thehammerdog

why does it seem that most fixie wheelsets are deep rim heavy style. I wanted to upgrade but prices go from $100 to $300 with most having the deep rim look. Is there a reason behind this trend? I think if I buy normal road rims and re-spoke I would save a ton of weight..is there any reason to go with deep rims for some unknown to me fixie bike reasoning.
Curious...

seau grateau

Many moons ago Deep Vs were the gold standard of cool and you could get them in a ****load of sweet colors. Then Velocity birthed the antichrist of rims, the B43. It was even deeper and heavy as ****, with triple wall construction for no reason. Fixies jumped the shark while it was in vogue and its ghost haunts us to this day.

thehammerdog

Ok
so it is not a power thing torque or something but pure aesthetics 😁

seau grateau

Bingo.

phobus

There's a set of B43s sitting right behind me right now, so they literally haunt me.

Bandera

Is it 2004 again?

-Bandera

79pmooney

I ride Velocity Aero rears and Mavic Open Pro or Sport fronts. Those Velocities are bulletproof and build up beautifully. (Also have the nice feature of a very deep usable braking surface so I can do big cog size changes and keep the brake pads on the rim.) The Mavis are a bunch lighter and work. Also build up well.

Ben

Mikefule

Deep rims may be more aerodynamic, or they may simply be styled to look more aerodynamic. The faster you go, the more important aerodynamics becomes.

It can be harder to get tyres onto or off deep rims when repairing a puncture.

Very deep rims need an inner tube with a longer valve stem. These can be harder to source.

All other things being equal (same material, thickness, quality) deeper rims will be heavier, will have more rotational inertia, and will take slightly more effort to accelerate or slow down. The more you change speed, and the more climbing you do, the more important rotating weight will become.

All that aside, there are no additional stresses that go through a single speed or fixed wheel that do not also go through a wheel fitted with a multi-speed block or even a hub gear. The maximum force you can put through is dictated by how hard you can push on the pedals, and how much friction the brakes can apply — and none of this is affected by the bike being single, fixed, or geared. A single speed or fixed does not need a stronger or stiffer rim than a geared bike.

The reason that you see so many "fixies" with deep rims is the same reason that you see so many people commuting short distances in flat cities on dual suspension mountain bikes: fashion and marketing. For a period, the minimalist fixie with bold colours and deep rims was a thing. Perhaps it still is, because I haven't had reason to look at new bikes for a few years now.

Whether you choose to buy into the fashion is up to you. A bike is not just a machine, it is a tool, a toy, and can also be an expression of who you are. If your bike looks good (to you) as well as feeling good, you will enjoy riding it more.

You can of course have wheels built to your preferred spec., or even do it yourself if you are handy with tools and have the time. Rims, hubs, spokes and nipples can all be purchased separately and any decent local bike shop can build a wheel to order.

My personal opinion: within broad limits in terms of price and quality, I'd pay more attention to my choice of tyres than my rims.

Broctoon

I've got a set of Velocity Deep-V rims that I ride pretty regularly on one of my bikes. The aerodynamic advantage is moot for me, because I don't ride that bike fast enough for it to make much difference. But they are quite tough and only pretty heavy.

The Velocity Chukkar is wider, not quite as deep, and super heavy. I think they were designed for tandems and touring. They were offered in a 48-spoke drilling, intended specifically for bike polo.* I have a set of these. As soon as I realized what boat anchors they are, I swapped them for something lighter, and now they're sitting in my garage awaiting the day I decide to try polo or find someone who can use them.

It's interesting to see the evolution of bike components as racers and ordinary consumers discover what works best, and marketing hacks push trendy features in a dynamic interchange of supply and demand.



* Polo bikes need tough wheels, but the reason really high spoke count is preferred is simply to keep the ball from being able to pass through the wheel. A lot of guys make plastic or even cardboard discs/fairings to achieve the same result.

Mikefule

Indeed. The fun one is when a minority of individualists and rebels come up with something minimalist that flies in the face of the marketing — and within about 3 days, the marketing people have turned round and started mass-marketing it as "rebellious", but in a range of colours and flavours. It happened with punk rock in the mid 1970s and it happened with fixed wheel bikes a few years ago.

nightfly

It happens with literally everything. It's called capitalism. There is a well worn path from fringe to cool to commodified. There are large bodies of study and a literature devoted to it.

