How long would you expect a set of wheels that are used with rim brakes and used all year round in all weathers to last?

I’ve just retired a set of Fulcrum racing 7’s after 2 years and about 15,000 miles, I was thinking of sticking them on e bay with an honest description and just seeing how they do, but i am curious as how much life they may have left in them.

blimey, that’s good going!
I have worn out rims on my commuter faster than the tyres! (though this is a rather hilly commute and rarely-washed bike with plenty of road grime, mind…)

it all depends what the braking surface is. I have some mavic ceramic coated rims that have lasted for years, whereas I have worn right through a pair of new but uncoated aluminium mavic rims in a weekend when biking in a granite terrane

would be interested if anyone has experience of DT rims for v brakes?

It all depends on how hard and how often you brake. A short commute on a gravelly cycle path could eat themif you are braking frequently. A long road commute in the country could be another extreme.

Look at how curved the braking surface is and whether the indicator is indicating wear.

When I last looked into this the consensus seemed to be the walls had to be at least 1mm thick and you can use one of THESE to measure it. Different rims are, well, different obviously…

This is also quite useful…

currently using a set of open pros that i think are 5 years old? which is going to be c25k i think? might be closer to 30k?

A huge amount of this is in the vale of evesham so no hills and no braking to worry about.

In contrast i destroyed a set of mavic sunset %17s in 9 months, to the point that the sidewalls gave way. (can’t remember if they were 117, 217 or 317) they were the good ones 10ish years ago.

Road bike?
I unfortunately retired some 1997 Campag Electron wheels this year after being clipped by a car in Wandsworth in June. They’d done at least 15,000 miles in all conditions. My 2006 Eurus have now gone to the cross bike after something like 20,000 miles including 3 RvV, 5 weeks in the Pyrenees, Alps and Dolomites, 5 Dragon Rides, hundreds of Sunday rides etc etc.
I’ve done wearing out 2 pairs of rims a year on my mtb in the early/ mid 90s and my approach now is that when I begin to feel uncomfortable about the level of wear I change them.
On a brighter note my Shamal Ultras were very nice on Sundays easy 100km.

Willy-wave-tastic!

😛

Depends entirely on usage as you’d expect!

I’ve seen decent quality rims (mavic open pro’s) go in under 2,000 miles underneath a normal size guy, riding year round, on an immaculately maintained bike. Seen big big guys riding through filth for years, never a care in teh world toward cleaning rims/keeping on top of brake pads and get 8-10k over a few years.
I’ve *just* thrown a set of mavic 217xc rims away after about 15 years service. Rear was a freaking joke to be honest though, must have been less than 0.8mm wall thickness left in the mid part of them (dodgy as ****). They did 4 years of mountain biking, then 10 years of commuting/SS/abuse, no idea how many miles, anywhere between 6-15k, no idea!