B_Doughtie wrote:
The spokes arent really the issue as so few wheel companies make wheels that aren't compliant that you can pretty much determine if the spoke count is good simply by glancing at a bike. Almost all wheel companies make the approved 16 spokes (I'm having a brain fart but i believe it's 16), and so you can pretty much tell right away if it has that many or if it doesnt. The issues used to wheels within the same company were and weren't legal, and then you had to figure out which wheel was what. Like HED's, not all HED's were approved, etc only certain sets; which made for a very pain in the ass process for both the racer and the officials checking the wheels.....especially if you took the decals off the wheels. So they went away from using the UCI approved wheel list to simply making it no discs, no tri spoke, and same wheel dimensions for both front/rear. Much easier process now, and I think they also have seen so rare of wheel integrity issues that they just sorta allow any set of wheels now.
And the whole thing about the uci approved list- the manufactor had to pay to have the wheels certified testing and thus some companies wanted no part of that- Flo wheels was like that. So for a long time Flo wheels were illegal to use if it had any rim depth below a standard low profile "training wheel"....and yes I saw them before measuring the depth of the rims and arguing over 1-2mm.
Thanks B_Doughtie and others! This matches with what I read in the rulebook. I'm just so used to having a bunch of random rules to follow that it freaked me out.