Deep V's are for looks. They are heavy, stiff and stupid.

BicycleBicycle

I don't think it's about being rebellious as much as it is about having something personal that you can identify with
The "rebellious" box is too easy to just throw everything that's not normcore into. Kind of a lot like how things are marketed to a mainstream audience, "Themes".
Then again, I've never really experienced the social intracacies of bike riding other than with people that made me feel like I was inferior because of where I was from, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask.

Mikefule

Whether we say "rebellious" or choose a different word like quirky, eccentric, individualistic, non-conformist, fringe, or a dozen other words, the point is that some people deliberately try to be different from the mainstream, and some other people have more or less a total disregard for the mainstream. Once something that is non-mainstream catches hold, the mainstream appropriates it and makes it mainstream, whilst using the "non-conformist" angle to market it.

BicycleBicycle

I'm not part of any stream so I wouldn't know honestly lol. I don't do much of anything on a bike for social reasons, or because I want other people to see what I have. Its mostly for personal aesthetic satisfaction and because I need a real bike and will take one over something that is in the shape of a bike (hi-ten) anyday.

I just like to do things by myself without having to think about these things all of the time.
I just know that marketing teams usually take everything that is visually or thematically appealling to people and try to make something in that sense.
Often times that borders on the unsafe as sometimes there is almost no regard for why or how the original products were made. Deep V's are laterally stiff, and actually pretty light for how much surface area they cover. They're made to be ridden.
A few companies copied it (Mostly mass parts distributors) and made a halfway decent wheel, but the ones that I see that are the grossest are the ones that come on the newer completes.

Marketing definitely has it's place, but sometimes it's kinda gross.

Also, I think that that's how literally everything happens. Even in penguin suit business situations.
I don't see a whole lot of innovation coming from people that did exactly what everyone else did.
Everyone told Musk that he as an idiot for starting a car company. Every innovation we've ever had comes from someone trying to do something differently.
But again, I'm probably not the best person to answer these questions, because I've never known what not different is. For someone to want to do somethign differently, they first have to know what it's like to be in a normal setting. If you've never had that and you've been screwing around on bikes since you were literally 12, then whatever that was is normal for you.
I think that people that want to do things to be "different" typically start from "normal", and that's what most mainstream marketing markets too. People that don't try to discover these things until they are in their late teens or early 20''s.

nightfly

If you are defining your difference by what type of consumer products you consume, you've already lost. The whole mainstream vs fringe are just marketing categories.

Until you start thinking about what defines the system you are in and explore what might be outside that, you're basically just moving pieces around on a board set by someone else.

And deep V's still kinda suck.

ThermionicScott 

"I don't belong to any group" is the coolest group to be in.

Bandera

"Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."

-Groucho Marx

Bandera

ThermionicScott 

You're on a roll with these song parodies, @Bandera!

TimothyH

The V shape isn't terribly aerodynamic anyway. A V shaped rim can be strong though.

A U shaped rim profile is going to be more aero.

nightfly

Fortunately aerodynamics doesn't come into play when you are walking your sweet fixie up to the coffee shop or bar where the advantages of the deep v really shine through.

TimothyH

This type of pragmatic reality-based logic is why I love this site and serves as a reminder that I need to ride my chrome Bianchi Pista more.


-Tim-

BicycleBicycle

Haha, this thread is fun. Really reminds me of the golden era of bikes. You don't see Deep V's anywhere anymore.

REDMASTA

browsing modern road bikes the wheels look fairly deep these days, especially the carbon variety. maybe deep v's should be renamed average v's.

TMonk

Deep wheels are for going fast. If that's what you care about then get some. But they're also expensive. Also IME I haven't noticed a difference for anything under 40 mm (including deep V's), then it has started making a difference (for me). The purpose of the depth is to reduce spoke area b/c wind gets caught up and bounces around in there, so depth is #1 . After that width, U-shape and other things like @TimothyH mentioned add up but it's mostly about reducing spoke area (depth).

Also if you care about going fast, tires and tubes actually make more of a difference then rim depth and they're cheaper.