SoreFeet

I recently got 3 pairs. One is NOS. They are nice and light. I am thinking of lacing them up to a pair of NOS high flange hubs. Any comments on the quality of this rim would be appreciated.

iab

One of the best rims out of Italy.

well biked

I asked about Fiamme rims on this forum once, and Sheldon replied that "back in the day, when I rode tubulars, I considered Fiamme the best." He said the red labels were a great all-around rim, the yellow labels super light. The Fiamme rims I have are yellow labels, FWIW.

Old Fat Guy

Yep, Red Labels were/are everyday rims, comparable to a Mavic GP4. Very nice, sturdy rims. Yellow Labels were/are Sunday 'Go To Race' rims.

John E

I may have ridden a (relatively) low-prestige American Eagle Semi Pro (Nishiki Competition) for 20 years, but at least I put a great set of wheels on it: Campag. Record 36-hole low-flange hubs, DT butted spokes, and Fiamme yellow label tubular rims.

unworthy1

and sometimes that is just the recipe for turning a so-so riding bike into...amazing! (Just don't tell our enemies)

Deanster04

Which era of red labels Oval or square shaped labels. I still have a track set and road set of campy wheels built with the older oval red labels. Still work from 1969 built up by Spence Wolf of Cupertino Bike shop.

top506

I'm surprised to learn this, as both my old Atala and the Coppi I pulled from the dump had yellow label rims laced to rather low-end North Star hubs.
Top

T-Mar

But were they tubular rims? The red label was the low end tubular rim, while the yellow label was the higher end tubulat rim. The aluminum clincher rim also used a yellow label.

I rode all three. My original training rims were red label tubulars but I swapped them out for 28" clinchers. The race wheels were yellow label tubulars. All three were very good rims.

top506

They were in fact clincher rims with yellow labels.
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Hocam

Yup, everyday tubulars. Nothing wrong with that.

John E

True. I have always maintained that the wheelset is the most important part of the bicycle.

T-Mar

No, it's the nut holding the handlebars.

John E

... or the nut sitting on the saddle

Kommisar89

These possibly - I had the same yellow label clinchers on my Bottecchia Special:

EricHandyGuy

Can one of you smart guys help me out? Simply wondering what the ISO dimensions are for the red label.... Thanks!

USAZorro

For tubulars? They're all pretty much the same. What are you looking for this information to help get you to?

EricHandyGuy

I just need to purchase some new tubular tires for this wheel set, and couldn't find any dimensions on either the wheel or the old tire. I'm thinking its a 700c, but I wanted to check the dimensions before I ordered the tires.

Chombi

Fiamme Red labels along with Super Champion Arc-en-ciel rims were like the standard tubular rims for many serious amature racers in the 80's. they were no- nonsense, reasonably priced, very durable but light enough rims to use in races and training. I saw thousands of these rims on racing bikes back then.

Chombi

USAZorro

Anything advertised as a tubular for 700c will do just fine for fit. Quality of tires is all over the place, but nearly all are pretty usable.

RobbieTunes

Hey, one of our own was hit by a car a couple of weeks ago, messed up his Red Labels. If you can spare a set, I'm sure he's interested.

big chainring 

It could just be the mid 70's Fiammes that I ran into, but I never liked the seam on red label rims. I always ended up with a little hop at the seam when lacing them. I had much better luck with Super Champions.

lhbernhardt

Fiamme Red Label tubular rims were pretty much the standard rim to use when I first started racing back in the early 70's. For training, we'd glue on Clement Campionato del Mundo setas that would last forever - they were the standard tubular for serious touring cyclists as well. We'd glue them on with Mastice Gutta, and then in the late 70's and later we switched to 3M Fast Tack trim cement because it was a lot cheaper (and a lot harder to get the tires off the rims). The guys who were really serious racers would use superlight rims, usually the German-made Scheeren (pronounced "Sharon") Standards and Scheeren Weltmeisters. I never used Weltmeisters (too expensive), but I understand that they were made of very thin aluminum reinforced with balsa wood inside the rim. You'd glue on the lightest and best road tires of the 70's, Clement Criterium Setas and Seta Extras, which were 230 and 220 grams (seta = silk). Even with the Fiamme Reds, you had to be careful how you rode. Even with 36 spokes (standard at the time), one good hit in a pothole would put a permanent and noticeable blip in the rim. Not like today's 450-gram clinchers, which can take far more abuse.

We stopped using tubulars in the late 70's-early 80's when 700C clincher rims started becoming available, and tires lighter and narrower than Michelin 50's - such as the Specialized Bicycle Imports - became readily available. Prior to that, if you wanted to save your tubular wheels, you'd train on 27x1 1/4" clincher wheels, but that required readjusting the brakes every time you switched to the race tubulars. With the 700C clinchers, you just had to adjust the caliper width, what a godsend. And then they started developing 700C clinchers you could race on, so I only used tubulars for criteriums and for track racing. In the 80s and 90s, we also moved to heavier, more durable tubular rims (Wolber Aspins and Campagnolo Montreals, etc.).

That said, I'm still training on the track with the same tied-and-soldered 36-spoke tubular wheels I raced on in the 70's, with Shimano hubs and Argent-8 rims.

Luis

EricHandyGuy

Thanks!