I hope I sucked you in with my title
In another
thread I asked about some vintage tubular rims. My plan for my Fuji Opus IV was an everyday set of clinchers and a nice set of tubulars for "occasions". Figured I'd start with the tubulars first since I thought I'd find them harder to find. Anyway, browsing eBay right after I posted that thread I came across a
pair of Wolber TX Profil 32H, clincher, NOS rims from Ben's Cycle. The price was very right, the rims period correct so I pulled the trigger. They arrived today (wow, fast, less than 48 hours later)...here they are:
I'm not sure how I feel about the "WOLBER" in big white letters... More about these rims down below.
I was at one of the co-ops this past Saturday and a pair of rims caught my eye...silver, tubular, 32H. Nice I said. I wanted to do some research first so I did....and promptly went back when they opened for open shop this afternoon at 3:00. They are Saavedra Turbo Aerodinamica...SUPER, very SUPER light rims. Drilled 32H as well...I simply had to have them. Note the price tag in the first pic:
Yes, $15 for the pair. They're NOS, never laced with a VERY minimum of shopwear. The wild part about these rims...even with that aero profile they weigh exactly
284g each on my digital scale. The Wolber rims weigh 486g on the same scale!
Just feeling the rims by hand they're MUCH stiffer than a GEL280 they had there, just compressing the rims slightly on the floor. The Saavedra rims were NOTICEABLY less easy to deflect, perhaps due to the deeper aero cross section.
I'm guessing these rims will build a very light wheelset:
2 x 284g rims.
1 x ~450g hubset. (Unless I go modern hubs and get something really light)
1 x ~350g for 64 DT revolution spokes in 292mm or so. (Which i can afford to get since I got the rims for so little).
1 x 20g for 64 DT alloy nipples.
(I'll probably use nipple/rim washers as well, very little weight.)
So I'm looking at sub 1400g for a
32H wheelset. With even inexpensive tubulars these will be sub 2000g with tires. With good tubbies, maybe around 1800g.
Amazing.
The hubs on both of these wheelsets will need to accomodate Shimano 9 speed as the group on this bike will be a mint DA7700 group (with downtube shifters) I acquired from another member. There are sub 300g hubsets advertised on eBay for somewhat reasonable money, I might have to check some of them out. The Wolbers will be getting an Ultegra 6500 rear and hopefully a 6500 front.
And therein lies the "khatfull's weight loss plan" of this deal. If I expect to build and ride these things, old khatfull is going to have to drop some ballast.
Being 32H they may be a little better. I don't think I'll worry about the Wolbers
Anyway...now I have to be on the lookout for hubs/hubsets....time to setup some saved searches
Hope you enjoyed...