Originally Posted by
seely
At 3 years old there is definitely a pretty good possibility of the rims being Australian made. It was before my time here, but I have heard that some of our Australian extrusions had some inconsistencies. Since switching to a US extruder with a long history of making bike rim extrusions, it seems like we've cleared any issues up. I'm going to say if the wheels are on Ultegra hubs, however, its likely not our in-house build but that doesn't mean it wasn't a competent build, and frankly, as long as it wasn't vastly over tensioned I wouldn't expect a failure like that from a poor build.
It sounds like you're pretty well set on the build, but if there's anything we can do to get you back on a Velocity rim, let me know. seely [at] velocityusa [dot] com
Seely, the wheels are definitely a Velocity build. At the time, they were having supply issues and were using Ultegra hubs in place of their race hubs. That was why I jumped onto the wheels when I did. As you say, I think there is a manufacturing fault at play here given the failure mode. The cracks are following the seam where the material changes thickness from the nipple seat. Hopefully with new manufacturing processes the same thing wouldn't happen again.
For the record, I'm not against Velocity rims. I've been running Aerohead rims on my track bike for 6ish years now. Hundreds and possibly thousands of full gas accelerations, standing starts and race miles and the wheels haven't even looked like running out of true.