[Closed] Explain road bike wheels - Price and cost

You're missing all the usual culprits such as marketing, branding, geekiness, diminishing returns, bold new graphics etc. etc.

For instance, I would never buy the Superstar wheels as I want adjustable cup and cone bearings (i.e. fulcrum or Shimano) as I read a very scientific* article years ago that convinced me they rolled better. Plus I like adjustability that doesn't involve bashing bearings in and out of my hub.

Second was stiffness, I already had some perfectly serviceable wheels on my bike however they weren't very stiff, any pedalling effort at all would send them diving for the brake blocks. The Superstar wheels would [i]maybe[/i] be stiffer, but all the reviews I read suggested that my chosen Shimano RS81s were as stiff as they come.

Plus all bike components are probably 200% more expensive than 5/10 years ago, look at suspension forks!

*i.e. it came from a German bike magazine

As above.
Also, aero is a factor too, deeper rims, in properly designed, will be quicker on the flat. Width plays its part too, road rims have been getting wider and that means you can run wider tyres for more comfort and more speed too. Wider and deeper rims mean more material mean more expensive to get light.

What they said.

Stiffness + aero + lightness + bling = price

I've got some Stans Alpha's on Novatec hubs which weigh sod all (1300g or less I think), they cost about £250, but were a sod to build stiff enough for my weight and are only midly aero. I've also got some RS81's which are a bit more user friendly.

Even mid-range road bikes will have stock Shimano wheels as the manufacturers figure that people will upgrade them straight away so why bother putting on decent ones. My Spesh Roubaix from about five years ago cost £1600 and had a £100 (at retail) set of wheels on it. Consequently there's a strong market for "decent" wheels.

While I noticed the difference between the £100 and the newer £350 hoops in both stiffness and sprightlyness I doubt I'd tell the difference between the £350 hoops and ones costing £600.

As to why? Insert your favourite unseemly human trait here

I got a set of these Mach 1 3.90 SL rims on sealed disc bearing hubs (possibly novatec like all the others).

Although a "budget" brand, the 3.90SL rim is one of Mach 1's most expensive rims and they are made in Europe, not the far east. They are pitched as 29er wheels but are 19mm so fine as wide road. Butted spokes, alloy free hub has a steel spline so no dig in.

http://www.mach1.fr/en/rims/390sl-107

http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/WPM1390SL/mach-1-390sl-28-hole-wheelset

Price is reduced to £100 but they were in the recent 35% off stock liquidation so I got them for £65!!!! I think even at £100 they are great value.

They weigh 880g rear and 780g front on my scales without the supplied QRs.....£65!

Its good-quality sealed cartridge bearings

For some reason this puts me off straight away, that reads like 'we couldn't honestly bring ourselves to describe them as high quality'...

Ok so apart from the marketing, branding, geekiness, diminishing returns, bold new graphics etc. etc. elements

The extra cost of say a set of Carbon Enve wheels if for stiffness and aero. Apart from stupidly expensive forks that Fox invented, wheels seem to be one of the only other parts whose price has skyrocketed in the last few years. Maybe I need to ride a set of super stiff wheels to see the difference over a standard set. I always thought with wheels that weight was the killer thing along with the right durability for your weight.

[b]13thfloormonk [/b] Funny really as I would never buy cup and cone wheels as I have spent far to many hours as a youth adjusting the bloody things and ripping my knuckles to bits.

[b]Factory built[/b] wheels seem to be one of the only other parts whose price has skyrocketed in the last few years

FTFY. My favorite wheels are hand built Mavic rims, sapim spokes and Dura Ace cup and cone hubs. About 1600 g and about £500. They roll beautifully, are reasonably stiff and a little bit aero. Other nicer rims are available, but I'm not buying the wider is better arguments. My CXP33's are running 27c Vittorias at the moment but normally run 25c Mavic tyres with similar rolling.

Re write you question and replace the wheels and weight with cars, kitchens, tv's or just about any consumer product.

Its also about time brands stopped flogging half specced bikes withy shit wheels. Its just taking the piss out of their customer really.

@wilburt - see my post further up.

TBH everyone has their own ideas about wheels. Some good ideas, some barmy.
The manufacturers don't know the customer that well, so they put ok wheels on, expecting the customers to swap them.

