New factory wheels or new wheelbuild
 

My friend has some nice 24h/28h 11 speed shimano 100/130 qr white industry hubs with a dented (pothole) rear rim that he is looking to rebuild. Quotes for rims, spokes, and build are coming in around $5-600 CAD.

Rim options
Boyd Altamont 700c
HED Belgium Plus
Astral Radiant
Easton r90sl
H plus son

Spokes are sapim race db for the majority of the quotes. Hes about 245lbs. For the cost of the build and hubs are there any factory wheels or rim options that would be significantly better than the custom build option here?

At 245 he needs 32 spokes in rear even 36 is not awful. Front 24 but don’t think some light 24 x 28 will be ok.

Lower spoke count wheels won’t last as long, but if he is ok with that, he will be fine if he doesn’t use lightweight or box aluminum rims. I weigh about that and run 28/32 on my main wheels, have two sets of Shimano factory that are in the low twenties and a some Bontrager wheels that are 24/24. I just know that if a hit a serious pothole with the Shimano wheels, that will probably be the of them.

I agree with the others above, that 24/28 for a guy of that weight isn't great, and for peace of mind he'd be well advised to go with something beefier. I typically weigh 20-30lbs more than him (my weight fluctuates quite a lot) and when I built my custom carbon wheelset I opted for 36/36. The front at 36h was admittedly overkill, but I didn't want to go for less than 32h given my weight and my priority for durability and stability, and in the end for a non racer what impact in terms of weight and aero are four more spokes/nipples really going to have? Not much.

If he goes for something more like 32/32 or 28/32 instead of his current 24/28 then obviously he'll need new hubs. How would he feel about building his own wheelset? With web pages and Youtube videos covering the topic it's not that hard to do. Is he a "I like a small project" kinda guy? Thanks to online learning resources I've built two wheelsets myself, including my wide/mid-deep carbon Chinese rim/White Industries hub wheelset that I'm currently riding, and they're doing great. I now own the Park Tools truing stand, which is really nice, but while building my first wheelset I flipped the bike over and used the wheel mounted in the fork, with an indicator taped to the fork to visualize the wobble for correction.

As far as factory wheels goes, to have anything specific to say we'd have to know what kind of hubs he requires and whether he's using rim brakes or discs. So, QR or thru-axle, and what widths/diameter hubs if thru-axle, and rim brakes or discs?

Altamonts.

Your friend needs more spokes or deeper rims. Sticking with those hubs, DT Swiss RR 511 or Kinlin XR31T would be pretty good. There are some out-dated options too - Velocity Deep V or Chukker, Hplusson SL42.
Any of those 24-25mm deep rims would probably be fine in 28/32 or 32/32 hole counts.

High end hub in hand, you probably aren't going to get a factory wheel for much cheaper that's comparable, unless you find some really cheap closeout or something.

At that weight I'd feel comfortable using DT RR511 or something like that. Probably he'd be fine on a normal midweight rim, but I'd feel more comfortable with something beefier. If you walked into my shop and wanted R511s to Races/DT Comps and standard brass nipples it'd be under $300 usd, although we're in a rural spot and our labor rates are lower than in metropolitan areas.

If he wants to try building his himself, it would probably be cheaper.