msu2001la

My tubeless tires generally stay seated on my hookless rims when deflated. Topping off sealant is no different than on my hooked rims.

My hookless rims are easier to mount tires on, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with the lack of a rim hook. I think it's probably more due to the manufacturing tolerance being a lot better, and the fact that I'm not trying to pry-bar on GP5000 TL's, which are really the only tubeless tires that have ever given me mounting problems.

Weight? I think I read once that the hook adds 15 grams vs hookless. Maybe there's more layers of CF needed to reinforce the hook though so that number goes up? I feel like the weight aspect might be a bit of marketing. My hookless wheels are 1500g for the pair, which is reasonably light for a non-weight weenie build. I've definitely seen hooked rims that are lighter, but like anything they cost way more money.

phrantic09

My Zipps were $1000. Before hookless it was pretty hard to get a set anywhere near that price.

prj71

I work in a manufacturing environment. It's obvious you don't thus you have a lack of understanding.

Hookless = Lighter weight rims that are easier to manufacture which means less scrap when manufacturing them which means they cost less for the consumer. People are also running wider tires at lower pressures so "blow-off" shouldn't be an issue.

seypat

Thinking about this thread as I'm ordering oxygen sensors for a work vehicle. Which level should I get? OEM, or aftermarket? What level? Some are more than half the price of OEM. I'm guessing cheaper is always better. Maybe not. The worst that could happen is they leave me on the side of the road stranded. But then you figure in tow costs.......................

Psimet2001 

I don't even know where to start with this one. You don't know me and made a 100% incorrect assumption as a result. If you work in heavy industrial metal fab then I am sure you work with items I either helped manufacture or made parts for. Seeing as how you are in Northern Wisconsin there's a large chance I have walked through your operation.

We already covered that clearly. Just in the same way that switching from a threaded interface on a bottom bracket to a press-fit reduced cost in frame manufacturing.

You obviously only work on the manufacturing side and not in operations or management and sales otherwise you would know this to be categorically false. Price and cost are not directly linked. Every armchair economist and basic engineer mistakenly thinks they are. A reduction is cost doesn't always mean a reduction in price. An increase of cost is always used as justification for a price increase. The fact is that prices are set by market-not cost. There's an entire field of pricing methodologies dedicated to the concept. I have had to go through thorough explanations of this in the past on here but if you aren't clear on this concept then by all means post your next iteration and we can follow the concept completely until it starts to take hold for you. Some quick off the cuff examples - gas prices, software prices, phone prices, service prices, etc. Where cost enters the equation is on the operational metrics side of both production and sales as a means of measuring performance. Also when it becomes obvious that one's costs exceed their ability to meet market price.

It's a very Pollyannaish thought. First off tires are blowing off of rims. This is why companies are taking the time to test individual tires and post what they feel is safe. As for running lower pressure on wide tires - yup. A subset of enthusiasts are indeed running wider tires at lower pressures. A whole slew of enthusiasts and racers and recreational riders who have been pumping up their tires to 100-120psi for 20-30 years have a whole lifetime of habits and behaviors that won't change overnight.

Seriously this whole thing is like arguing that gravel is cool because it doesn't have rules and completely ignoring the reason that road has rules is because people have died.

Trakhak

One of the delights of reading the Talkbass forum is seeing guys who have picked up odds and ends of electronics knowledge picking fights with people with vastly greater experience. It's amazing how many people can't let it go and continue to argue in post after post after post with the guy who had designed the very amp under discussion, among many other industry standard units in the course of over 25 years in the audiophile and sound reinforcement fields.

prj71

I work as an engineer for a company that manufactures a product and work with a lot of aluminum extruders. I have a pretty good handle on how all of this works. And no, you haven't been at my facility.

Not only have other people in this thread mentioned that they can buy hookless rims cheaper than what similar hooked rims cost in the past, it's talked about many other places.


