Replacement wheels for heavy rider

[foo on patrol]

No idea why anyone would not buy sealed bearings hubs - no one needs should need to own and know how to use cone spanners in 2021

Because Shimano's cup and cone hubs are actually sealed from the elements much better than so called sealed cartridge bearings. From my experience they last much longer than cartridges. Replacement bearings if ever needed are just loose balls and don't require special tools for extraction or pressing for installation as with cartridges. The quality of cartridge bearings varies enormously from absolute garbage to very good. High quality ball bearings are cheap and readily available.
Many of Shimano's higher end hubs don't require cone spanners. They utilise a system of an indexed, knurled cone and lock nut slotted interface. Very simple to adjust perfectly.
I'd take quality cup and cones in preference to cartridges any day.

I have Shimano hubs that are 45yrs old and roll almost as good as the Dur-ace hubs that I have now, so yes, I'm with you on how good and simple they are.

Foo

[Duck!]

Campagnolo/Fulcrum (they're basically the same) hubs unintentionally display the discrepancy between cup & cone and cartridge bearings, because they use both in some levels of hubs. The cup & cone bearings used in the main hub shell are very long-lived and smooth rolling, basically plain bloody awesome. However the freewheel bodies use cartridge bearings which crap themselves pretty frequently. A disintegrated $15 cartridge bearing can write off a $200 freewheel body because it's so bloody hard to get the remnant of the offending bearing out.

[henno]

Keen to hear an extended review of the R42SE. Kotavelo seem to be exceptional value and I'm almost keen to try one of their models as an experiment.

Well here it is: years and years and thousands and thousands of KMs later and they are still great. Sure, they aren't the lightest thing going around but what is a few hundred grams at 6'2" and 100kg.

Genuinely one of my best bike purchases. I even overload it slinging a heavy pannier rack and gear on the back for the work commute and the rear is still as true as true gets after all this time. I went from having to true up every other month to not touching them at all.