Canyon even offered two almost identical bikes at similar price points with the major difference being the wheels.
Personally I'd have gone for the lower spec wheel and put my own on. I already have multiple sets of wheels.

If you go for a set of aero carbon wheels from enve, reynolds, vision etc you will be getting a known quantity some design style and maybe a bit of confidence when your doing 50mph down an alpine hill. If you go for a chinese direct import you may get a good set of wheels bit there is less assurance than the brands above.

Pretty much the same can be said for any given type of wheel.

fwiw I would go for mavic or shimano as basic wheels, they may be rhe ultimate spec for the money but are reliable ime.

@whitestone, yes I know why they do it, its the sorr of sharp practice you get then someone stops and the others have to follow, giant appear to be kicking the trend a bit others will follow I suspect.

Some one stops and the prices go up. And you end up with loads of high end wheels on ebay.

Shimano make brilliant wheels for sensible money. Their budget stuff (R501 and RS10) are a good starting point.

Many consumers shop on weight, but its misleading as some light wheels feel poor to ride when pushing hard, especially climbing steeps or descending on brakes. I'd always take a 70 grammes heavier wheel that responds well to input, than a lighter wheel that feels flexible

going up in price, Shimano RS81 are very hard to beat, especially the C24 for general road riding and racing, just over £300 for a pair if you look around

Giant have done some good wheels too, they used to be DT Swiss made with 240 internals in the rear, this has changed for 2016 with only the top models using ratchet drive (DT) the cheaper wheels using Formula guts

There's nothing really 'bad' about the cheap wheels that come with expensive road bikes. for most people, they're good enough.

Why don't bikes come fitted with more price-appropriate wheels? Because traditionally the kind of person buying an expensive road bike will quite possibly have many sets of wheels already.

Deep-section Aero wheels, lightweight hill-climb wheels, race wheels, etc.

The decent-enough cheap wheels that come with the bike can just be thought of as a free-pair of Sunday caff-run wheels.

Or, as this is a mtb forum, why are bikes fitted with cheap crap pedals? - why don't they come fitted with better pedals? The answer is of course, that it'll push up the purchase price, and they'll be the wrong pedals, in the wrong colour.

Funny really as I would never buy cup and cone wheels as I have spent far to many hours as a youth adjusting the bloody things and ripping my knuckles to bits.

Likewise! but the new ones just require two 5mm allen keys and your fingers, which I think is all that Fulcrum require also.

apart from the marketing, branding, geekiness, diminishing returns, bold new graphics etc. etc. elements

Soooo, your question is - "excluding all the things which make more expensive wheels more expensive, why is it they are more expensive?" 😀

At the end of the day I do believe a set of RS81s would outperform the Superstars, probably not by very much, and probably not when both sets of wheels are fresh out of the box and you put them underneath a flyweight rider who doesn't flex them...

a pertinent thread for me. My road bike came with shimano r500 wheels, they appear a bit on the heavy side(~1900g), but the thing that bugged me that they rub on the brake blocks when pedalling out of the saddle.

So I ordered a set of shimano ultegra 6800 wheels from planet X for £199. These weigh 1650g, and are apparently quite stiff.

Not ridden them yet, only got them on tuesday, but interested to see if I can feel any difference. I suspect the fact that I also bought new tyres will make a bigger difference.

Yep, when you read reviews of sub £500 wheels, there's usually the (slightly elitist) comment "these are great wheels" swiftly followed by "for training"....Why should cheaper wheels not be used for racing? Have these reviewers seen the carnage that can happen in amateur racing??! 😉

I can understand carbon wheels costing more but I think there's definitely a price vs performance sweet spot.

I can't believe people still buy hubs with cup and cone bearings, once the original bearings have gone I can never quite get the the same, which isn't too long on the winter bike especially

Good cup and cone hubs roll and roll and still have many fans inc me. The cheap ones are just disposable tat

you are paying for straight pull aero spokes that you have straighten after every ride otherwise you are running a fan wheel, god mavic wheels are crap. 🙁

woody74 - Member

I would never buy cup and cone wheels as I have spent far to many hours as a youth adjusting the bloody things and ripping my knuckles to bits.

