Originally Posted by
avrilboazmoss
I may be missing some subjective experience but surely the centrifugal force of a turning wheel is way stronger than gravity that would cause it to slide off. I mean - if it wasn’t than we wouldn’t need mudguards much. May it just be that deep section rims happen to have no flat spoke bed which causes the mud to slide off one side or another? But then any rim with any depth with such cross section should be just fine.
This was the reason why I posted the question. If it turns out the aerodynamics effects are negligible and I were to focus on weight savings, what would be the best example of low profile carbon rim and how much lighter would it be than comparable alloy one?
So they are easier to build for the people selling them to me at potentially higher margin?
A) I think CXMag might have tried to test it a bit. It gets semi-apocryphal, but for years crossers have preferred deeper rims. They tend to be as light or lighter and cut through muck better.
B) You can get disc brake 380 gram 29er carbon clincher rims in 28mm tall by 22mm bead-width that will be reliable and take a 125KG rider for $200/rim without even so much as a sale coupon. And the LB folks are reliable IME, unlike many fly-by-night Chinese rim brands. You will not find an alloy clincher that IRL will be durable in 700C
that weighs less than 440-450 grams/rim at a minimum weight. Pacenti tried 5X with their SL23v1 and v2 and v3 and Forza now twice to make 420gram rims--and failed resulting in pissed customers and broken rims/wheels and pissed wheelbuilders refusing to do business with their name ever again....what is more those two linked rims---it isn't even apples/apples as the LB rim
is a wider and taller profile, still.
Something more comparable like the AForce AL33 (a nice rim), that is 19mm wide at the beads and 32mm tall
will still be narrower and weigh 500+gram per rim IRL, and cost $150USD per rim.
C) Easier and more reliable to build. It isn't like wheelbuilders are becoming millionaires--their margins are poor, too. Wheelbuilders that build even with quality rims like AForce and HED and Easton have piles of unusable rims they couldn't use because the extrusion process left a rim that wouldn't true well enough to meet a professional standard. Fewer than with cheapo rims--but still pile of waste metal...but they meet a nominal trueness metric
enough to ship. CF rims lace up and go--generally. I think Psimet has ranted about this a bit come to think of it.