SethAZ 

TL;DR: I built a wheelset designed to be tough and durable for "superclyde" class cyclists who nevertheless want to take advantage of as much aero and other benefits as can reasonably be salvaged by a superclyde-proof wheelset. Photos are attached below if you just want to scroll down and see the pics.

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This post is about a wheelset I just built and test rode. I've called it the AeroClyde wheelset. It departs from most if not all of the commercially available wheelsets, so I will explain my choices, describe the components, and show the build. Since this build is atypical I thought it might be of interest to others, particularly heavier riders who want some nice wheels and don't want to crush all the nice wheels out there designed for thin people.

I am no expert on any aspect of any of this, and don't even pretend to be on the internet. This is only the second complete wheelset I've ever built, with five total wheels now under my belt. This design and build represents opinions I've formed as a superclyde cyclist who wants to, and likes to ride fast (fast for me anyway). I've read a lot and researched and just put together my idea and decided to just do it and see how it turned out. I realize my opinions may not agree with those of other people, including those with much more experience than I have, so I'm prepared to listen, learn, and revise my opinions as appropriate. Bring it on.

Purpose: Build a wheelset whose first priority is toughness and durability for a superclydesdale, but which also uses quality components, and salvages as much aerodynamic and weight benefits as can still be had while satisfying the first priority of toughness and durability. This is not meant to be the toughest or most durable possible wheelset: it is merely what I believe to be a tough and durable wheelset that is a good compromise between aerodynamic and weight considerations and the other extreme of being built like a tank. For the toughest and most durable wheelsets talk to the touring and tandem guys and see what they build.

There is a market for aerodynamic carbon and other wheels for the typical cyclist that use deep-section carbon wheels, low spoke counts, lightweight components, etc. to provide aerodynamic and other benefits to enthusiast cyclists willing to pony up lots of cash. The various ENVE and other wheelsets come to mind. I'm sure these are great wheels, but people like me can never ride them (or even afford them).

For the clydesdale and superclyde cyclists there are wheelsets that are typically very heavy, tanklike builds with very high spoke counts, very heavy duty rims, spokes, hubs, etc. They'll probably last forever, but aren't exactly ideal if you want to ride fast.

What I hadn't seen was the ENVE-like equivalent wheelsets optimized for really heavy riders. I weighed 283 lbs this morning. Even if I had the money for an ENVE wheelset, which I don't, I'd have no business actually riding it. My weight is falling a little day by day as I continue cycling and eating well, but even if I achieve my "dream" weight I will still probably never be lower than, say, 230-240 lbs or so. This means I can never hope to benefit from any of the typical high-end wheelsets, which are all designed and built for typical lightweight cyclists, with low spoke counts that a guy like me has no business ever riding.

When I ordered my Lynskey I told the salesguy what I weigh and said that my goal with this new bike was to have a tough, durable, comfortable, high quality bike that I could ride hard and expect to have it last, be fun and enjoyable, etc. We decided on the Stans Grail wheelset, which was the toughest Lynskey had to offer in a pairing with this bike. They special-ordered 32-spoke front and rear wheels, 2 cross, and those wheels have been great so far, with over 600 miles ridden on them in the last four weeks since I got the bike. I'm sure they'd last for a long time, and I had no criticisms of them at all, except that even this wheelset, the toughest Lynskey had to offer with their bikes, has an official weight limit of 230 lbs. I'm still over 50 pounds beyond the weight limit of this wheelset!

Requirements:
36 spokes both front and rear. I was constantly tempted to revise this downward, knowing I could probably get away with it. I resisted every such temptation.
The highest-performance rim I could find which would give the most aerodynamic and weight benefits while being affordable and available in a 36-spoke drilling, and also being tough, stiff, and durable enough for long-term use by a superclyde.
High quality hubs.
Spokes that took advantage of any weight and shape benefits while also finding durability and strength bonuses wherever possible.
Brass nipples for ease of building and durability.

