Carbon AM wheels

What’s out there, other than the maniacally expensive Enve?

I’ve seen Reynolds wheels reviewed, and the Eastons with the flaky hubs – is there anything else?

Are the Light Bicycle rims worth a look? Anyone ordered them and had them increase the stength a bit?

A mate has been running Easton Haven carbons for about 18 months now. The hubs have been fine but he did manage to trash a rim in Spain last year. It was replaced quickly under warranty and as far as I’m aware he hasn’t had any further issues.

Another mate (messiah off here) is running a pair of Light Bicycle rims on Pro2 Evo hubs and has good things to say about them. There’s been a couple of threads recently.

I’m hering good things about these guys and I believe there coming in at £400 a rim with full AM abilitys

Hand Built Wheels

Here is what I posted on another similar thread…

I rebuilt my trashed Hope/Flow Hoops with the Light-Bicycle Wider Carbon rims and DT Revolution spokes & Alloy Nipples. Dropped the weight from 1900g to 1494g (12x135mm x 20mm)… I’ve been running them for a few months and they feel great so far. I’m pretty hard on kit hence trashing the Flow rims but so far these rims with Bonty rim strips and Conti Rubber Queens/Baron’s have impressed me. Quicker to accelerate and they feel just as stiff as the Hoops. One reason I decided to rebuild the wheels rather than replace them was that rather than go for some proprietry 24 spoke design with this set up I still have 32 spokes so if I lose one or two in a ride the wheel won’t ping itself to a taco… I’ll get to finish the day/ride and replace the normal spoke without having to send the wheel to XXXXXXX to get it fixed. The alloy nipples worry me a bit but in for a penny in for a pound… If they all start breaking I’ll replace them but from previous experience with Revs and alloy nipples during my XC racing days (early nineties ) they will last a couple of years before fatigue causes problems (IMHO, YEMV etc etc).

EDIT. The carbon rims are really impressive and very easy to build up as they are very stiff compared to a lightweight alloy rim… like a DH rim to build

Another month has passed and the wheels are still great. I’ve had to tweak the rear wheel a bit after a fitting a bigger tyre which required the wheel to be dished a bit more to clear the chainstay; it was no problem and I decided to make the tension a bit higher as with the spindly rev spokes at normal tension I could feel the back wheel was a bit flexy when realy working the bike. Since sorting the tension the feeling has gone away so the higher tension has worked.

Not much else to say really. Cost with import duty etc makes the rims about £150 each so double what a Flow costs. If you were to build my wheels from scratch I would guess the cost would be about £500-600 which for a 1500g wide carbon rimmed AM wheelset is probably very competitive (especially compared to ENVE/Reynolds/Easton etc).

Another bonus (for me anyway) is that my wheels look pretty normal…

and since the hubs are Hope standard issue they are reliable, quick and easy to service/change… and reasonably quiet when lubed regularly with oil

Cool – they look great…. quite tempted.

Did you just go for the standard “wider” rim, or ask them to beef them up slightly?

Yes, I just went with standard. I had entertained putting a heavier duty one on the back but decided not to bother in the end. The rims I recieved were 370g each so right where Light-Bicycle said they would be. Delivery was pretty quick as when I ordered mine they had stock.

One other thing – can you remember the spoke lengths?

Remember? I have spreadsheets for such things 🙄

258 and 260 were what I used – 32 hole and standard 3 cross.

258 were disc side front and drive side rear
260 for non disc front and disc rear

You could go a little longer on either but I would not go shorter as these were getting tricky to lace (they made up fine but had to be loose to get the last few spokes laced in).

I used a couple of spoke calculators and still have PDF’s of the wheelpro ones. Fire me a mail and I’ll send them.

Cheers – 258 and 260 will do me.

Wonder what their full builds are like, loads of stupid light, very wide wheels for $500.

Do they sneakily sell any other brand names?

Superstar Components do carbon AM wheel builds now, think the rims are available separately too. No experiance of them personally but another option…

Problem there is you end up with Superstar hubs. I’d sooner have Hope.

The Superstar rims are £300 each, and look almost identical to the Light Bicycle ones which can be bought for $150. For the cost of one SS rim you can buy two from LB.

The 29er wheelset looks good value at $568 (sub 1600g), but I’m not sure about the Novatec hubs.

http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=74&products_id=698

Seem quite hefty too. Their trail wheelset is a better weight, but I’m not going back to 17mm rims.

http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=40&products_id=674

Novatec hubs and Pillar Spokes/Nipples.

I’ll pay the extra to have DT spokes/nipples and a reliable hub-set I know I can service and get adapters and spares for… which is similar to the concerns that put me off many factory wheelsets.

True, I just trust a shonky machines wheel building skills more than my own, which is pretty tragic. 🙂

If your looking at these wheels at 1425g then here are how mine stack up?

My wheels are 1494g
My rims were 363g each (not 370g I said above 😳 )
My Hope hubs were 310g Rear (135×12) and 178g front (20mm)
32 DT Revolution Spokes and Alloy Nipples were 280g

Considering my spokes feel like they are made from the thinnest fuse wire imaginable then the Novatec hubs must be light… or they are listing them as built with the lighter QR hubs as the Novatec 12mm and 20mm options I can see online are quite heavy.

