rims: eyelets or no eyelets
 

What do you guys think?

I like cholocate.

eyelets are nice to have. they do reduce friction. If your using aluminum nipples you want something as a barrier between the aluminum rim. They are nice to have, but not essential. Plenty of good rims dont have eyelets. Velocity Deep V for example, no eyelets but the design makes it plenty strong

Eyelets make for a smoother build but the non eyeletted rims are plenty strong and lately they seem stronger than the eyeltted ones.

The eyelets are primarily to act as a strain relief for the spoke holes, which can be important for thin walled rims. But in another sense, they minimize the dissimilar metal corrosion between the rim and the nipple. That means no stains, and no siezure, which allows finer tension adjustments for truing.

yea they are found often on these much lighter rims for XC use, and road use. But as rev chuck said, a rim without eyelets can be just as good

The eyelets do not neccessarily mean strength. They are merely an element of refinement that is sometimes used to allow lighter/more brittle alloys that stress fracture more easily.

then you have the MA3 that has a single eyelet and that makes it weaker.

I kind of wonder if the problems associated with the MA3 are partly due to the fact they are often used in cheap builds and/or builds that involve straight guage spokes.

Those straight guage spokes put more tension on the spoke hole.

Thank you (everyone) for your answers.

when I posted my failer about mine (it was hand built but I don't know what spokes he used) I got a lot of info. I guess the single eyelet causes problems and also hard annodizing the aluminum makes it brittle too. quite a few have said there are mroe rim failues because of tha then with plain aluminum. so the engineers said it is the combo of single eyelets and hard annodizing that causes that model to fail so much. And mavic won't back them up.