I was constrained by the following:
15x100mm thru-axle front hub required for my bike
12x142mm thru-axle rear hub required
36-spoke drilling available
disc brake version, preferably Shimano centerlock (because I like it better than 6-bolt)

Components: I selected the RR46C02 rim from light-bicycle.com. They are 28mm wide, and 46mm deep. The width is great because as a superclyde I really dig riding wide tires. Having read that the best aerodynamics in the wheels are had not just from having a deep section, but also matching the rim width to the tire width as closely as possible, it seemed that this rim would match up really well with the 32mm Compass tires I've been riding on the Lynskey. Also, Light-Bicycle allows you to customize the rims you order in quite a few ways, including offering spoke drillings all the way up to 36 spokes. This rim seemed likely to be tough, strong, and durable. It wasn't super light, nor was it super heavy. I could have gotten the rims with no logo, or with various colors for the logo. I opted to keep the logo because I'm not ashamed that I used some Chinese carbon rims, and I don't care if people know they are from light-bicycle.com. I did go with black, though, for a "stealth" logo that won't overpower the look of the rest of the bike with a big flashy colorful logo.

The hub choice was pretty much limited to White Industries CLD by the constraints mentioned above. Had I been willing to go to 32 spokes some other options may have been available. While expensive, fortunately the White Industries hubs have a great reputation, so other than the money I was not disappointed by this choice. I got the red anodized CLD hub with 15mm thru-axle front, and 12mm thru-axle rear, Shimano 11-speed compatible. The White Industries uses a chromoly steel axle and titanium freehub, both of which contributed to my satisfaction with this choice of hub for my strong and durable superclyde wheelset.

For spokes I went with:
36 Sapim CX-Sprint spokes, black brass polyax nipples, HM nipple washers for the front wheel.
36 Sapim Force spokes, and the same nipples and washers, for the rear.

The CX-Sprint spoke is a bladed spoke that is the thicker brother of the popular CX-Ray spoke. While the CX-Ray starts life as a 2.0/1.5mm double butted spoke, and then has its center section swaged to an rounded flat blade section, the CX-Sprint starts life as a 2.0/1.8mm double butted spoke, then is similarly flattened. The CX-Sprint still offers whatever aerodynamic benefit one might expect from such a flattened spoke, but is tougher than the CX-Ray. It's also cheaper than the CX-Ray.

The Sapim Force spoke is a triple-butted spoke. It's 2.0/1.8/2.18mm, where the 2.18mm thick section is the one with the J-bend and spoke head, where its extra thickness will actually toughen up that critical area substantially. While normal 2.0/1.8mm double-butted spokes would have been fine, I decided that with my emphasis on this wheelset having long-term durability and strength, going with the Force triple-butted spoke was really a no brainer. It pays a very small weight penalty over a standard double-butted spoke, while concentrating all of that little bit of extra weight right where it will do the most benefit.

I used Sapim black brass polyax spoke nipples for durability and easy of building. The polyax nipples have a hemispherical shape where it meets the edge of the spoke holes. This matches up perfectly with the Sapim HM nipple washers, which provide a nice little cup for the spoke to sit in and ensure the best ability to move freely and be easily adjustable without digging into the rim around the spoke hole.

I used the Shimano Ultegra 8000 generation of 160mm brake rotor.

Build: I've been wanting the Park Tools 2.2 truing stand for some time, and finally bought it for this project, and to have for the rest of my life for truing, other wheel builds, etc. I built my first wheelset using the fork of my previous bike with the bike upside down. It worked, but having a real truing stand is better. The Park Tools truing stand was not well centered when it arrived. Using a wheel of my Lynskey I trued up the Park Tools truing stand so I could be sure of a well-dished wheel build. I flipped the wheel around while truing up the stand to make sure the wheel I used to center it was in fact well dished, and it was.

I reviewed Mike T's wheelbuilding site for tips on the build, his suggestions for stress relieving, etc. I've read quite a few other sites in the past as well, but I specifically went back and re-read this site before doing this build. I also re-watched some Youtube videos on doing a cross 3 spoke lacing, and watched one step by step while lacing these ones up.

For the front wheel I actually made a mistake with the first 9 spokes (trailing spokes) on both sides and ended up with spokes cross over the valve hole. I had to go around the rim moving each pair of spokes over two holes, and that got it right. The White Industries logo is nicely visible through the valve hole, the space above the valve hole is one of the parallel spaces that leave it nice and easy to attach the pump to the valve, etc.

I put a tiny drop of chain lube (NFS if you must know) with a syringe into each HM nipple washer before putting the nipple and washer onto the spoke. I also rolled the spoke threads onto some anti-size thread lubricant (the kind that has copper in it) from the auto parts store using my finger. Mike T's suggestion of carving a Q-tip like a pencil and screwing that into the head of each nipple in order to make it easy to get the nipples in and onto the ends of the spokes was incredible useful.

