Nice Mixte [MENTION=414154]Doc_Wui[/MENTION] . I agree with [MENTION=28167]dedhed[/MENTION] that this is the best improvement you can make. You may know this technique already, get a pair of aluminum rims and the tape the new rim to the old rim while keeping the valve hole lined up and transfer the spokes to the new rim. The bike should be noticeably lighter. One thing is that you probably have 27" rims. You could get 27" rims, but the market has moved to 700C rims which are about 4mm smaller. That is assuming that you have the same diameter of the circle that the nipples will be. You may have to make some measurements to get the this to work with the original spokes. Or just get 27" rims and skip the measuring and looking up the ERD Effective Rim Diameter. \