Sirrus Rider

I have an 07 Specialized Sirrus that I am considering building up a front wheel for with a Shimano DH-3n71 Dynohub for commuting. My original plan was to pick up an identical rim to build up with the Shimano dynohub so that this new front wheel will match my rear and not look odd or out of place on the bike. I wanted to retain the original front wheel so that when I do not want to run with the dynohub I could switch back to the original and run with a lower drag/slightly lower weight configuration.

For '07 the Sirrus came with Alex R500 rims which I have recently discovered are not available to the general public as they are considered in the industry as OEM rims. Not only that they are also nothing special in the performance department; however, if I want my front Dynohub wheel to match my rear I am going to need an Alex R500 rim. Unfortunately, because these rims are OEM no LBS can order one for me and my only hope is to find an identical front wheel on eBay or find a junked '07 Specialized Sirrus for a set of donor Rims.

The second more expensive option I have open to me is to replace both my front and rear wheel with wheels made from components that are not OEM and would be an upgrade from its current component level. Seeing that the Shimano dynohub has Ultegra bearings in it I figure a good match would be to replace my Sora hubbed Alex R500 wheels with wheels based on Ultegra hubs and Mavic CXP 22 Rims and then pick up a spare CXP 22 to build up the dynohub wheel.

So what I am wondering about is what would some of the more experienced hands would do in my situation. Would you blow off the whole extra wheel idea and just dig out the Sora hub from the OEM front wheel and replace it with the dynohub or would you upgrade the bike with better hubs and rims and then pick up a third matching rim for the dynohub-wheel??