Originally Posted by
Robert A
Can I ask a basic, slightly OT question about Light Bicycle Wheels vs. the major brands?
I have a rim-brake CAAD12 and am just starting to look at replacing my wheels. Without getting into granular details of wheel specifics, I'm curious about the high-level tradeoffs between two very different ideas. 1) A new set of Light Bicycle Wheels, built to whatever specification is right for me. 2) A quality pair of used high-end wheels (Zipp or Enve) from a known retailer such as Pros Closet. Both options are close in price.
TPC is a respectable outlet and I would trust used carbon from them (as opposed to some random set on CL/ebay). For me, the tradeoff was really down to mentally riding "new" vs "used" -- I wanted to ride something brand spanking new. The only thing I would be curious about with used carbon wheels is the age. For example, an $800 pair of Enves might be 4 or 5 years old. There have been enough tweaks in rim profile in that time that it's worth noting. On the other hand, dependong on how old, in favor of used Zipps/Enves etc is (probably) better hubs and bearings. Maybe.