Have Carbon Rims Made Custom Wheels a Thing of the Past?

[Tricia]

Given his typical spots in SW DC and Arlington County have been taken over by construction it was only a matter of time before he settled into a brick-and-mortar. He's also now working with a bunch of brands and it's easier to do fittings, customer consultations, and builds in a static location.

And I'm willing to bet that VeloFix had a little bit to do with this move.

Funny thing is that when HandyBikes moved to a brick-and-mortar, one of the best local wrenches decided to take her shop mobile, operating from an e-cargo bike. http://www.upshiftdc.com/

That's interesting.

 

[cantunamunch]

I think they are better built these days. Machinery and or hand labour improvements. And they're more expensive. So maybe people are willing to pay for these improvements.

Yep. With eventual convergence to eliminating hand labour entirely, just like car wheels.

The thread topic seems to me to be rather retrospective, so why not look forward instead and anticipate modern zero hand-work wheels and zero spoke adjustability because the spokes are moulded into the rim?

Modern because I'm sure people have preconceptions and biases about last century carrot choppers and tri spoke CF, so why not see if anyone is riding a Silverton that at least looks spoked? Hence my question about Syncros above.

 

[Tony S]

You haven't explained why you think an independent craft wheel builder would be more masterly than an in-house builder employed by Zipp Enve Hunt Princeton Boyd Stans Syncros Lightweight or whoever else makes the rims?

More adaptable to customer wants, I can see, given a sufficiently wide range of customer wishes . More masterly - not sure about that.

This is a good point. I never had a strong personal bias against in-house builders. And now - with several successful years under my belt with an Enve set on my MTB - even less so. However, I'm confident in saying that for a long time the consensus among serious riders was to avoid branded wheelsets. @KevinF's post above is typical of the responses you'd get on this topic. "They don't last" was basically one take, and "the hubs always suck" was another.

 

[Rudi Riet]

I'd say for 90 percent of riders out there a factory-built set of wheels is exactly what they need. Wheels from ENVE, HED, Industry 9, Hunt, Neugent, Rolf, Fulcrum/Campagnolo, Roval, Shimano, Mavic, and others still work well for a lot of riders, and for good reason: the bang-for-the-buck is good. On some lower-end sets the compromises will be in bearing durability and/or quality (e.g. steel vs. ceramic), hub weight, freehub actuation, spoke count, spoke type, etc. And the tradeoff of wheel weight vs. weigh capacity is still there: the superlight factory-built wheels mostly aren't rated for a total ride+bike weight over 220 pounds/100 kilograms.

For the other 10 percent custom is probably best. Think of bikepackers, folks on the higher end of the body mass spectrum, retro setups, and the like: there aren't a lot of factory setups that fit the bill. To wit: I know of many custom builders who get carbon rims and pair them with ultralight spokes and higher-end hubs to build to a rider's exact needs.

The wheels on my older road bike are custom-built on Campagnolo Chorus hubs (super easy to maintain, still using cup-and-cone ball bearings) with Sapim X-Ray spokes and Velocity A23 rims. They're not the lightest but they're on a par with Mavic Ksyrium Elites, differing only by 20 grams, but are much more comfortable as they have 32 spokes at a lighter tension than the 20 spoke Mavics. If a spoke snaps they're not likely to go super out-of-true. They handle washboard gravel without transmitting all the roughness to my body (note that tire choice and pressure play into this as well).

My backup wheels for this bike: Mavic Aksiums. They're heavier but they do just fine with proper care (the older Mavic freehubs develop play all too easily due to planned wear).

But the wheels on my Moots are a factory built wheelset from QBP: Shimano 105 R7000 hubs, DT Swiss spokes and DT Swiss R500db rims. They're not the lightest but given I take the Moots on almost any kind of surface they're built for the long haul. I'm thinking of getting a second set of wheels for this bike, and they'll likely be custom built with a mix of Industry 9 hubs and either HED, H+SON, or Astral rims, spokes TBD but likely butted and probably 24 front, 28 rear. Sure, I could get something factory-built but the cost will likely be the same and the weight similar.

 

[PowHog]

The need for a custom built wheel set has gone down over the years with manufacturers significantly improving and enhancing their line-ups, particularly making Carbon wheels more affordable and thus mainstream.

That said I still run an elder custom tubular wheel set built from 45 Enve rims and Tune hubs. It's fun and light AF.