cassette, I think that is included in the paper instructions.

I built up most of my own wheels, thus I knew the lengths of spokes and bought spares when I built the wheels. But I bought my road bike as a complete bike, thus I did not know my spoke lengths to carry spares on a tour. So, I bought a Fiber Fix instead. Odds are I will never use it, but I feel better to have it if I go on a long ride like a brevet.

I am 5'-6" and 135 pounds with a minimum amount of gear and was touring around Durango Colorado a few years ago on my Windsor Tourist with 36 spoked wheels and had several spokes break in short succession. I think they are spec'd with really low grade (stainless) spokes.
I ended up going crazy and built a 48 spoked rear wheel. I probably should have replaced them with (stronger) D.T. spokes., as I do not believe I have ever broken a D.T. spoke.

That's fair, and I suppose I was "asking" for someone to respond along these lines. :) A rear wheel with more spokes, double- or triple-butted, and carefully built, would certainly be better.

But at the same time, I have a bunch of wheels with straight-gauge spokes in the collection, some of them used for many thousands of miles before I re-tensioned and stress-relieved them, and I still wonder if anything will actually go wrong with them in my lifetime. Out of morbid curiosity, I'll be leaving them configured as-is. :lol:

One of the engineering dictums I've been hearing for years: "Better" is the enemy of "good enough."

Yep. When I first learned the term "satisficer", I was so relieved that there was recognition for those of us who just want to spend a little time picking a good option, and then get on with life. :thumb:

Okey dokey but here are some questions
How much do you weigh
How much weight of gear do you carry
Two panniers only on back? Any weight on front?
Have you had any problems on your 3 previous tours?
Have you ever had the spokes tensioned at a shop?

Devil is in the details Mr bjorn

I have a Tourist as well, and had the same issue with the rear wheel. Several spokes broke. Had the rear wheel re-built. Apparently fairly common with the machine built wheels the Tourist has. Some commented that the first thing to do when purchasing that bike is to throw out the pedals and rebuild the wheels.

your experience is unusual compared to my experiences over the last nearly 35 years of touring and riding regularly commuting with heavy panniers.
It is highly likely that your wheels were not tensioned properly and gradually lost tension , or the wheelset had other issues (bad tensioning, not true etc etc) as I have ridden for years and years on similar wheels with no issues at all.

most riders I know buy a bike and never have the spokes checked for tension, which as most wheels are machine built and can be just so so tension wise, its fairly common over time for them to not be at their best.

someone our weight and not touring with a 100lbs of stuff on a bike should absolutely not need a 48 spoked wheel--again, I'm just comparing my experiences to yours.

also, some riders are just hard on things, never unweight a bike when going into potholes or whatever, or ride hard and fast into holes, jump off curbs etc. Not saying you do this, but I know lots of riders who are like this and have no clue that they are making life hard for their wheels.

After I started breaking spokes on my Fuji Touring (allegedly the same as the Windsor Tourist), I ran across Jobst Brandt's recommendations and increased the spokes' tension (either 1/4 or 1/2 turn on drive side, it's been many years). That, and the pair-spoke squeezing (stress relief) was enough to keep the wheels going for 5-10 years.

Supposedly the wheel building machines today have better capabilities built in, but I don't know if those fancy machines are used to build lower level bikes. Ever since I bought a spoke tensiometer, I've touched all my new wheels, and most of them needed some extra tension to carry this clydesdale.

I weigh 185 lbs. I carry about 30(maybe more? Never weighed) lbs on my rear panniers and don’t have front panniers. Never broke a spoke, but paranoid. I had the wheel tensioned by my LBS before my most recent tour last month.

No. Perfect is the enemy of the good. Any engineer with his salt will make something “better” if possible and especially if better materials and equipment comes along. The whole point of “something better coming along” is because some engineer thought they could make an improvement.

Thing is that I’ve done exactly the same experiment and found that there is something better that lasts longer without the hassle of carrying extra spokes or trying to replace spokes on the side of the road. Been there, done that far too many times.

People keep making the same assumption…that somehow the “build” isn’t right…when it comes to spoke breakage. It isn’t. Pillar Spokes has actually done the measurement of spoke strength and the results are very clear. Double butted spokes are stronger than straight gauge spokes and triple butted are significantly stronger than either. This article explains why. Eric Hjertberg isn’t just some smuck who blogs on wheels, by the way. He is the founder of Wheelsmith and knows a thing or two about spokes, wheels, and wheel building. This article links to his 1986 Bicycling Magazine article series that I used to teach myself how to build wheels…and I still refer to it. I’ve largely pirated it for my classes on wheel building that I teach at my local co-op.

I reiterate my suggestion to buy a Fiber Fix spoke if you keep using your wheel. That is a very good low budget contingency plan. And if you never use it, that is even better.

It is better than nothing, but I'd suggest if bothering to carry anything carrying actual spare spokes and a Unior cassette tool or similar. The reason I say this is that often it is more than one spoke broken before it is noticed that there is a problem. Also IME on higher spoke count wheels (like 32 and above) you can generally get a wheel to run true enough to make it to the next town with a bike shop even with one spoke missing. When I have bothered to carry something it has been a Unior tool and spare spokes.

I will grant that the fiberfix has the advantage of universal fit so it will fit any position on your bike, your buddy's bike, or some guy you meet on the road's bike. No harm in throwing one in the tool kit, but if you really want to be able to fix any likely wheel issues take the cassette tool and spare spokes..

Hitching a ride to a town with a bike shop isn't likely to be tour ending on multiweek or longer tours. I have needed to hitch a couple times for one reason or another and folks around me have as well. The wait was never all that long. The more remote and lighter the traffic the more likely what little traffic there is will stop to help. So carrying nothing spoke wise wouldn't be that huge of a risk for most places I have toured including very remote roads in the desert SW with just a few cars per day (pretty much every one will stop and help IME).

How "robust" we talkin' about? There are custom wheel shops that will build 48 triple-butted spoke wheels suitable for self-contained tandem touring. Definitively robust, kinda heavy, probably overkill.