The builds otherwise were fairly uneventful. I took my time and just followed all of the suggestions, making sure to do my stress relieving, bringing the spokes up to tension as evenly as I could, etc. In the end it was kind of funny when I thought I was still deep in the process of building each wheel and suddenly realized that I was done. The wheels were properly dished, as true as reasonable (maximum side to side wobble of only a couple tenths of a mm, only barely discernible vertical wobble), the tension was as even as possible (within 5kgf maximum spread as far as I could tell reading off the fairly coarse scale of the Park Tools TM-1 tension meter). I just go to a point where I was thinking ok, what next, and realized that there was nothing next; the wheel was done.

There was no pinging of spokes after I mounted up tires and put the wheels on the bike and road them around the neighborhood, so my stress relieving was effective. I used 5 out of 6 of Mike T's suggested methods of stress relieving during the build. The only method I didn't use was using a hammer and punch to "set" the spoke heads into the hub flange. I slotted a scrap piece of hardwood with my bandsaw and used it to hold the blades of the CX-Sprint while tensioning them, to keep them from winding up.

Weight: Final weight of the built rims, with two layers of OrangeSeal tubeless ready rim tape, and the disc rotors installed onto the hubs. No cassette installed. I include the weight of the Stans No Tubes Grail ZTR wheelset that my AeroClyde wheels replaced for the sake of comparison. The Stans Grail wheels had Stan's yellow tape installed, of course.

AeroClyde front wheel w/rotor: 980 grams
Stans Grail front wheel w/rotor: 920 grams

AeroClyde rear wheel w/rotor: 1120 grams
Stans Grail rear wheel w/rotor: 1070 grams

The total weight penalty of the AeroClyde wheelset over my existing Stans Grail wheelset was only 110 grams. When you consider that most of this extra weight was in the hubs and rotor, that difference is pretty meaningless. My wheels have 4 more spokes each, but due to my 46mm deep rims instead of the Stans rims' 25mm or so, my spokes were shorter, so the spoke weight is something of a wash.

The benefits of the AeroClyde wheelset over Stans:
36 spokes in 3 Cross lacing instead of 32 spokes in 2 cross lacing, for improved strength and durability.
46mm deep section rim instead of 25mm for better aerodynamics
28mm outside rim width instead of 24mm for better aerodynamic transition from wide tires to the rim
Slight benefit from 1mm wider inner rim width for very modest benefit in shape and support of wider tires.
Likely stronger and stiffer rim due to larger cross sectional area and carbon vs. narrower/shallower aluminum. Light-Bicycle specifies a 130kg (286 lbs) weight limit for this rim, while Stans specifies a rider weight limit for the Grail wheelset of 230 lbs.

One minor bonus is that the 48-POE White Industries hubs are much quieter than the Neo hubs used in the Stan's wheels. The White Industries hubs are louder while freewheeling than a Shimano Ultegra hub, but much quieter than the Neos hub. While I'd gotten used to alerting people that I was coming up behind them on a MUP by freewheeling a little with the Stans wheelset, I am not sure the White Industries hubs are loud enough to do this, or at least to do it from as far away. The Ultegra hubs I've used on my previous bike definitely weren't loud enough to warn people by freewheeling until I was right on top of them. I'll have to see what happens next time I approach someone from behind on a MUP with the White Industries hubs.

Maiden Voyage: I took the bike out earlier today with the AeroClyde wheelset mounted on it out for a 32.5-mile route that I ride quite often. I cut 3 minutes off my 2017 PR for this particular course, averaging 18.7 mph including waiting short periods at several intersections. My previous PR for 2017 had averaged 18.2 mph for the same course. I can't say that this improvement was due solely to the wheels, because I also averaged a little higher heart rate for this ride. While I didn't think I was consciously pushing for a faster ride today, it's likely that my excitement over the new wheels did drive me a little bit, because the heart rate doesn't lie.

The wheels felt great. No pinging, no wierd feelings, no nothing. They felt solid, tracked extremely well through turns, etc. It's possible that I'm feeling slightly more road vibration through these wheels than I felt with the same tires through the Stan's Grail wheels. I'm not sure, but I think these stiffer wheels are transmitting a little more of the road buzz up than the Grails. It's still a vast improvement over my previous bike with the 28/25mm tire combo and stiff aluminum frame. I wish I had a way to measure and quantify this road vibration, because I'm not really sure if I really felt an increase or whether it's just in my head because I was also going faster.