You were doing it wrong.

Loosen one side, tweak a bit, tighten that side, done.

A couple of friends of ours used to make a big point that they only rode really cheap and very lightweight wheels and how we were patronising other people (ie them) by not doing what they did. They used to go through about 3 sets of really cheap lightweight wheels a year whereas we got 4 or 5 years out of our more expensive wheels. We used to spend about 1/14th the amount of money on wheels which they did, but which basically just worked reliably for a long time. Apparently it still made us shits.
As far as I'm concerned I don't want to have to check to make sure that the bearings haven't collapsed, or the spokes have snapped, or the nipples have pulled out of the rims every time I want to go out and ride.

Yes, it's more to do with quality of materials than bling or marketing.

My son and my cycling buddy both bought a set of Superstar wheels for around £195. They were both impressed at the light weight and how that affected the ride. However within a year both had needed re-trueing and in my son's case, new rims after two relatively un-dramatic offs. When I tried to re-true my buddy's wheels the spoke nipples had already rusted to some of the spokes making it impossible. My son now has some low-level Ksyriums and my buddy some Ksyrum SLSs; both find the Ksyrium wheels stiffer and running more true and although they cost a lot more we expect them to last a lot longer. My own Ksyrium SLs for example have given me five years of use and are only beginning now to show wear to the braking surfaces after the wet weather.

You can have cheap, strong and light but not all three at the same time. Superstar wheels are cheap and light but not strong. Mavic wheels are strong and light but not cheap.

We have put the old rebuilt Superstar wheels on Mrs Gti's bike, which seldom gets used and then only light use but she will appreciate the light weight. But if you need light wheels for regular hard use, you need to be forking out some decent cash.

Do the maths: Superstar wheels at £195 plus two new rims at £50 each time, about 18 months of use or Ksyriums at £700 and five years so far and still going strong.

I like superstar's mtb wheels (sorry bike snobs) but I tend to tighten the spokes before I use them. Both I and my brother have had SS road wheels and in both cases found them to be as flexible as boiled spaghetti, even after tightening the spokes they were still very flexible, although we both weigh a fair bit.

I have a set of ultegra and find them lovely, I wouldn't recommend SS road wheels.

Jay

I had some Mavic wheels a few years ago and the hub flamge failed - cracked. So I don't think any wheels are infallible.

There are reasons why light wheels can be cheap. You just need to appreciate that they may need looking after - some more so than others.

TBH. Unless you get a big discount, mavic wheels aren't all that amazing at their various price points. Just ok at everything. You can usually do better shopping around.

Looks like for £150 I can get some 1600g wheels from Superstar. Nothing special at all but actually quite a decent weight.

Buy them, they're good...really good.

I bought the Elite-30 set a few years ago to put on a Spesh Allez i had at the time, i was skeptical about the weight but went online and searched for other's experiences, turns out the weight claim is conservative...plenty of people had weighed their set in at LESS than Superstar were claiming, i duly paid my £160 and waited...a few days later they arrived and i weighed them...pretty much bang on 1600g, i believe they now do a set for 1400g which are also less than £200 for the pair!

I'm no lightweight at 14st/85kg and my wheels get a tough time as i tend to swap to road riding over the winter (dont like getting muddy on the MTB) but i've never had to true them up or change the bearings (their own Icon hubs, brilliant too)...the wheels are now doing service on my Ribble which despite also being cheap aluminium has come in at less than 8kg fully built with no use of titanium, carbon or such like...i love brands like Superstar, Ribble etc, they allow people like me with very average earnings to get decent lightweight bikes on the road for not much cash, there's a lot to be said for cutting out the shop floor, overheads, salespeople, etc etc...

Aren't they selling the Elite/Icons for 99 quid in the clearance, which they say is less than cost? Rim brakes so not for the OP but sounds like a bargain.

what are you paying for?

Having spent a fair bit on aero wheels over the past couple of years, my decision was based on paying for provable performance. I looked at a lot of cheaper options, direct Chinese wheels etc. but it mostly came down to there being a lot of published (manufacturer and independent) test data being available for the more expensive wheels.

When it was all about weight you could just pop a set of wheels on the kitchen scales, now with aero it's a lot more difficult/expensive to test.