Best wheels for commuting?
 

Hey gang, I wondering what kind of wheels you prefer for commuting? Clinchers, Tubeless, Tubular? I was also wondering if a deep rim would be best for cobblestone and crappy roads? Any help would be great, thanks.

Clinchers! I like and ride 2.0 to 2.35 Schwalbe Big Apples for the bad paved roads just like what you are talking about.

Trick question... obviously you want to be on 1,000 gram (front and rear wheels combined) low-profile carbon tubulars mated with $150, 200 gram tires. The lowest rotating mass of any possible wheel option, almost impervious to pinch flats, and the tires stay put safely stuck tight to the rim if you have a sudden deflation.

However, if you are carrying loads, or riding in the rain over sketchy roads, you'll obviously have to ride something heavier and stronger than the dream setup I just listed.

Life is full of compromises...

Building a commuter around H+Son Archetype rims and hub brakes. Medium-height V-profile rims should be stiff and wide enough for some 37mm tyres.

The best wheels are the ones that are already on the bike and have been for a while. Anything else is going to cost extra. Mine are heavy and robust. They need to be able to be withstand the rigours of my commute--rain, snow, ice, ruts, carrying heavy loads, etc. On the road bike that I ride to work occasionally, well, that's different.

There's nothing esoteric about commuting. You just happen to be riding the bike to work instead of across finish lines or to camp sites. Any kind of wheel should work, and if it doesn't, get something else.

Just make sure that it's not too hard to fix flats on what you've got. 'Cuz you'll probably need to. ;)

I see you have a Volpe. When the roads are clear, your good to go with whatever you have. When the tires wear out, I recommend Gatorskins in 28s or 32s. The only reason for new wheels would be to put some snow tires on them and swap wheelsets for the bad days when only hardcore crazies on this sub-forum would ride to work.

Round ones.

Always clinchers. For commuting and everything else.

Tubeless is not worth the trouble IMHO. Not to mention tubulars...

Wheels with a minimum of 32 spokes, I also have few wheels with 36 spokes. I like the simplicity of tire/tube combo...Tubeless and tubulars are just too much trouble and offer no real advantages over the traditional tube/tire combo.

I prefer regular tubed tires. I have 8 bikes and use 4 to 5 of them for regular commuting. The care and feeding of that many tubeless tires is just more than I want to deal with.

As for how the wheels are built, strong wheels don’t have to be heavy. In fact, heavy wheels aren’t necessarily stronger. I use very light rims on my off-road touring mountain bike wheels which get more abuse than commuting wheels do. I use either Mavic XM717 or Velocity Aeroheads for most of my builds. The key to a strong, durable wheel is the spokes. Rims add little to the strength of a wheel. My preferred spokes for all my wheels are triple butted (2.3/2.8/2.0mm spokes) from either Pillar or DT Swiss Alpine III. These wheels will carry 40 lbs of gear on rocky roads for hundreds of miles. My touring bike uses similarly built wheels and have provided great service over thousands of heavily loaded miles.

Thanks everyone for the great advice, I asked because the idea is to potentially convert my bike to single speed for commuting and city riding and just wanted to see what the best possible options may be.

Commuting is fundamentally a utilitarian endeavor, and hence simpler is better...Hence the recommendation of standard tubed clinchers.

My only other recommendation is to just ride the wheels you have on the bike, as someone else recommended. My commuter has very cheap, nasty wheels - and they roll just fine and stay in true. I won't replace 'em until they start falling apart.

I have a fixed gear commuter with two sets of wheels. It's nice to have a backup pair for a quick swap in case you break a spoke or something.

Both clinchers with tubes, both aluminum, one is box section one is aero, one is a little wider, one will not take tires over 28mm. I keep 32mm on the wide ones but they don't fit under the fenders as well so I use them in the summer and the narrower ones in the Winter.

Maybe it's just familiarity, but it seems to me that clinchers are the most straightforward when dealing with problems. And with puncture resistant tires, they are virtually maintenance free until they wear out. Resistance to pinch flats doesn't seem like a big enough attraction for tubeless, when riding at fairly high pressure on pavement. Of course that's a YMMV thing.

Tubeless equals fewer flats and is therefore less trouble. I've been commuting on tubeless since the summer with no issues.

Had a set of wheels built-up for commuting on somewhat-rougher urban pavements. Velocity Dyad, DT Swiss spokes/nipples, Continental Tour Ride 47-622 tires, on Shimano Deore XT 36H hubs. Very capable for handling the occasional pothole, lots of seams and upheaved sections, and with the tires it's plenty able to deal with light mud, gravel, sand, and other off-pavement junk. Not the lightest setup around, but quality and durable. Tires I selected exceeded Velocity's recommendation for tire sizes, though they have worked fine. Quite impressed, overall.

If I were to do it again with the same width of tires as the goal, I'd likely select the Velocity Cliffhanger rim over the Dyad.

Last year, all the punchers are from commuting and not weekend rides. I go with clincher, might get a bit more punchers but a lot easier to fix. Few commuters I know also switch from tubeless to clincher since they got puncher too often due to broken glasses.

Clincher for everything except racing. Otherwise its more trouble than its worth.

I planned to use road bike to work, which bar do you prefer? flat bar or drop bar?

Wider the better to allow more air volume in the tire, this will straighten your sidewalls and let you run fewer PSI in your tires which is beneficial to commuting.

I have run inner tube clinchers, tubulars and tubeless.

I am 100 percent tubeless now which is great because flats self-seal. Cyccocommute is correct in his analysis (per the norm) but I only have one bike to tend to, not 1/2 dozen like him

GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN

I use clinchers for everything, including commuting. I think tubeless is not worth it. Maybe flats are more common with clinchers, but I can fix them in less than 10 minutes without making a mess.

About the rims, all of them work if they can carry the weight you need.

That's a matter of deep controversy and personal opinion.

I have commuted for some time on both.

I prefer flat bars but drop bars have their advantages.

The main drawback to flatbars is the limited number of hand positions. This is a bigger problem the longer your commute is, if it's short, then maybe not a problem at all. I overcame this problem by mounting MTB bar ends on the inside of the grips to give me a secondary semi-aero position for headwinds or just a change of pace.

My current bike has the Jones H Loop Bar - it's a flat bar by nature but has more hand positions than drops. It's very unorthodox but I highly recommend.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...6e9f1a346c.jpg

Cliffhanger is supposed to be an awesome rim, let me know if you every get a set built up.

I am currently running 3" tires on 50mm rims, no such thing as TOO wide lol!

I have the Jones bars also and highly recommend them