Looking to upgrade the lumpen wheels on my Specialized Sequoia Hubs are taken care of (some surplus 32H Hope pro 2 evo’s), but I’m wondering what to pair them with. My first thought was WTB KOMs, in i25 flavour, til it was pointed out that they get specced on trail bikes, so maybe a bit overkill. So what else is there with 25mm internal width (gives a nice tyre profile), 700/29 diameter, for less than £100 a rim? Ideally in black or with removable logos.

Kom is my default- I don’t think you can go much lighter without spending silly money. What size tyres are you going for- I’ve found 21 or 23 internall to be plenty for up to about a 44mm tyre, which saves you a bit of weight

I’m about to build some 700c i21 KOMs up. Think I weighed then at something daft like 420g.
Dunno how much they are now, but they were a bit of a bargain from CRC when I got them.

The KOMs come in 19, 21, 23 and 25mm(and a few bigger), will be running 42mm Specialized sawtooth tyres, the current wheels are 25mm wide and I like the shape they give so will prob go for that.

Thanks for confirming my thoughts!

I’ve got dt r460’s and ‘only’ 38-40mm tyres. I’ve got crests on my cx race bike which are 23mm internal and I worry for the rims on rocks as there’s very little tyre overhanging the rim.

Trail rims can be fine (a la crests) but; they’re actually lighter and thus probably weaker than road rims. They just normally get protected by 2.2″ of tyre. And check spoke tensions, with higher pressure tyres low spoke tensions can be a PITA. My crests are 28h which makes them even more of a faff. basically they’re built right to the limit and still feel a bit slacker than I’d like.

+1 I’d go with a wider road rim, rather than a MTB rim. I ran Crests on my road/gravel commuter and they fell apart due to the higher pressures.

H Plus Son Hydra?

Koms are fine as long as you treat them as ‘mtb tubeless’ i.e. sensible pressures. I had no problems with crests (MK1) before that too.

It is worth thinking about what tyres you want to run- wtbs can be quite a loose fit on some tyres. I’ve just had a right faff trying to get a gravelking to inflate on one. Which is weird, because I tried a gravelking SK in the same size before and it went up fine.

Crests on the other hand were really tight with wtb tyres. As in, thought it was going to have to cut the tyre off and took a meaningful whack out of the spoke tension tight. I’ve gone with wtb for cross/gravel stuff because the tyres seem to err on the side of tighter and it’s easier to build a rim up with tape than the reverse.