"From our development of hookless rims, we saw clear weight savings (about 10-15g lighter per rim) for the same profile and dimensions, when compared to hooked. There's also a cost reduction owing to a simpler manufacturing process, which we passed on to the rider. We provided clear guidance that they were to be used with certain tires and at certain pre-tested pressures."

https://us.huntbikewheels.com/blogs/...d-an-explainer

"Lower manufacturing costs can be passed to the customer"

https://road.cc/content/feature/hook...ter-you-285715

Hookless rim construction is cheaper and less complicated, actually allows the wheels less expensive while also being stronger and better.

https://bikerumor.com/best-road-tubeless-wheels/

"Another reason is cost. Hookless rim are cheaper to manufacture. There is less material involved and less labor so the cost goes down."

https://blog.flocycling.com/carbon-w...hookless-rims/

Again...It's not as scary as you make it out to be.

https://bikerumor.com/insider-interv...or-road-bikes/

Psimet2001 

Ah! I sure visited a lot of operations. Usually as field engineering, field engineering support, complexity reduction of supplier redundancies, or simply along for the dog and pony show where I got to assess the company's value for acquisition under the guise of a supplier visit. There of course was an occasional hat in hand visit as well. All heavy metal fab and motion and control industries. I'd say that sometimes I miss it but I don't. The companies I own now, while still manufacturing, are so much smaller than the cool stuff I used to run...but they're mine. No more corporate or small cap ($70M and down) family owned BS.

You realize that I personally know and am in the same industry as many who you have quoted, right?

Weight savings - I mentioned weight savings a ton of times. To put the quoted 10-15g into perspective one can save the more weight by swapping to alloy nipples over brass (18-20g ish) - yet we hardly ever do (even Zipp and ENVE switched back to brass) because the drawback eventually to the life of the wheel.

So again - I never said it doesn't show in in reduced wheel weight - rather that difference in weight is negligible and massively eclipsed by the myriad of other variables and choices involved in wheel building. To me once again not constituting a real benefit for the rider that outweighs the downsides of the current state of the technology.

In all of the cost quote - all of them reference it's cheaper to make them. That isn't in dispute either. The point I made is that price isn't directly linked to cost. Cost saving was never in question. it resulting in actual price reductions to customers? That's up to each company. What you've missed is that there was a ton of tech improvements in molding over the last handful of years 5-8 or so that have steadily been dropping costs in carbon wheel tech. At the same time companies like SRAM/Zipp finally started seeing massive pushback against the ever increasing price of wheels. So much so that they didn't take a single pull of their blanket for spokes during late 2018 and most of 2019 (could be off on the specific timeframe but it was pre-0pandemic and was something like 9 months of time). The market pushed the price on these down. The cost savings is just one of the pile of cost savings they have been chasing to help preserve margins at the lower prices.

...but once again the market pushed the price: not the cost savings.

All of this boils down to the same thing: there's no "real" benefit to the rider that makes jumping over to hookless something that everyone should absolutely be considering right now. I have kept searching for the real benefit. I know we are heading this way - can't stop it. I know the tech will improve - it isn't there now IMHO and I am not alone in that assertion by any means. Seriously take the time to listen to Josh Poertner - someone who is an advocate for tubeless and hookless tech in general as an iteration but even he says it's not completely there yet, not for everyone and openly discusses the number and types of blow-offs they get while testing. He readily states the benefits as being manufacturer based in nature and that will push the change.

While Josh isn't the singular repository for all cycling knowledge I would sit and listen to him discuss and make a case for anything he believes. He's an engineer's engineer. He's like the Sheldon Brown for people who have analysis paralysis.

Just like with pressfit BB's - there will be people of all walks who talk about and believe there is some sort of benefit to the tech yet over time more and more people will be left scratching their heads and forgetting what the point initially was.

The thread is literally "is there an advantage to hookless rims" - Like with everything else I'm still waiting for ones I consider worth outweighing the drawbacks.

79pmooney

A clear endorsement ot hookless rims. And I quote from their website:

"Does FLO Have Hooked Or Hookless Rims?At FLO, we make road and gravel carbon wheels. We consider the following when designing wheels for both road and gravel cycling:

• We are committed to developing that fastest products we can make. This means tire selection is critical.
• We do not want to limit the selection tires that can be used on a FLO wheel.
• We want those using FLO wheels to have the choice if they use tubes or tubeless installations.
• We are committed to safety and do not want to develop products that increase the potential of a blow-off scenario.
• Manufacturing cost will not be a factor.

