Has anyone tried both with the same tyre, is the profile any different?
I was thinking about getting a Specialized Butcher 2.3 for my crest, but I have been offered a complete Flow wheel for a fair price, with or without a Chunky Monkey.
The weight difference between the CM on Flow & the Butcher on crest would be about 200g, but I’m sure the extra strength of the rim won’t be beneficial to me so I’m a bit lost on which way I should go 🙁

Any thoughts?

Cheers peeps.

No opinions?
What about narrow V’s wide rims in general?

Cheers.

If you don’t need a DH tough rim, then don’t get the flow. The Crest is plenty wide enough for XC. Hell it’s made for that.

Cheers for that, pretty much my thoughts, but any idea of the effect on the tyre profile?

…any idea of the effect on the tyre profile?

Wider rim should give you a squarer tyre profile, at least they do in my experience.

Depending on how wide the tyre is, wider rims can help tubeless tyres to be more stable.

2.3 / 2.4 will be fine on a crest.
On One tyres *aren’t* tubeless compatible. Loads run them tubeless without problems. I know of a few who’ve had blow outs. If you ride hard, I would buy a tubeless compatible tyre.

The Flows are overkill strength-wise but I like the width. Unfortunately the lighter Stans rims are much narrower. Rim stiffness is maybe another factor to think about but is often overlooked. I’m not sure what the correct answer it, it depends on too many factors (your weight, how hard you ride downs, how fit you are, technique, where you ride, tyres etc).

I would suggest that unless you’re pushing hard then you probably won’t see too much of the benefit of Flows, and they will weigh you down unnecessarily.

There is very little difference between non-tubeless and ‘tubeless ready’ tyres. Some tyres work better than others for tubeless but there’s not a lot of correlation between how easy they are to get inflated and what it says on the sidewall. Once inflated and sealed there’s no real difference. (I’m not talking about UST btw).

If you want more width, but don’t want/need want the DH strength, I’d suggest a pacenti TL28. About 30g heavier than a crest iirc, and as wide as an original flow (ie not ex), iirc 23mm internal?

That said I don’t know quite how a pacenti holds onto the tyre. With Crest, Arch(2.0) and FlowEX being ‘BST2’ the low walls mean Stans claim the 21mm internal of a crest/arch is more equivalent to a ‘conventional’ 25mm internal rim

@james I would tend agree with that, my tyres come up slightly wider on my Arch Ex’s than they did on my old Mavic 321s, both are 21mm internally.

Isn’t there a whole 1mm difference in width?

fyi I’ve found 2.3 Spesh Tyres (Butcher Control and Purgatory Control) sit happily on Crests. Personally I wouldn’t go wider tubeless on Crests – I tried some 2.35 Hans Dampfs but decided the profile was too light-bulb shaped, too much of the tyre was well beyond the vertical support of the rim.

I’ve just bought some Flows (not Flow EX – careful on terminology here) and will try those with the HDs but I expect to stay on the Spesh 2.3 really.

Thanks all, some very useful info.

Cheers.