I was unable to use the same Vittoria latex tubes that I'd been using with the Grail wheelset, because their 45mm valve stem didn't stick out far enough from these AeroClyde rims. I had to use lightweight Vittoria butyl tubes that I had onhand instead, which have a 60mm valve stem.

The light-bicycle rims claim to be tubeless ready, so fairly soon I'd like to try tubeless again, preferably with a wide tubeless ready tire like the Compass 35mm Bon Jon Pass tire. If I am in fact getting a slight increase in road vibration through these stiffer wheels, going tubeless will almost certainly eliminate most of it. At least that was my experience with my previous experiments with road tubeless on my old bike.

Here are some photos.

All ready to go:


The Lynskey with the AeroClyde wheels on it, with the Compass 32mm Stampede Pass tires:


Closer shot of the front wheel. You can really see how nicely matched the 28mm wide rim is with these 32mm tires:


Rear wheel:

Steve B.

Fantastic write up.

I first saw the length of the report and was turned off, then decided to stick with it. Well written, completely understandable and I could follow your decision making process and choices.

And now I have a good source for some good looking yet durable wheels for a fellow Clyde.

chaadster

Nice work on both the build and the writeup! Thanks!

Seattle Forrest

Thanks for posting this. I'm looking forward to seeing more from you about them. How do they handle in crosswinds? Was this your first time building wheels? Do you mind telling us how much the project cost?

SethAZ 

I looked at those and they look nice and have a great reputation. They would add a good $250+ to the price tag for the final build, and the 6-bolt is (probably irrationally) a bit of a turn-off for me. They would have made a fine build though, I'm sure.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone not constrained by 15mm thru-axle couldn't put together a much cheaper build with these same rims. I don't know if I looked at all possible options, but I looked at as many as I could find, and my simmering resentment at the 12mm/15mm thru axle standards cockup just grew the more I looked. The fact that my road bike uses a "gravel" fork that wants 15mm, but my rear cassettes want to be road cassettes really put some constraints on my options that I did not appreciate.

The new Shimano RS770 hubs, for instance, are available in 36 holes with centerlock disc mount and would cost around $200 less give or take, but are only available in 12x100 up front. I'd have used them if I could.

SethAZ 

Since I've only been on one non-trivial ride (not counting the spins around the block just to make sure they actually worked) with the new wheels I haven't experienced how they handle in serious crosswinds yet. There was a breeze today, but it wasn't very strong, and I didn't notice any effect on the wheels. I know what you're asking though, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they handle the strong cross winds myself. They do have the more rounded half V/half U shape that is now known to be better in crosswinds than the straight V designs, so I hold high hopes. Also, they're 46mm deep, so enough to be useful, maybe not deep enough to present a serious crosswind challenge.

In 2013 or so I built three wheels using the fork of my upside-down bike as the truing stand. Back in the early 90s I rebuilt one wheel after a guy knocked me over by crashing into me and putting his hand through the rear spokes, tacoing the wheel. Technically I'd built four wheels prior to the AeroClyde wheelset, but I don't count the one in the 90s because I had literally zero clue what I was doing.

When I built the wheels in 2013 I read everything I could find, watched various Youtube videos, etc. I at least had that much clue that time, so I count those. Since I hadn't done it again since then I went back and watched more videos, and re-read some of what I'd read before, just to remind myself.

I just lost my entire email history for the last 20 years in an email server migration gone awry, so I can't look up the exact pricing, but this is close:

The rims, hubs, spokes/nipples/washers totalled just under $1k. Add in the two Shimano Ultegra 8000 brake rotors and it was closer to $1100.

The light-bicycle rims were $188 each plus shipping, all totalled around $430 to my door from China.

I bought the hubs, spokes, nipples, washers from BikeHubStore during his Black Friday 20% off sale, so I saved quite a nice chunk of change on them.

His normal pricing:

WI CLD hubs:
Front - $167
Rear - $327.50

Sapim Force per spoke: $1.30
Sapim CX-Sprint per spoke: $2.40

It cost around $8 for the nipple washers, and $.20 each for the black brass nipples.

