[Closed] £350 to upgrade road bike wheels ? Yes or not

Campag Zonda or the Fulcrum equivalent is the usual answer to this one.

my Prime (Chiggle) wheels have been faultless so far - 2 years on and offroad. They are Novatec hubs and I think Alex rims, convertible axles. They are centrelock discs but you can get converters easily.

Or Hunt.

What are the stock wheels? Generally £350 would get a decent upgrade over a lower end bike's original wheels.

Wiggle have DT Swiss P1800 reduced to £290 just now. Factor in the extra end caps you’d still come in under budget and have a fantastic set of wheels.
I have the heavier E1800 and they are way better than the cheap wheels that came on my Charge.

Depends on what wheels you currently have

I swapped the boat anchors that came with my defy for a set of 250 quid primes and the difference was huge. Swapping they wheels and tyres combined saved me a kilo!!

Current wheels are Giants own PR2 disc wheelset. Nothing wrong with them but was going to set them up a winter wheelset.

Lots wrong with PR2, their weight being the main one. Similar to many above I swapped out PR2's for Prime wheels on my TCR. They've been faultless for 3 years and many miles.

See what JRA have, think they're alu disc wheels start about £400 and will be lighter and feel much never than what you have.

By all accounts the PR2s are a bit chunky.

Prime were good for me. All be it older models and rim brakes. I'd consider hunt, cero and superstar as other alternatives.

It's likely you'll save a decent bit of weight. Depends on what you are riding as to whether it will be noticeable or not though.

Cheers all I'll have a look about.

Habe standards changed at all ?

My bike is a 2016 model with qr wheels front and rear.

prime come with axle adaptors so will fit qr and if you upgrade later to bolt thru you can keep the wheels still.

Rest should be the same, road bikes haven't (yet) fallen quite so far down the rabbit hole of multiple different hub widths, etc.

I spent loads less than that on a pair of Hope XC hubs, Mavic Open Pro rims and DT Revolution spokes for my cross bike.
The hubs were used but in good nick.
So can be done for pretty decent wheels, especially if you are happy to buy bits

clubby
Full Member
Wiggle have DT Swiss P1800 reduced to £290 just now. Factor in the extra end caps you’d still come in under budget and have a fantastic set of wheels.
I have the heavier E1800 and they are way better than the cheap wheels that came on my Charge.

Would these be a decent match to a Pinnacle Arkose gravel bike? Current (original) rims are similar size, and I need a new wheel set quite desperately.

I can't seem to find the DT Swiss on the wiggle site ?

They're on Merlin.

Ah ok found them now.

Is there much difference between the spline 23 and the spline 32.

Which would be better for a heavier rider ?

The hubs were used but in good nick.
So can be done for pretty decent wheels,

Yeah but your wheels were pretty decent in 2004. He would be as well keeping the PR2 buy the time.he got those heavy rims.and hubs with very little spares availibility/axle interchangeability

I built myself some carbon deep sections wheels with second hand hope pro2 hubs. Rims are from king bike on eBay. They ended up being heavier that I expected, but still a respectable weight.

It was £150 for the rims, £60 for the spokes and a fair bit of searching for the hubs. The hubs can be changed to almost any axle so hopefully the wells can live on any bike I end up with in the future.

Yeah but your wheels were pretty decent in 2004. He would be as well keeping the PR2 buy the time.he got those heavy rims.and hubs

Not sure about old Hope hubs but Open Pro rims and DT Revolution spokes would still be a good choice today and would not describe them as heavy (what weight are other rims in any £350 wheels?)

Saying that, the weight of the rim/spokes is more important in making them feel better with the weight of the hub making sod all difference (especially for the "heavier rider")

I have P1800’s bought from Merlin 2.5 years ago.  The P is the lighter version vs the E so aimed more at the road, weight limits are on the DT Swiss website but I think 120kg.  23 vs 32 is the rim height, 32s are more aero but more weight.  The wheels look good and have nice blades spokes.

The wheels have been faultless over many miles.  Have been used tubeless since day 1 and no issues with Hutchinson Fusion tyres setting up and inflating with a track pump.  I’ll be getting some deeper section carbon wheels at some point and will keep the Ps for winter duties.

Also check hub sizes on the DT Swiss.  Mine are 100x12 and 142x12.  You may be able to get qr converters but can’t make the rear narrower.

Just been out to check and I actually have giant sr2 disc wheels ?

Are these just as heavy ?

What's lighter than an open pro on hope xc for 350 quid ?

