I built a set of wheels with Flow rims and the customer destroyed the rear one in a few days! Oh hang on….he was repeatedly pulling 360’s and finally got one wrong, came up short and slammed the rear wheel into a tree stump….

Plenty of people use Stans in BC and the terrain is arguably just as hard as France. Sapim or DT? Who cares!

I rode some of the East Midlands most hardcore towpaths yesterday and my Stans rims held up just fine!!

Rob that would be true if I was leaving in the UK, I am not. LBS Use plenty of rims other than mavic. And they try everything before deciding weather or not they offer it to the customers. Obviously if you get in and sya I WANT STANS they will build you some stan, probably better than a trail rat (btw trail rat are you up for a challenge, TransV this year, the faster of the two of us got the right to brague about it on here). But they have decided they are not good enough, so I trust them. And sapim they are purely for roadies.

Every wheel build has their preferences. I’ve built thousands of high quality wheels for all kinds of riders. I prefer Mavic rims, but others, including DT and Stans are perfectly acceptable. I prefer DT spokes, but Sapim and Wheelsmith are also lovely. Alloy nipples? Run away!!! 😆

No idea about that wheel spec, but a confirmed Stans user here, and I’m heavy and clumsy. Never had a problem with them.

That’s all.

Mavic for building. Stans for riding. I prefer the eyelets and stength of a Mavic to build, but give me the width and lighter weight of a Stans for riding. I wish Mavic would WAKE UP and build/sell wider rims (without having to buy into their wheel sets).

DT spokes used to be best to build with as they were better finished; not sure if this is still the case.

Super light spokes and alloy nipples are good for race/posing wheels IMHO. If you do this and use them hard your looking at a rebuild in 1/2/3 years… which might not be a bad thing with a Stans rim anyway.

If you want a long lasting wheelset and don’t mind the extra weight go Mavic with DT Super Comp and Brass. If you want weight weenie and are willing to rebuild a bit earlier then go with your plan.

FWIW – I ride with the lighter and wider Stans now as I like the feel. I know the rims are weaker and won’t last as long as a Mavic but I’ll live with that compromise. The next wheels I build will have carbon rims… wish me luck 😕

BiTD, I used to buy wheels as cheaply as I could to save me the hassle of lacing them, and then check the tension and stress-relieving had been done properly myself. Often got a couple of extra turns on every spoke…

I’m not going to tell you what to build and what not to build, i’ve been out the bike trade for a while now but I used to build around 2 sets of wheels a week for 4 years,not a lot for some mechanics but enough for me.

we used DT swiss spokes and encoraged people to use them as they were easliy available cheep and wellfinished,i think it was around 75p a spoke compared to the sapims which from around 90p to silly amount. obiously if you wanted double butted or tripple butted etc you’d pay a little more.

I hated using sapium as i found them harder to work with,my boss hated them because we charged a set rate for wheel builds so the mark up wasn’t as good. alloy nipples,we’d see the wheel set in at some point in the near future, but for racing this wasnt an issue.

as for stans rims being not fit for purpose, it depends on what rim you go for and what your doing. I prefered working on mavic rims or sunlights as they were easier and slightly stiffer, so they reaced lessto a tweekon the nipple. the stans and dt rims ifound a littlemore flexible so you had to be a little more carefull.but once built they all made good wheels

I had been riding a set of bontrager race lite rims on dt swiss hubs with tripple butted spokes built by me for 6 years and never trued them i just sold some factory built ones that were my spares that just weren’t being used. I ride n the lakes im no light weight (i was almost 15stone when living up there, and a heavy rider.

Rscott, don’t you find your wheel get a bit woobly under hard breaking using thin triple butted spokes?

to begin with i did yes, but once i got used to it, as with anythign it wasn’t really noticeable. I’ve not been entirely honest in my post these wheels are now decommissioned as the bearings in the hubs had gone and the free hub was shot. it worked out cheaper to get a second had pair of wheels and sort them.

Im now running hope pro2’s on mavic xm321,dt swiss double butted stainless spokes,brass nipples. i bought them for the hubs and was going to rebuild them on to my racelite rims but i cant justify the time at the min, and they are in much better condition than i thought when i bought them.

That is the point I guess, in my point of view, rims are consumables, if you use good quality rims and take care of them, you may be able to keep them 4-5 years, but I suspect that is the top. Then they get to many dings and dongs to justify being used again. Basically, if I get 4 years out of a 717 disk or a VO2max, I’ll consider myself very lucky. I follow your point regarding hope hubs though, not the “lighest”, but by far the most durable.

on hope hubs don’t get a hope bearing kit for them for a ridiculous price. take the bearings out and toke them to your local engineering shop they will be able to sort you out for a round £2 a bearing. they’ll use the specific code on the seal to get the exact same one for a margin of the price.

if you find a good LBS that builds you a quality wheel they are well worth the extra you pay.
i’ve been running a Sun Ringle Abbah SOS rear hub and a Marzocchi 20mm front hub laced with plain guage s/s spokes on a pair of Atomlab Trailpimp 24 inch rims on my DH bike / Atomlab Trailpimp rear hub and WTB Laser 20mm front hub with plain guage s/s spokes laced to 26 inch Atomlab DHR rims on my hardtail for 5 years now and through all the abuse they have had, they’ve never needed to be trued once.
having said that i think i was quite fortunate really as at the time when i got the wheels re-built (hub swap between the rims) my LBS was taking part in an exchange programme with Shimano (they were one of 4 shops worldwide to be invited to take part) and Shimano sent a mechanic over from Japan to live and work with them for 2 months…and boy could he build wheels!!
the only time any of the wheels have gone back was 2 months ago when a broken rear mech ripped a spoke out of the rear wheel.
i suppose you may say that the strength of the wheel has more to do with the fact that the parts choice makes them heavy but super strong but the quality in the workmanship cant be faulted.
i’ve had wheels built from here before and they’ve always been perfectly done.
the shop in question is Ride-On….yes the same Ride-On where the Global Ti bikes and the Empire AP-1 originated from.