A person not constrained to buy one of the more expensive hub sets (for example the Shimano RS-770 I linked to above), and who used the cheapest nipples, normal double-butted spokes, cheaper brake rotors, etc. could probably build a wheelset with these same rims and same number of spokes, but a little less fancy, for probably closer to $700.

SethAZ 

I'd like to add a couple of thoughts to the walls of text I already put into this thread.

The Park Tools TS-2.2P truing stand that I bought for this project will not do thru-axle wheels by default, because there's nothing sticking out from the axle holes to hang on the lips of the arms that hold the wheel up. Park Tools sells some ridiculously priced options for solving this particular problem, but I'd seen these adaptors mentioned on some other forum (by the guy who sells makes and sells them). His forum posts were several years old but he was still selling them on eBay, so I picked up the full set that will do 12, 15, and 20mm thru-axle. They simply stick into the axle holes and provide something for the truing stand arms to hold onto and tighten up against. They worked perfectly. It's mind-boggling that Park Tools doesn't just sell these instead of their own ridiculous options.

While researching the rims I ran into Light-Bicycle.com and looked long and hard at them, looked for reviews, etc. What I did not want to do was just buy some no-name Chinese rim clones from some anonymous eBay seller and have no idea what I was getting. I saw that LB has been doing this for a few years now. They apparently started with MTB rims, so I found more online reviews and mentions, and Youtube videos from people who were using them for their MTB rims, but still, the reviews were good, and I got a good vibe.

One of the things that actually pushed me over the edge into trusting them was the fact that on their web site they have a "light bicycle family" page where they have photos of everyone who works there and what their job is, from the owner, to the layup workers, the wheel builders, production managers, QC engineers and managers, the painters, all the way to the ladies working in the back office and handling customer inquiries and such. They didn't look like slaves to me. I just decided that these people were doing the "real company" thing, trying to build a real company offering products at good prices, with good quality, that had been at it for a while and looked like they'd still be at it for some time to come. It didn't look "fly by night" to me at all. I saw references in someone else's posts online referring to his interactions with "Kartrin" over email. These posts were several years old. I interacted with Kartrin during my own order process. She's been there for a few years now. Some crapco fly-by-night operation probably wouldn't people working there for years like that. That's an assumption anyway, and it sounds funny to say that photos of these workers made me trust the company, and yet that's what pushed me over the edge from skeptical to willing to put down my money and see what I got.

Here's a little anecdote that also made me feel really good about this company, even though at first glance it might seem to do the opposite. Once I had my order number I could click a link and watch my order progress. They use a barcode or something and scan it in during each stage of the process from order received all the way through the various stages of production, QC, painting, packing and shipping, to shipped out with a tracking link. I watched my order of two rims progressing through the stages all the way up to painting. Then from one day to the next a third line item showed up in my order that was another rim, and it was back in the production stage. I emailed Kartrin and asked what that was about, and she said that one of my rims had been rejected during QC, and they were making a new one. There are at least two ways of looking at this:

Glass Half Empty: OMG, they failed in production and made me a crappy rim!
Glass Half Full: These people have a real QC process, and they really do inspect their product, and they really will reject it and make it a new one if they don't feel it meets their standards. This is very comforting.

So yeah, it took an extra week or so for the order to finally ship because they had to make another rim, but that didn't bother me very much. I was very happy knowing these folks took their QC seriously. That's always one of those lingering doubts we have about these Chinese carbon companies.

When the rims arrived I was actually blown away by how nice they were. They looked really, really good. From what I could see shining a light down into the spoke holes and whatnot the internal surfaces look great, they were nice and clean inside, nice looking laminations, etc. No voids or other defects were visible in the laminates where they drilled through for the spoke holes. The outside surfaces looked really nice, the glossy finish I ordered was nice and even, etc. I was really impressed. I guess talk to me in a few thousand miles and I'll be able to report how the rims actually held up in real use, but just going into the build with these things in my hand they looked and felt really good to me. Btw, the quoted weight for these rims was 460g +/- 15 grams. One rim weighed 460 grams on my fish scale, the other weighed 470 grams, within the range they claimed.

chaadster

More great insights, and again, my thanks. It’s so nice to read a thoughtful, smart post or two!

Capo72

Very nice write up, Thank you!

Seattle Forrest

I bought my Enve wheels for the same reason that you bought these. I had a set of Stan's Grails and I kept breaking spokes, 5 or 6 on a single ride once. I was doing a lot of remote gravel riding and didn't want to get stranded 30 miles from nowhere. I wanted very strong and reliable wheels, but also fast and wide ones. And I'd been wanting Enve wheels for a very long time.

