Looking for some advice. I currently have two bikes, one with Whyte carbon 29er wheels, which have been absolutely flawless (I think they’re XC-209) and the other with American Classic All Mountain 29 – the hubs are great but the rims are dented and they flex like crazy. I’m looking to replace the Am Classics with Hope hubs and some good tubeless compatible rims. Obviously I want the best £2K carbon rims ever but I can’t afford them so I’ll be looking at no more than £500 or so for a set of wheels.

Does anyone have any suggestions for great, wide 29er rims with easy tubeless compatibility (I have 26″ 819s and they’re great as an example?) and a lot of strength?

Thanks in advance

The American Classics are great hubs, why not ditch the rims and lace the hubs into Flows, or some Light Bicycle Carbon jobs if you fancy? – I’m not up on the LB options, but there’s a megathread on here somewhere.

And how wide is wide? Flows too narrow? Velocity Blunt? And the LB rims come in widenesses. Then there’s the Syntace W35 and W45

£500 is quite a decent budget for rims + build if you’re not buying hubs!

Having said that, if you’re binning the AC, hubs, I’ll take ’em off your hands! 😀

Light Bicycle Carbon – sounds good, I’ll have a look at them for a start.

I know the AC hubs are great (I’ve had them road and mountain for years and they’ve been flawless to be fair) but the deals for full built wheels are not hugely different and my wheel builder somehow managed to put me off the AC hubs too, which was a bit rude.

The reason I say wide is that my ideal rim would be Mavic 819s but they’re not very wide so would be looking for something more like 25mm +, does that make any sense?

As you can tell, I’ve not really kept up with modern trends but will look at all the rims you mention.

And yes, I would consider selling the AC hubs – that was the intention all along – I wouldn’t be binning them (I don’t even bin worthless stuff, so I wouldn’t have binned these!).

THANKS so much for your help so far.

Spank oozy do some nice rims.

I’ve used arch ex on my 29″ but I’ve just killed the rear. I wish I’d slapped a Flow rim on the rear now.

not really kept up with modern trends

Just in case, then – “Flows” = Stans ZTR Flow EX. 25.5 internal, 29mm external – http://www.notubes.com/Flow-EX-Rims-C123.aspx They’re your benchmark for strong, 29er, tubeless-able rims. “standard choice”. There might be stronger, cheaper, lighter, wider, but not all at the same time. Great place to start, anyway..

and the 29er LB options: http://www.light-bicycle.com/carbon-mountain-bike/carbon-mountain-bike-rim/29er

and 24 pages of discussion about them: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/light-bicycle-carbon-rims

In normal fashion I’ll recommend what I have – Easton ARC 27! Seem to be a decent weight, strong enough for 100kg of unskilled rider slamming them into things!

They also have the ARC 30 rim and you can buy the full Heist wheel set which uses the rims for under your budget.

As above.

Running a set of Easton Heist 27’s. Brilliant.

Wide, light and strong.

DT Swiss XM 481 on Pro II front and back come in at £440 from justridingalong.com
The XM 481 rim only weighs 490g and is 30mm internal width!
Best value ali wide rim I’ve found. I’m ordering these next month.

Running DT Swiss 240S hubs on Light Bikes carbon rims on my bike. They would blow your budget by about £250 granted but they’re quite frankly bloody awesome! You can easily drop the price down by building them on Hope hubs or DT 350’s instead, which I imagine would come in somewhere around the £600 mark built and ready to ride.

If sticking with ally, then I’d look at the DT Swiss EX471 (25mm internal, approx 500g each) which Aaron Gwin uses on his DH bike to good effect, the WTB KOM i25 or the Easton ARC27. All are gonna be about £70-80 apiece, so will set you back probably in the region of £400-450 built into Hopes.

Personally though, for the extra £150, the extra money on the carbon rims is well worth it on a 29er…

I’ve just built a set of 29er wheels with Velocity Blunt SS rims which are only £59 or so each at Wiggle. They are rated at 425g by Velocity but I weighed them at 399g. They are 30mm wide with an ID of 26.6mm.

Lb carbon rims are a good shout, I got a set built up by them on hope Hubs.

I got a complete wheel set built by lb for about £650 including import taxes and charges. These were 26er all mountain (27mm internal width, 30mm external if memory serves) but they do wider rims too.

They only offered novatec (cheaper option) or hope hubs built fully when I bought, and three or four spoke configurations. The hubs are the newer pro2 evo 40t ones too, which surprised me, I thought they may have been the older model.

Can’t comment on price difference for a 29er but the only real difference is the rim is slightly longer so doubt it would be much more.

They’re what I built up for my wife’s Swift, on A2Z hubs. Built up nicely, toooblessed well. Didn’t weigh them, though!

Have a look at my for sale thread.

I’ve got some Light Bicycle carbon rims, 35mm wide, laced to Dt240 hubs for sale. Youll struggle to find a stiffer and strong 29er wheelset.

They’re amazeballs.

No matter what you build, a good approach is to find some used 26er wheels with nice hubs. They’ve depreciated horribly, so I picked up a set of DT EX1750s for I think £140 inc tyres, which donated their DT240S hubs to my new 29er wheels. (and some of the leftovers, I can probably sell)

I like Lightbicycle but I think I ended up paying a little over £500 for my current set, after all the taxes and that. Not sure, I don’t like to add it up 😉 But for alu, there’s some grand options, I’d probably go WTB just because I’ve been so impressed by my other ones, but I can’t say they’re the best.

I’ve got wtb frequency i19 on mtb hardtail and cx bikes.

I’m really impressed, feel really solid but they’re pretty light too. Built up easily.

I imagine the wider options are similarly good but, er, wider.

Crc have them on sale every now and then, picked mine up about 25 quid each.

I have the WTB i23s on my SS, can’t fault them. Tempted by some i25s in 26″ flavour for my 456.

Easton ARC24 or ARC27 would be my choice of rim at the moment.

Edit : Or even ARC30!

Anything wrong with crests on hopes for a bit of XC? See tons of threads about LB but they are off budget currently.

Anything wrong with crests on hopes for a bit of XC?

Exactly what I use on my FS XC bike – Anthem 29er.

I like them, they are surviving events in the peak district pretty well – i.e. they get pushed hard. Only issue was a ding when they were on my ht – I bodged a puncture repair in a race and only ended up with about 15psi in on an adrenalin-fuelled very rocky last downhill.

Thanks CP, these will be going on a carbon HT so I don’t want my lack of skill to damage the wheels…