With these items taken into consideration, we currently make all FLO wheels with hooks. While we do believe that hookless rims will have their day in road cycling, unfortunately, tire technology will have to catch up before we can offer wheels that adhere to the guidelines above, without sacrifice.

Our Recommendation

In our opinion, if you are buying mountain bike wheels, hookless is the best option. Because of this, it’s easy to think that hookless would also be a great choice for road and gravel wheels. However, as this article shows, that’s not the case. For road and gravel wheels, we highly recommend rims that have hooks so that you can buy wheels designed around fast tires, are not limited to a small list of tires, and are not risking an unnecessary blow-off.

The only reason a hookless rim for road or gravel makes sense today is if you are ok with the limitations currently imposed on tire selection and pressures. In all other cases, pick a hooked rim." (The bolding is mine.)
prj71, you might want to read the links you provided. This one reinforces the doubts I had when I opened this thread.

Trakhak

"Lower manufacturing costs can be passed on to the consumer."

Interesting choice of verb phrase. "Can be" is not the same as "will be" or "are being." I haven't come across any specific examples of a hookless rim being marketed as a less-expensive alternative to the equivalent hooked version. If there are some examples, I hope someone will post them here.

From the road.cc link in post 107:

Campagnolo says that they “are not neglecting its [hookless] potential in the future but, for today’s average consumer, hooked systems (that we have in use) are simply still safer and more versatile.”

By the way, all of the arguments in favor of hookless rims also apply to the decades-old example of what were then called "smooth-sided" rims. Those, too, had a pressure limit of around 70 psi. But those of us working in bike shops in the 1960s and, especially, the 1970s, when narrow-section, high-pressure tires arrived on the scene, replaced lots of tires and tubes that had been (marginally) overinflated by riders looking for better performance (whether illusory or not) from their 27" x 1 i/4" tires.

The advent of hooked beads was revelatory. All of us working in bike shops would breathe a sigh of relief when we replaced a tire or tube on a hook bead rim. One less problem to worry about.

Rdmonster69

Thank god the Bonnie Aeolus 3V Pro whatever else they are called are hooked. I can rest easy knowing I won't die because of my wheels.

PeteHski

I have to say I'm more comfortable with hooked road rims at this point in time. I can see the obvious attraction of hookless rims to the industry, but I agree with Psimet2001 that the benefit to the customer is insignificant and potentially more hassle. At least right now.

Psimet2001 

I've always loved this take - anyone involved in wheel manufacturing has lost sleep over the idea of someone dying on their product. I get this is a user forum and here the anecdote of personal experience is king ("I've never had a problem so it is a viable technology because it doesn't fail" kind of thing). Not saying you're doing that here just that it prompted a thought.

Also while this was going on I happened to listen to the latest marginal gains podcast and Josh even goes over how he used to not be able to watch pro racing for fear of something happening to a rider on his stuff. Before some of the resin changes I used to lose a lot of sleep thinking about delam. Hell I had a rider who I built some EDGE (now ENVE) wheels for a huge sportif "Tour of TransAlps" or some such came back to tell me he had blown the entire hook off the rim. I was shocked. He said he was so scared descending the alps that he used the brakes almost constantly the whole way down. Had all sorts of blisters on his hands to prove it. While I pointed out that no carbon clincher was built for that kind of heat buildup at the time EDGE had no issue covering it and replacing it and mentioned off hand how there had been a rash of that in the same batch those came out of.

In those early days they were learning and iterating as they went. Almost all of us were. What got me is they had no problem placing that learning and iteration effect on the rider. I had an issue with it. I still do.

Also fun point - he mentions the 2008 Zipp taco at Paris Roubaix with magnus. One of my co-hosts on my podcast now is Mike Friedman was riding as his domestique the year those wheels failed. I haven't heard any stories about it from him and if his last few comments are any indication it seems like he doesn't really "remember" all that stuff until someone points it out to him. Just an interesting thought.

prj71

I read the links. Just not going to make a mountain out of mole hill here.

We don't have a rash of people blowing tires off their road bike and gravel bike wheels.

Trakhak

I just hope hookless rims don't turn into a repeat of the Mavic R-Sys debacle. Mavic and their loyal customers insisted that there was no problem with those carbon-spoke wheels up until (and even after) they voluntarily withdrew the wheels from the market.