If you built wheels like mine up with DT 240 hubs you could get down to that weight and have awesome reliable servicable wheels… at a cost 😈

I have another set of Hope/Flow/hoops on another bike which makes it really easy to swap these over… even though I have to swap the end caps and cassettes etc 8)

That’s what I did for my Asr5c. LB wide rims (363g & 376g ish) on dt240 cl hubs with dt revs and brass nipples. Stayed with brass nips to carry the extra tension better but may try ally next time. The extra stiffness of the rims allowed me to use 28 spokes… And seem fine so far. They came in at 1400g. They’re very snappy yet stiff and spin up real nice.

LB are working on specialized style beadless rims at the mo and proposing a 35mm 380g rim which is pretty exciting at Circa $170 (guessing around a 26-27mm inner width!)

Have seen the new Superstar AM carbon rims in the flesh, and they’re a lot deeper than the Light Cycle ones (which I have also looked at).

I have LB wider carbon rims in 29er, came in at 420g and 412g and built them onto Tesla hubs with DT super comps with highish tension.

Tweaked the rear after some serious abuse and now they have settled nicely.

1750g the pair for strong wide wheels in 29er…. they ride stiff and feel good…. very happy.

LB are working on specialized style beadless rims at the mo and proposing a 35mm 380g rim which is pretty exciting at Circa $170 (guessing around a 26-27mm inner width!)

It’s a ‘hookless’ rim. I have been chatting to them about it as I’m interested but concerned the internal width is overkill for my usual 2.25-2.3″ tyres as it’s actually 30mm internal. I do like the idea of hookless as they can make the rim stronger with a 2.5mm thick rim. Same weight as the current 23mm internal (old Flow width) as they have the new manufacturing technique. tbh I would be happy with a 23/25mm internal rim based on the new manufacturing method.

My son has some LB rims 30mm, when he got them we found that they were laterally true but 4-5mm out in a small segment radially – anyone else had this problem

We got them to about 1mm out after trueing but no better without overtensioning.

Those of you with the LB rims – what kind of riding are you doing with them? Jumps/drops/rocks/etc?

honourablegeorge – Member

Problem there is you end up with Superstar hubs. I’d sooner have Hope.

And I’d rather have Superstar. Each to their own I guess.

My switch hubs have been faultless, bearings last a good time, spares are cheap and easy to get hold of and they can be adapted to virtually any standard. And maintenance is straight forward to perform. All for less money than a Hope hub.

I’ve ridden some rock stuff and plenty of singletrack so far and seem ok. Suffered a few marks frm the rocks but just seem to rub off.

Forgot to mention that the erd of the LB rims has been known to vary a wee bit so prob best measure before buying spokes!.

Wow 30mm is a massive Id. I imagine I would be happy around 25 too, maybe with dare I say it a slightly lighter and cheaper rim. Not sure my tyres will even fit in frame at 30mm.

Incidentally the am wide Lb rims plump out conti mk2 2.2 tyres to a nice plump size as a bonus.

Is that your thread over on mtbr btw Andy?

How do these compare as a set weight wise to flows with hope hubs?

Another LB wider 29er user here. Built onto Kings with DT supercomps. I’ve given them a good battering on loose rocky terrain. They’ve picked up plenty of scrapes but so far so good, they are true and no sign of any cracks.
I was using Flows before. Not a huge diffrence in feel really as the flow is a great rim, but they are definately a bit stiffer.
I love the idea of 35mm wide ones, I had salsa gordos with big tyres and they were great but a bit hefty.

Is that your thread over on mtbr btw Andy?

‘Fraid not – what thread is it? Can you pop a link up?

J273 – messiah’s first post above has the weights for both wheelsets.

I’m tempted by the new ones but i think the width is too wide. Did ask here but no one was interested 🙁

Where are these new wide ones? Like the sound of it.

http://www.light-bicycle.com/new-26er-rim-specially-designed-for-all-mountain-and-downhill-bikes.html

These threads keep tempting me…

Where would be a decent place to pick up DT swiss 240 hubs for a good price then? 15mm / 142mm

Where would be a decent place to pick up DT swiss 240 hubs for a good price then? 15mm / 142mm

bikediscount.de were the cheapest when I was trawling around checking prices last week

Your not he only one, I’ve been perfectly happy with my Arch EXs, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them, but….! I’m going to stay away from this thread from now on.

And where would I find 64 Supercomp spokes for not much money? Or CX-Rays?

starbike.com seem to have best prices on Sapim spokes – 2 euros for CX-Ray, 0.90 for D-Light

Aci alpina are as butted as supercomps 1.7mm and weigh the same!. Try sdeals or cyclebasket for em. 21-28p each plus post. If your hubs are the right size you might get away with buying from a guy in eBay in Preston/Kirkham. He does full boxes fir £15 but only in two sizes!.

Good luck.

G

I had a chap in the workshop the otherday who said the bloke a t superstar makes his actual own hubs, did a tour of the factory and saww real cnc machines, maybe they are going upmarket

I know its the same factory that makes lots of carbon rims for other folks and they have just got the services of a well know rim guru

theres also been another suggestion someone could do the same as enve in the UK

the services of a well know rim guru

😕