Sorry, I know it’s a persistent topic. I’ve narrowed the budget to sub £400 for a set of wheels to improve on my cube stock Easton ea30 wheels which are not light or strong. Riding is on ‘mixed’ road surfaces in the lakes, not racing but lots of climbing and long rides alone/ small group, not chain gang. I weigh 82 kg.

Best factory wheels for the money would appear to be shimano rs80’s at £320, or I could go to wheelsmith and get, for example, race23 rims on nova tech hubs for similar.

Over to you experts to help me decide, please show your reasoning in possible, and also point out good alternatives. I’m leaning towards hand built at the moment, but can’t really articulate why!

Sounds like you’d be better off with hand built wheels with hubs of your choice and whatever 23mm rim takes your fancy. H+Son Archetypes are floating my boat currently.

I have RS 80’s, IRD cadence on novatecs from wheelsmith, amd some Fulcram 1’s….they’re all decent wheels…if I had to pick a favourite the RS 80’s would just about shade it…

RS80s are great wheels. But if you bend them or prang a pothole, or when the rims wear out, you’ll have to buy new wheels because the cost of a new rim is pretty close to the cost of a new wheel, and often it’s higher if you factor in paying someone else to rebuild the wheel for you.

Hand-built wheels may be a few grams heavier (it’s easy to sell people stuff when they only care about its weight), but they can be much more durable, easier to re-true and you have a lot more options in case they get damaged or wear out.

For £300 I could build a pair of Ultegra hubs on DT RR415 rims with Sapim Race double-butted spokes. They’d be about 1700g for the pair without QRs and rim tape and they’d come with a lifetime warranty. For just under £400 I’d build them with Sapim CX-Ray spokes (probably the best in the world) and the build would be under 1600g and a lot more durable than the RS80s.

Edit – just spotted you mentioned the 23mm rims. I like Velocity A23s as well at the moment, slightly heavier but cheaper than the RR415s.

I had a handbuilt set for £250, which weighs under 1600g. Open Pro/ DT Rev/ Alloy nipples/ Ambrosio hubs.

Pierre makes a good point re durability…just been quoted £140 to re-rim a Fulcram 1…

Thinking about it, for lighter weight and cheaper wheels I could build a pair of Miche Racing box hubs on a pair of Velocity A23 rims with Sapim CX-Ray spokes for £330 and it would be about 1630g. Leaving you £70 for a pair of really nice tyres, like Conti GP4000S…

Tom

I have a set of RS80s and a set of Hope3/ H plus son Archetypes (got these from just riding along £380). The handbuilt ones are so much better. Although it sounds like a bit a marketing bs the extra rim width makes a lot of difference and the weights are virtually the same.

Willie

Im in exactly the same dilema and will be going for the race23’s from wheelsmith on the PILLAR spokes to get it down to £395 for a pair of wheels pretty much bang on the 2kg mark including tyres but stronger and cheaper to repair than mavics and RS80’s.

Híghly recommend Strada Wheels:
http://www.stradawheels.co.uk/shop/velocity-a23-wheelset/

Give Harry Rowland a call and he will advise on every aspect of a wheel build you could imagine and is very reasonable for what you get.

http://www.harryrowland.co.uk/

I have broken millions of awful factory built wheels that are supposed to look cool and be lightweight but really are just weak as piss and flexy as a Russian gymnast.

My vote goes to hope hubs on open pros, hope hoops front and rear £280-£300ish I think. Last for ages, easy to replace spoke, look cooler, light enough and stiffer. I’ve even raced on some.

Spot on.

Hand built, every time!

Take your old one’s apart your old wheels, or just an old set and learn to build them yourself. It’s not ‘the black art’ it’s made out to be. Get a quiet hour or two, a cup of tea and read a guide on the internet. You don’t even need a jig, use your bike and true them against the brake.

I have read that the RS80’s are supposed to be a bit flexy, but other than that they’re good? I did see one come “unlaminated” in the alps last summer though.

Sounds like you do pretty much the same sort of riding as me – lake district mincing!?

I use all sorts of handbuilt wheels which seem ideal. Latest set I’ve got are Hope Pro 3’s on A23 rims with sapim spokes which were £376 from JRA. I expect them to be good, and I don’t think you’ll get them much cheaper anywhere else.

One thing I would say is avoid light weight spokes like revs/lasers/super comps on the back wheel. I found that they broke and my wheel flexed alot. Go with standard sapim races instead (no problems with these)

davidtaylforth, I’ve got an RS80 front in the shop that has started coming apart, although it’s hard to tell whether it’s been abused or whether it’s just starting to fail.

In defence of CX-Ray spokes, they are lightweight but they’re also super strong; they can take a very high tension and they’re more durable than standard Race (or Comp) spokes – up to three times MTBF (around 3 million revolutions vs most spokes’ 1 million, although Sapim have stopped quoting these figures on their website.)

Also, double-butted spokes don’t mean a weaker wheel. They actually build a stronger wheel – Jobst Brandt’s book has the maths – and Roger Musson builds plenty of super strong downhill race wheels with CX-Ray spokes. I’ve built tandem touring wheels that have outlasted many other wheels; the butting in the middle allows that section of the spoke to extend and contract through the force cycles of the wheel’s rotation, passing less of this force through to the spoke elbow, which is the most common place for spokes to fail.