Scenerio #1: The Non-Competitive Rider Who Cares
You are not obsessed with component weight, but you love the way you feel when you ride a tight bike. You are truly tired of the minimally spoked Bontrager, FSA, Shimano, Formula, Fulcrum way-below-race quality wheels that came spec'd on your road, track, or mountain bike.
You are ready to have a decent set of road wheels built for you. You want the option of replacing a broken spoke at just about any bike shop in the world. You ride maybe 6K miles a year for pleasure, your health, your happiness.
Here are some wheelbuilds that might make you way happier than the hoops on which you are riding. All the hubs are listed at manufacturer suggested retail price. Check the manufacturers' website for prices. Unless something is dated or discontinued, most excellent bike components have a set msrp so that the value of the part is controlled by the manufacturer, not your cousin Vinny who might sell the family car for a buck fifty and a can of Colt 45. Is this bogus? Well, it stops Vinny from selling a new Chris King hub set on ebay for $40, and I am OK with that. Spending some money for a King hub set that I am going to beat the hell out of and may probably last 10+ years if I service them when I need to, is fine with me. My chipped cellphone bill will cost me more in 6 months than that new King hubset. No lie.
Pricepoint is great for machine built wheel deals of erratic quality. Maybe you are feeling lucky? Sometimes I see big guys who spend $220 for Ultegra on Open Pros and never have a problem. Then there are the 145-pound guys who bring in the Pricepoint wheels a few times, since the spokes keep breaking. Roll the dice.
Some hubs:
- Chris King Classic Road Hubs
- DTSwiss 240s Road Hubs
- Shimano Hubs
- Campagnolo Hubs
- Phil Wood Hubs
- Paul Component Hubs
- White Industries Hubs
- Your Good Still Useful Hubs Laced to New Rims
Rim costs for high-quality Mavic, Velocity, WTB, DTSwiss rims range from $60 to $80 each (Black usually costs more.) Any other high-quality road, mountain, cross, track rims that make sense laced to a specific hub are also fine. We can get everything. But no expensive pieces of engineering art hubs on hoopdee rims that cost $20 dollars each. Make a baked potato for a few nights, save some money, and get some decent rims. Budget rims on great hubs is not a winning strategy; it is a dumb strategy.
Spokes
Sapim Double Butted 14/15/14 stainless steel in silver or black with polyax brass nipples work fine. we cut them to size with a Phil Wood spoke cutter, the mechanical equivalent of a co-host facility. (Yes, you can do alloy nipples, but unless you intend to change the nipples each year, the mechanic who has to true your wheels is going to tell you at some point that the nipples are frozen. Alloy mates with alloy. And you are going to be up a creek without a paddle. Spoke and nipple weigh 7grams together. Cut off some of your hair if you need to save weight. If you not receiving a payday for your work as pro bike rider, keep your high-quality wheelset easy to true and service. Pros are paid to take equipment risks. The rest of us are just going to end up watching daytime TV on the couch if we stack on a set of untrue, cracked nippled and rimmed wheels.
Scenerio # 2: The Racing Rider Who Needs Speed, Aerodynamics, Light Weight, and Efficiency at the Cost of Practical Service and Value
My thought: It is 20% bike and 80% you. Expensive, impractical wheels have a place in this world. If you can't do anything else that is legal to make yourself ride faster, buy prebuilt, superlight, factory pro-level racing wheelsets. Check out Mavic, Fulcrum (Campagnolo's wheel corp.) Reynolds, Lew, Zipp, Hed, Lightweights, Specialized, Bontrager. Spend at least $1,000, that is the entry point to the world of pricey race wheels. Buy whatever you see the Pros racing on this season. The technology changes season to season. And you take your wallet in your hands when it comes to carbon rims cracking. They do crack, and you rarely get your money back. Those are the breaks if you want to ride on the bleeding edge. Anything handbuilt, including tune hubs with cx-ray spokes on whatever rim is usually not going to have the built-in 2-year insurance policy that Mavic let's me sell for 8% of the wheel purchase price at the time of purchase. Granted, the weight and composite technology of first generation stuff is always a bit scary, and expensive wheels won't make you faster if you are slow. But in the end, you'll usually want something uber light and inelastic. Please save those helpful suggestions for me to build with a lighter spoke and nipple in an effort to make a 2x or 3x wheelset ride like a TdF factory pro-level tubular wheelset. That is goofy. Racing wheels are for racing. They can be, but they are usually not, practical. They are light, aero, and usually require some proprietary item like a spoke, nipple, or wrench that all the tool vendors have sold out of, when something breaks. Have at least a spare set of training wheels if you are going to venture into wheelset high finance. If you are racing at the level where you would be buying a boron this, carbon oriented that way, secret spy bonded that, or magnesium whoha, you already know all of this. I stock and am happy to order whatever set of racing hoops you saw on Versus's coverage of the TdF and dream about riding to a podium place.