This blows my mind. My Enves were $2,900 without the rotors. While there are obviously differences between the two wheelsets, I expect that you achieved what we both set out for and at a small fraction of the price. I'm very impressed.

My wheels are special. They were built specifically for me, I had to wait a month and a half for them to be built. Nobody else has ever ridden them. Your wheels are special. The rims were forged specifically for you, every part was selected with care for your riding style and conditions, they were hand built by none other than the rider. I hope you're very happy with them.

noodle soup

You sure about that?

SethAZ 

I'm not sure that my wheels are any better because I built them myself. In fact, I suspect that if I'd sent my components to one of the guru wheel builders I could assume they would be better because they built them instead of me. I did take the responsibility, though. If they're awesome wheels then it's because I made good choices and did a good job building them. If they end up sucking then either my choices were flawed, or else I just sucked at building them (or both). Either way I get to blame precisely nobody else but myself.

There are so many options when ordering the rims that it's entirely possible that nobody else is riding exactly similar rims, and when factoring in all the other component choices I'm sure this truly is a unique wheelset, but of course anyone else could make the same choices and build up exactly the same wheels. Light-Bicycle will do custom logos for additional money. I don't know how much it costs since I didn't ask, but it would be cool to design a neat looking "AeroClyde" logo and have it on the rims.

There are people who pay $124 at Nashbar for a set of Vuelta Corsa wheels and are happy as a clam with them. There are people like Seattle Forrest who pay $2900 for a set of ENVEs and feel like they got a great deal. I'm sure there are more expensive wheels than that, but I've never really paid them much attention for the same reasons I can't tell you exactly what cars Ferrarri or Lamborghini currently offer.

It's impossible to say whether these wheels are worth it. They probably wouldn't be worth it to a skinny cyclist because they'd be overbuilt, lose some aerodynamics due to unnecessarily high spoke count, weigh more than they could have gotten for the same money if the built wheels more suited to their requirements, etc. If a guy would pay $2900 for Seattle Forrest's wheels but can't because they're underbuilt for a really heavy rider then they may get enough benefit from these wheels to be worth it.

Since markets abhor a vaccuum, I can only assume that the number of superclyde cyclists who would love to ride wheels that attempt to do the same kinds of things that the ENVE wheels do is small enough that this explains why it hasn't been commercially "worth it" to companies like that to design and provide a superclyde version.

I'd actually expected more sharpshooting in this thread. I can only assume that either too few people were interested in something clearly targeted to a small minority of the cycling community, I used too many words and people didn't want to read them, or else maybe my choices were reasonable enough that there just wasn't much to criticize. While I'd love it if were primarily the last reason, I actually suspect it was far more the first two. :-)

I'll get ready to go out on a lunchtime ride, since I didn't get up early enough to get in a good ride before work. I'm anxious to start racking up miles on these wheels so I can get used to them and see how they actually perform. I'll probably have a good 500-600 miles on them before the end of the month thanks to the Rapha Festive 500 challenge on Strava.

SethAZ 

Well, at the very least I'm happy that they don't obviously suck. With my acknowledged lack of extensive wheelbuilding experience, it was far from a given that I would pull this off successfully. So far so good!

ENVE puts money and engineering into their product development that I readily believe and accept Light-Bicycle probably cannot match. I'm sure there must be aerodynamic refinements which eek out a little more of what ENVE wants than the Light-bicycle rims will do. They may look similar, but I don't for an instant believe they are at the same level. They're just a lot closer to that level than other common rim choices like, say, Velocity Dyad, which are popular for superclyde builds but just aren't what I was looking for.

I doubt it would be economically viable for ENVE to offer a superclyde version of their wheels for the same $2900. There probably just aren't enough heavy riders who'd be willing to pay that. Hopefully the AeroClyde wheels end up being good enough to at least demonstrate that a heavy rider can get a wheelset that aspires to be to them what your ENVE wheels are to you, and even spend a lot less coin than you did.

noodle soup

My point is that these are stock hoops, with a decal/drilling option. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's hardly "forged specifically for you" as someone posted.

noodle soup

@SethAZ, how heavy are you(if you don't mind me asking)?

Seattle Forrest

One of the failed QC somewhat late in the process, he got an email saying they were building him a new one. Ok, one of the hoops was built specifically for Seth.

