Do the concerns about carbon frames extend to carbon wheels?
-Cliff
Funny I never really thought about it in this context myself until you asked that. (Odd)
But
Wheels are a different animal; they are radial, not lateral; they have load bearing spokes; and they are highly scrutinized from a design side. They were a lot harder to perfect but now they are seemingly stronger or perhaps more forgiving than carbon frames. People are also much less inclined to ride around on damaged wheel's versus a damaged. Although the a carbon wheel can explode; not sure if that's worse than an aluminum one folding over.
So You won't catch me riding a noname super low cost set of them. But I have no problem riding a quality set, and many people do well with the mid price ones if the supplier is well vetted, as David is point out above some are well know. It's the "named knock offs" that you have to beware of.
I also find my self more inclined to inspect my wheels than I do my frame which is just dumb but it's the way I personally am. I logged about 500 road mile recently and two days after I completed a 140 mile ride I finally noticed that both my front and read brakes had become loose with ¼ inch of play and needed some serious lock tite white added to the bolts. I probably did 80+ miles with brakes about to fall off the bike. That would never happen with my wheels because I'm always ispecting them because I expect them to fail.
The real advantage on carbon wheels is you can get them Aero but then shape them to handle the cross winds far better than metal deep v rims. There's always the Aluminum wheels with carbon fairing for those that are nervous about.
