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On a hardtail. The front's got less weight on it, a suspension fork and a bit more care about where it's placed compared to the back. It seems like a pretty sensible idea to have different strength wheels front and back. I think I remember reading Sheldon Brown saying that if the front and rear are the same, either the front will be overbuilt, or the back will be underbuilt.
No-one seems to talk about doing this though. You certainly don't see it on complete bikes for sale with different wheel builds.
Why?
Are people worried about different tyre profiles ruining the handling? Keen on savings from a buying a pair?
Or just deeply suspicious of things that don't match?
For me, the first answer would be tht cosmetically it wouldn't match. However, i love what my flow rim does to the tyre profile so I wouldn't want to lose that on the front. As for the rear being under built or the front being over built, it makes sense for normal riding, like you say, the rear gets the hammer. however, when i crash, it seems to be the front that really takes the beating so maybe overbuilt isn't such a bad thing!
cause it would look gash.
I used to run a 517 on the front with a 521 out back.
As I'm less concerned with cosmetics than some of the tarts on here 🙂 I generally do have a tougher rear wheel when I'm getting custom wheels eg 217+521, dt4.2+819 But as you say full bikes tend to have matching pairs. Some mavic rear wheels have more spokes than the matching front i think
i see the logic of having the stronger wheel out back. but i'd rather have the wider rim up front.
yes
i have stronger rims and/or more spoke count at the back than at the front on all my bikes.
That makes a lot of sense, but I end up doing it the other way round - having a wider (and stronger?) rim on the front because I like a wider tyre there.
More spokes at the back is a great idea though, eddie11.