Objectively, that's meaningless. Subjectively, it's not a bad reason to feel like he's riding something special. It's also the end result of a lot of his own work. I think that's pretty cool.

Seattle Forrest

Your wheels aren't heavily tested yet, so I'm kind of giving them the benefit of the doubt, and assuming you achieved that. You built up (what I'm assuming are) very strong wheels that are as aerodynamic as possible given your constraints. For both of us, strength and reliability were the #1 consideration. There are differences to be sure but I'm impressed with what you accomplished especially given the difference in price.

noodle soup

It's a common tactic that Chinese carbon manufacturers use to explain a delay. I've been given this excuse several times when purchasing products from a few others.

SethAZ 

I believe he was being poetic. Are you familiar with The Rifleman's Creed?

There's nothing particularly special about one rifle off the rack from any other rifle off the rack. But this one is mine. I interpreted his comments similarly.

SethAZ 

I've been 283lbs for the last couple of days. I've been trending downwards since August when I started cycling again after a two year break. I was around 305-310 or so when I got my old bike rideable again and hit the road with it in August, so I'm down around 25ish lbs or so since then. If I just keep up what I've been doing over the last several months the weight will continue trending downwards, but there's a limit to how light I'm ever likely to be. Considering I was in really good shape at 225 lbs or so at age 22 when I got married 26 years ago, I'm thinking 230-240 is quite likely a realistic lower bound for my weight. At least, it would probably take an amptutation or some kind of wasting illness to see me substantially lower than that.

SethAZ 

Light-bicycle stocks these rims in the configurations they sell the most. Given the things that are customizable about the rims, they don't stock all possible variations, as there would be many.

Customers can choose:
bead hook or no bead hook (for low-pressure tubeless, for instance)
Brake track or no brake track (I chose no brake track of course since I have disc brakes)
Spoke drillings from 16h all the way up to 36h
Glossy or matte finish
12k, 3k, or uni-directional outer weave (purely cosmetic, and I chose 3k)
No decal, or decal in a choice of 8 different colors, or if you want to lay down some money, a custom graphic

So yeah there'd be hundreds or thousands of different possible combinations, and so any but the most commonly selected rims are built to order. So technically they built three rims just for me, including the one that QC rejected. It's entirely possible, though not important, that nobody has ever ordered exactly the same combination as me, so I may be the only one riding exactly those rims, for whatever that's worth.

Capo72

Sounds like a good business model for a niche market! SuperClyde Wheels! Hand built in the USA.

SethAZ 

I'm taking them at their word that this is in fact what happened, since I've got no reason to think otherwise. Their order tracking process appeared to track my original two rims all the way through till the final QC check, and only then did a third line item appear in the order and track a new rim through the whole production process again. I have no reason to think that anything other than what they said (a rim was rejected by QC and they had to build another one) is what actually happened.

In any manufacturing enterprise where QC is taken seriously you will have rejects. I guess light-bicycle is being more transparent than other companies in actually letting a customer know exactly where their product is in the production cycle, so that these QC reject/rebuild events are even seen by a customer. How many rims do you think ENVE built before the pair that Seattle Forrest bought were good? We have no idea, because their process is opaque. You just know that rejects happen in any manufacturing process, but the customer usually never knows about it.

SethAZ 

Yeah, the proof will be in the riding. I'm feeling confident, but only time will tell if the wheels are actually good and built well, etc. Thanks for your comment!

SethAZ 

I think the niche is already adequately served, or at least servable, by the various custom wheel builders with whom I could never hope to compete. I have no doubt that, with the possible exception of specifying these Light-bicycle rims, one could call up any of the well-regarded custom builders, tell them exactly what they want, and get a similar wheelset to what I just did. I've just never seen anyone actually do that. None of the gallery photos on the wheelbuilder websites have ever displayed an AeroClyde-like build that I ever saw. Since custom wheels are already a niche in the overall market, AeroClyde-like wheels would be a small niche in an already small niche. It's difficult to imagine building a successful business out of that.

Besides, I've built what, five wheels now? I don't think I would ever try to sell wheels I'd built to anyone until I'd done at least a few dozen more, if not hundreds. It probably took me four to five hours each to build these wheels, too. I couldn't hope to compete with guys who could knock out the whole set, to a higher quality standard than me, in an hour or two.