Got a pair of CL25’s as road wheels. 30mm tyres so 80 psi max and this was confirmed as fine by the importers.
Just notice splits from at least 5 spoke holes. Each side of affected hole heading around the rim. Bemused as well as upset. Any thoughts. Road use only , now potholes espcially since the they were last cleaned and found ok.
Pricey to replace so any suggestions for alternatives. Must be ok for road tyres so maybe even more pressure, 32 hole, tubeless. Not silly money and as light as possible given price constraints.
Big bonus would be silver but sadly doubt that will happen.

Likely to be too much spoke tension for the rim.

Get in touch with whoever you bought them from; warranty issue for sure. Think they may have been redesigned recently, but not sure.

Also, I guess they’re from JRA? If so, they should sort you out.

Spokes over-tensioned – who built them?

JRA Nope . Rims from PX about a year ago, wheels independently built. Not questioning the build although anything is possible and maybe this is the case. I did actually wonder if the wheels were slack if anything when they arrived. Cracks not limited to one side but not yet noted which side has more damage.

Get the same rims again, but use a decent wheel builder.
Eyeletted rims with 32 spokes shouldn’t be failing there until they are ancient and starting to suffer from fatigue and/or corrosion. An early life failure is either a faulty rim (heat treatment/extrusion/surface finish/drilling/badly fitted Eyelets) all of which are warranty issues or the builder has over tensioned the spokes.

Which is also a warranty issue.

Oh, if it was a bad rim, there are unlikely to be any more of that batch floating around after a year…

Oh well, if you have no luck with warranty then get some archetypes. They come in silver to.

Going to look the rim over and if there are issues/ suspicions see what PX or importers say. No warranty with a mate building them. Not writing off the idea of over tightening but in this case that really seems unusual. Time to check the front one maybe as well.
Any suggestions as to wide alternatives? I do think that the coating on them is rather soft.
Archetypes narrower.

If it’s a mates build you’ll be bang out of luck unless there’s something really obviously wrong with the rim. Anything difficult to check (heat treatment etc) it’ll cost more to prove rather than just buying new rims.
Do you know the spec for the rim? Spoke tension limits etc

Same happened to two of my sl23 rims (one eventually pulled the spoke right through), built myself so know they weren’t overtensioned.

I’m gonna say that my Pacenti rims lasted about 3 months, now these were MTB ones TL28? I think, but soft as cheese, and one or two cracks around the spoke holes. Awful rims that I won’t buy again.

Ta. I’ll wait to see what importers have to say but am inclined to try something else. Maybe complete new wheels with 11 speed hubs. What’s as light as 420 g rims on Hope? These were dead cheap and not likely to be replaceable at the same price. Ah well 😕

My Pacenti TL28 rims do everything on my HT from general trail riding to DH on uplift days, they’ve been faultless but then I run proper pressures in my tyres as opposed to lots on here who’ll slag off a rim for being soft when only running about 15psi in it and wondering why it dents!

Not saying you’ve done that, the 80psi implies you don’t for a start!…probably a build issue.

80 is soft! The tyres will go to 115

ghostlymachine – Member

Eyeletted rims with 32 spokes shouldn’t be failing there until they are ancient and starting to suffer from fatigue and/or corrosion

Eyelets can stress the rim when fitted, leading to early cracking- I’ve had a couple of mavics go the same way, they hadn’t been used especially hard and weren’t overtightened

IME the Pacentis just don’t have enough metal in them, the eyelets probably don’t help this since they’ve obviously built down to a weight and every gram that goes in the eyelets hasn’t gone in the structure. Makes them very denty but also seemingly pretty cracky. Wouldn’t go there again myself.

It might be worth dropping Pacenti an email to ask what spoke tension they recommend. Sounds like a faulty rim though.

my bontrager mustangs went like this. (seemingly so did lots of other peoples) they were replaced on warranty but for a different rim as they’d been discontinued.

IME the Pacentis just don’t have enough metal in them, the eyelets probably don’t help this since they’ve obviously built down to a weight and every gram that goes in the eyelets hasn’t gone in the structure.

bontragers were also very light compared to competitor offerings…

you mean badly fitted eyelets I guess. I lived through the mavic cracking issues as well. IIRC mavic put it down to a manufacturing issue. Haven’t had one go for ~10 years. And have about 5 pairs of open pros, some built radial on one (or both) sides.

ghostlymachine – Member

you mean badly fitted eyelets I guess.

It’s a common issue so, unless most eyelets are badly fitted I wouldn’t say so. I suppose it’s a matter of degrees; there’s a difference between “eyelets causing cracks” and “wheels crack; this crack started at eyelets because of stress risers”. Anyway, for mtb use I’ve pretty much come round to quality uneyeletted rims being better.

80 is soft! The tyres will go to 115

but the rims won’t..

only time i’ve had cracking like you are mentioning is on a 3 year old set of PX type b wheels. noticed that after a bounce through a rough bit of tarmac, no pothole required.