"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - Easton wheel selection

So, through a friend I have a chance to get a good deal on a set of Easton wheels, and am wondering what wheels everyone would recommend. I would primarily use them for racing and hard training rides, with the occasional TT or triathlon bike leg as well. I am only 140#, but I tend to like to stand and attack often rather than sit and spin, so flex is a bit of a concern. I want to be able to use my current wheels as well without switching pads, so I would like to avoid carbon wheels as well (not to mention I'd rather not spend that much). The ones I am mainly looking at are the EA70X (tubies), EA90 SL/SLX/Aeros. Anybody use any of these and would you recommend them for my purposes?

I ride ea90 aeros and love them, great for training, not so expensive that i'll go broke if I wreck them in a crit, and they're nice and stiff. i'm 155 lbs.

I have a pair of EA70s. I haven't had any problems with them. That being said, my LBS guy has not been impressed with the Easton wheels (carbon wheels excluded - he liked those) because of generally low quality parts and the R4 hubs, which he decried as a terrible, terrible design with the bearing adjustment.

since you're not afraid of tubulars, why not get ec90 aero with pads that work with both types of rims like swiss stop yellows?

I particularly don't like the bearing adjustment of the R4 hubs either, but they are pretty smooth. I would go for the EC90's for sure though.

I have 2008 EA90 SLs which have 4 extra spokes on each wheel - 24/28 for 1530 grams. Love them. I'm 145 pounds (give or take a few depending on how much bike I'm riding and beer I'm drinking) and they are plenty stiff, IMO.

I did have one problem with the rear hub, it needed to be "adjusted" as you all mention. Sounded like my bottom bracket was clicking but the mechanic found that it was the rear hub bearings echoing through the frame.

That was around 2500 miles with the wheels. After about 5-6,000 miles, that's the only problem I've had and I've ridden these wheels on basically every training ride and in every race since I got them. Even over some pretty rough terrain... dirt, gravel, whatever.

If you want something more aero, you might be better off going for the EC70, which is kinda like a 303 but still has an aluminum braking surface that you said you'd like. The EA90 series is NOT aero whatsoever. Even the EA90 Aero probably isn't great against the wind, just more aero than the lighter EA90 models.

I have the 2008 EA 90 Aero as my primary race wheelset (and occasional fast training rides). I weigh between 150-160 depending on what time of the year it is, and the wheels have been true from right out of the box, and have never broken a spoke.

BUT, in order to save weight, Easton built their wheels with an alloy cassette body, and after just a few hundred miles, my Ultegra cassette began to chew through it. It was damn near impossible to remove the cassette when this happened, and the work platform had alloy slivers on it afterwards that looked like residue from a drilling exercise. Fortunately, they have a special cassette body for SRAM Red, so I just upgraded to the solid body cassette (still don't like the hollow ringing sound that comes with riding it, but I won't have to worry about changing the cassette body every 200-300 miles). Be warned though, their cassette bodies are proprietary, and thus you cannot solve the problem by throwing a steel cassette body on the hub. Thus, if you don't want to go to a SRAM red cassette, you are stuck with the problem.