I’m about to push the button on some new hope hoops. I’m about 13 stone and mainly ride Yorkshire dales moorland routes with the odd trail centre. Which rims would people recommend from experience? Crest, DT XR400 or Flow?

Also do hope hoops come with QR skewers?

Ta

They do not normally come with skewers.

Have you concisered Arch rims?

are you definately running them tubeless ? If not I’d go with Mavic 719’s

crests if you don’t regularly ding wheels, arch ex if you’re a bit clumsy and flows if you’re a certified wheel abuser.

DT and mavic, whilst doing some tasty looking wheels appear to have given up on normal rim development.

and no, no skewers.

Initially won’t be running them tubeless, might try it in the future? Only rim options I have are – Crest, DT XR400 or Flow.

I am slightly lighter than you and ride mainly natural Scottish stuff. Last month I was about to buy Hope/Crests and run with tubes, but got put off by horror stories of bent tyre levers etc trying to get tyres on. Went with Hope/719’s, built up by LBS for same price as the Merlin deal.

personally found crest to be a good front wheel but a little fragile for rear, I’d be wary of putting one on the back of an FS*, flows are probably overkill for “normal” riding tho.

Still got a very old dt4.2 which afaik is pretty much the same as the 400, again front wheel only, was good at the time but you can get wider lighter and strong enough (no idea if they are ultimately stronger or not) rims now.

If you can mix I’d go for flow rear and crest front. Unless you are clumsy or have DH aspirations crest should be ok.

*but I have a tendency to mash the back end into big rocks, ymmv.

I’m 14st and run Crests on my Rockhopper.
They’ve held up OK despite taking abit more abuse than they’re intended for but given the choice again I’d probably have to go tougher. If the rear gets too far out of true, then I’ll probably rebuild with an ArchEX.
FlowEX would probably have been overkill on that bike.

The Flow EX is great and I have it on both my Five and Patriot but it’s more rim than you’d need for what you’ve described.

Executive summary : flows

I’m 11.5 stone and have been happy on the crest for many years (hope hoops).

I ride light though and tend not to plough through things and hit things.

The crests are great with normal setup or tubeless. I’m using standard tyres and the rim strips so it is fairly cheap. If you want to fit narrow tyres at any point then the flows are wide. My crests happily take a 2.4 tubeless.

Personally I would go with either of the stan’s options. 719s aren’t much stronger than crest’s (I have a set of those as well) and are harder to set up tubeless (although not difficult particularly). I doubt the Flows are heavier than the 719s so you get a stronger rim for the same weight.

Go and check hte weights. From memory the flows aren’t heavy compared to Mavics or DT rims so would not be a compromise in that respect. They do give you very easy tubeless options in the future and probably a stronger rim.