Racing Dan

The real danger is when this garbage gets in general circulation and eventually enters the 2nd hand market. Someone not knowing to look for a hook or even knowing "normal" rims has hooks, will mount a clincher and a tube, and have it blow off. If it haven't already happened, it will. - Considering the endless noob questions about expensive bikes and parts I see every day on FB.


Of course ppl will endlessly argue the user is a fault, however there is no safety mechanism to prevent this. They even made the rim the exact same size, making every tyre out there superficially compatible even if most TL and every clincher will create an unsafe condition.

tomato coupe

This is a legitimate concern. Most cyclists don't spend their time obsessing over tire / rim combos and maximum recommended pressures, and they could easily use combos that are not safe.

Atlas Shrugged

Great point that why I have been advocating for some time a permanent tag to be placed on all scissors sold which states “Do not run when in possession of this product”.

himespau 

Are hookless tubeless rims still mainly high end carbon? Part of me wants to think that would keep them (even in the 2nd hand market) mainly in the hands of enthusiasts who care about these things, but then I remember everyone isn't as tight with their money (or on as limited a bike budget) as I am.

prj71

Hopefully nobody pumps up their tire to 174 psi

prj71

Stans No Tubes aluminum are hookless.

seypat

Here's a question for Psimet2001.

This is an original steel, 27 × 1 1/4" hookless rim that originally came on a vintage mixte I refurbished for my wife. When I tried to put a better tire on it rated to 90 PSI, it would blow off at 80. So, I lowered the pressure to 70 and it stayed on. On the first ride, however it blew off. Replaced with hooked rims. My question is:

Is there a manufacturing standard now, or is one coming that the rim and tire manufacturers will have to comply to? Something similar to the helmet requirements? Whether it is a cheap rim/tire like the one pictured or premium top of the line?
Thanks in advance.

Sy Reene

Just guessing that if that vintage of a rim, it was meant to take wire-bead tires. Not sure what you tried though -- I assume you were using tubes though and not trying a tubeless setup?

Psimet2001 

This is my contention. Most people here are like, "Well I took the time to understand this and it seems to work for me so it's amazing. (Just don't ask me what's really amazing about it outside of it being different.)" when the reality of the world if that even among enthusiasts the vast majority honestly don't know the first thing about what they are riding. Honestly. They also don't care. The questions I get asked daily are astounding. I don't gloss over stuff I take the time to explain differences between things in great detail and ask questions to make sure they understand what we are talking about (like explaining the difference between tubeless, tubular, clincher, Open tubular, Tubular clincher, tubeless tubular, etc). Then 5 minutes later they will say something like, "I have tubulars right?" "No, remember you run innertubes right? When you get a flat you change an innertube?" "Yeah but you said tubulars have innertubes and I was always told tubulars were better for racing. I race."

We still get the "the brakes were making noise so I lubed them up" guys.

All that is fine and good as even lubed up brakes can usually kinda slow people down but tires blowing off rims because someone threw 100psi in there when they should now only be putting 50psi in there... "there will be blood" so to speak.

Seriously discussing this here is like talking about valve adjustments on a car forum. you'll get a couple camps of specific thoughts on how things should be done but the overwhelming vast majority of drivers don't even know what a valve is or if they do they sure wouldn't want to discuss adjusting it or even servicing it. To quote PCad (RIP) "I have people for that"

Psimet2001 

Those sucked. They still do. You can still get tires and most will work well but there is nothing wrong with running them lower. If you blow a tire off then it's trash. It will never really hold ever again. Same for tubeless tires BTW (hooked or not). As for standard - It worked a bit better back in the day as Schwinn was in charge of the standards and did a better job with vendors and supply chain. Now we are too diverse. There exists standards but the devil is in the details and no one is sharing the details unless you pay to be included and sign the NDA that says you won't throw anyone under the bus when you find out its all a mess. Control the variance stack and control on the standards is what everyone seemingly is complaining about.

That was a Schwinn hookless standard. It requires a specific tire with an "S" designation. Can't remember the specifics but they are readily available. Something like an S5 or S7 or some such. I always have to look it up.