Kinlin xr200 on a novatech hub . Same as some of the marketing brands will put stickers on and call "novel" and "original"

Sub 1500 grams for riders up to 80kg on disk.

Didn't see the bit where the op was heavy .

Where open pros win is- last rim you'll ever buy if you nor a ham fisted clod when it comes to potholes.

Sr-2 a shade under 1900g the PR2 is 2050grams.

So quite a bit lighter in wheel terms.....a good turd in real terms.

Even less convinced id spend 350 quid changing wheels.now.

Infact I'd probably take Andrews advice and buy some bomb proof cheap winter wheels. You'll probably feel the benifit more come summer.

Granted an XR200 is light at 385 grams but an Open Pro is only 420 grams so hardly a tank of a rim in comparison is it.
35 grams difference in rim weight is not something I would worry about especially as OP is a self confessed heavier rider (not sure if that means over 80kg which is suggested top weight for XR200)

@trail rat: where did you get the info on the wheel weights.

You'd think the PR2 would be lighter as it's the better wheel?

Ok so I'm not going to be saving loads weight wise but what about rolling resistance from the bearings. The giants don't seem to spin for that long.

I've seen these ....

https://www.cycledivision.co.uk/wheels/disc-brake-wheelset/cero-ar30-disc-alloy-clincher-wheelset

Had a set of AR 24 on a previous bike and they seemed decent enough so was considering these.

Hunt 4 season disc then if rider weight / robustness is an issue

115kg rider weight recommendation (18st)

1629g

I'd suggest looking at Scribe
https://scribecycling.co.uk/
I've had Hunt and Scribe in a similar section and weight on the same bikes and the Scribe were more 'comfortable' without any additional flex. Hunt just seemed to make the ride more harsh, not hugely but noticeable.
IMHO

Personally I've found low end DT Swiss wheels with 370 hubs to be the sweet spot in budget replacement wheels. Best pair were a £200 pair of 1500g R20s that I got 10k+ miles out of, never even had to true them (original list price was £450) and only swapped bearings twice (total cost about £50 and an hour). Sold them and a year on someone else is still happily running them.

My experience of Hunt wheels has been QC issues (dented/gouged ally rims, badly formed carbon wheels with a huge wobble and distortion around valve hole, bearings that lasted a couple of rides due to water ingress and presumably a lack of grease).

Either or any should give be very noticeable versus the stock Giant wheels - their lower end wheelsets are not well put together (again in my experience).
The old rim brake PR-2s I had were ok but spoke tension was all over the place and the freehub wasn't particularly slick, and the SR-2 wheelset spokes didn't hold tension until I rebuilt them and then the freehub exploded.

I broadly like my Hunt 4seasons road disc wheels. The front wheel feels outrageously light vs anything else I’ve ever had and the rear is respectable as well. They’ve been ground through awful commuting weather for a few years and the freehub / bearings have seemed to cope fine. I’ve just got a little play in the rear hub now - either it just needs tightening or perhaps it’s time for a bearing change.

They sound a good chunk lighter than your current wheels - it won’t make you much faster but it’ll feel nicer to accelerate / handling in general.

They’re j-bend spokes so easy to source if you ever need any replacements.

I’m running mine qr at the moment but believe you can get endcaps to convert to bolt through as well.

I’ve tested the crash replacement discount once - smashed through the biggest pothole ever - it jumped out at me from under a van that had just overtaken me in a stupid place) - and hadn’t been on that road the day before. Front wheel survived but the rear needed a new rim. I had that rim in my hands within a couple of days and the lbs re rimmed it. I actually bruised my toes in my road shoes such was the impact through the pothole!

I would go for soething from superstarcomponents.com or shimano or dt swiss hubs and open pro rims.

Campag and fulcrum are light but dont look as durable to me.

I'm 83kg and my Zondas have had no problems in 6 years or more and 10's of thousands of km. Run tubeless nicely too.

I have a Fulcrum 3's,Campag Zondas and Scribe Race rim brake wheelsets. On performance it's the Scribes that I would pick without hesitation. The others have been reliable but the Scribe rear hub was easy to take apart and grease the ratchet. The Scribes are fairly noisy but the sound gets addictive.
Have a look if Scribe have them in your spec but you may have to wait on the order. The backup was excellent too.

My thinking is, the wheels are often the worst bit on a full build, and road wheels really have an easy life compared to mountain bike wheels, so it's not like you're having to work so hard to balance weight, width, strength and price.

The hub standard does make a big difference though- mine is from before things started to stabilise on bolt-through so it was super easy to find cheap good QR hubs (pacenti branded bitexes), that's not so easy with the newer standards.