didnthurt
Full Member
How about a cheap Chinese carbon rim?
Imminent death awaits?
I think it’s a moment that’s passed, personally. I got some of the very first Lightbicycle ones before they were a known brand- purely because they were the right erd and I could get them drilled to the right spoke count, for a wheelset that I was having trouble getting a replacement rim for. And they were just incredibly awesome- broke one eventually at BPW on the hardtail, but there’s no aluminium rim in the world that would have done the same job, at the same weight, for any length of time. After that got a slightly heavier set that I sold on after I think 3 years on the enduro bike including 2 EWS rounds and 2 years of the SES and sold in good condition. After that got a set of 29er ones which are still going strong.
But. The known quantities are now pretty expensive, and the cheap ones feel like way more of a gamble- essentially these days they’re more likely to be cheap for a reason, whereas “back in the day” they were cheap because it was a new thing and even the very best were an unknown quantity.
And in the meantime, alu rims got miles better. Though, also expensive to be fair.
So I’m a fan as you can tell, never regretted any of the ones I got and they’ve been better than any alu option would have been, at the time. But I’m really not sure I’d do it today.