Perhaps a realistic comparison of weights carried (and riders) would be useful?
I know what you are both saying, but I try to be careful with the language I use. I was careful to not say that I think it's wrong or a bad idea, but instead suggest that maybe 32 hole wheels are not as fragile as suggested? I know overall weights will be different, but I doubt by much, I weigh 72kg and fully loaded along with 2 litres of water I'm probably not that shy of 95 kg all in, adding in 11 kilo's of bike and you have over a 100 kilos. My main point of comparison though, was that I use my bike much more roughly, that 100 odd kilos is thrown around on some pretty rugged old ground, much more so than the smooth gravelly surface of bike tracks and such like.
I don't want to turn it into a debate though, I wasn't trying to say anyone was wrong, just offer up my experience and leave it up to others to decide if it was relevant or not.
There's also the fact that your wheel(s) were rebuilt. (Did you do that yourself? - sorry, more curiosity
) I'm a fan of that, myself.
The rear wheel was slightly out of true, but weirdly the spoke tension was all over the place, with some loose and others tight. Efforts to true the wheel only exacerbated the uneven tension problem. So one evening I popped the wheel on my homemade truing jig and undid all the spokes back to a known point, i.e where the threads started showing. Then I retensioned the whole wheel. So not a complete re-lace, just a re-tension and tue. I have re-laced some wheels, just not on the Kona.
Whatever you decide to do though dimrub, enjoy that bike, Kona Sutra's are well regarded touring bikes for a good reason. The're well built and I find mine to be super comfy, both loaded and unloaded. I wish you many miles of happy adventures with yours.
