Originally Posted by
dt4211
OK, I've got a newbie question. I've done some research and think I'm pretty up to speed on different types of frames, as well as different component groups. However, one critical area that I feel ignorant about is wheels and tires. What are the things to look for in the wheels, when I'm looking at bikes? Is there some hierarchy of quality levels that I can use as a shortcut, like there is with component groups? What trades (if any) are there between performance, comfort, and durability?
Any thoughts, advice, or pointers to websites with info on wheels and tires would be much appreciated.
stock wheels on most bikes are pretty garbage. you'll have to look at the manufacturer website, but shimano, bontrager and alex wheels that come with bikes are generally all very bad. Mavic makes some nice factory wheels, but they use proprietary parts which limits your choices when you need to repair them. In general the cheap factory wheels are quite junk, but the more expensive ones are really worth the money, except for shimano wheels, they are junk all around.
One thing to understand about wheels is that there are factory made wheels by one company, and then there are hand made wheels using rims, spokes, hubs and nipples available on the market. Shimano wheels might be terrible, but their hubs are wonderful and some of the best for their price. One of the better, cheap wheels you can buy are shimano ultegra/105 hub, mavic open pro rim, DT swiss spoke and nipple wheels that are very popular around here. again, there are different levels to hubs, rims and spokes that you just need to check up on each manufacturer.
Originally Posted by
assiduous5
What does the "Comp" refer to in this bike's name?
comp is for 'competition', pretty sure. It's like what you see on sports cars with SX, LTD, GT, GTS, GTX and whatnot, to differentiate from vanilla, but add unneeded confusion as to which is better.