Reynolds vs Williams vs Boyd carbon wheels for ~$1K
 

I'm looking at carbon wheels in ~1K price range and Reynolds, Williams and Boyd has come up in my research. Does anyone have feedback on these wheels? How do they compare to more expensive brands from Mavic and Zipp?

I assume Reynolds, Williams and Boyd wheels are all made in China but they may put the wheel together in the US. I'm a little wary of buying the no-name carbon wheels from China, as I don't know what quality control they have even though they may come out of the same factories.

boyds for 1k?

where?

Directly from Boyd, $975

http://www.boydcycling.com/2015-closeouts/

oh tubulars,

meh

my 2 pairs of chinese wheel arrived extremely round and true, with even spoke tension, and have remained that way

proscloset on eBay is selling sets of Reynolds for less than 1k.

no warranty might be an issue for some like myself, when I fried a front wheel on a long descent in April.

All three are reasonably good choices.

Anyone try ordering these mavic cosmic's from DHGATE? Not sure if they are fakes, seconds or just come out of the same factory. They are asking $400, which is dirt cheap.

http://www.dhgate.com/product/mavic-wheels-full-carbon-road-bike-wheels/210477316.html#s1-0-1b|3455354212

Getting back to the OP's question, I just bought a set of those Boyd 44s, in tubular because I am that kind of guy. Under a grand and these are really nicely built and designed wheels. Very stiff, the climb as well as another 1200 gram wheel set that I own, sprint nicely, seem to not be bothered by the heavy cross winds that I just rode in today, and the breaking is fine. I was considering some Reynolds Fourty Four wheels but they are a lot more money and for what? Or you could indulge yourself in some ENVE or ZIPPS for twice the price, but again, for what? Name and logo? Spend the $1300 on the Boyd's. And maybe be daring and go with tubular and save 200 grams on the pair. For what it is worth, I have had two flats riding tubulars in the last 13 years. One of them I fixed with Tufo sealant.

They are fake. I stay away from DHgate. May look good at the coffeeshop, but blasting downhill at 80kmh?

OP, all very comparable wheels. Stick to them if you have the $$ versus going with Chinese fakes. Williams just released their new 38's too.

Avoid the Boyd
 

http://i1356.photobucket.com/albums/...psjcfczjd6.jpg

I'd pass on the Boyds. This comes from personal experience. Less than 1,700 miles and already premature delamination. No help from the company on this.

More info needed on the Boyds? What brake pads have you used? Mine have been perfect except for the fact that I haven't ridden them in almost two years. I let my wife borrow them and she won't give them back. I'll have to get my own set soon.

The carbon pads that came with the wheels.

How did Boyd handle your claim? We need details here.

I've got 600 or so miles on a set of Reynolds R4's from performance. They go on sale for about 1000 fairly often, I got them on a 20% off day for around 800, not a single complaint with them at all. I looked at all three you are looking at and they are so comparable it came down to price and Performance had the sale at the right day and I snatched them up. Quite happy.

Those are the models that we have from 2012 and before. The wheels are over 3 years old at this point and we do offer a 2 year warranty. We offered a great way to trade in the wheels to the newest models since they are far out of warranty.

The models we have from 2012 and before did not have the high temperature resins in them as they weren't commercially available yet. In 2013 when we released all of our own carbon rims we had the high temperature resins in them. The newest rims I have personally been testing by riding down Paris Mtn while riding the front brake the entire way. This is 7.5 minutes of prolonged hard braking and they have been fine time after time.

That's a pretty strong statement to make on a public forum about a well known company here, especially if the wheels were in fact out of warranty. I don't know about everyone else here but when I buy something of value like wheels or a bike, one of the first things I want to know about is the warranty and when that warranty ends I don't EXPECT anything after that point.

Buy whatever you are comfortable with.


as for me, I got these wheels 3 months ago, so far so good... and yes, I have taken them down a mountain :P .... and I am 190lbs

Far Sports Home page

recently bought 52mm deep, 25mm wide, u-shape, bladed spoke, DT Suisse straight pull hub.. for under $750

I am bought to order a 30mm deep front wheel only for "hill days"

The Boyd wheels are very popular with people in my area. I bought a set of Vitesse wheels in 2012, which lead a few of my friends to the carbon wheels. Nobody has had an issue with the carbon wheels, and I've heard nothing but good reviews from the people who use them all the time.

You have the right to an opinion, however, what I don't see you acknowledging is this statement:

It sounds to me like they were willing to cut a pretty good deal on new wheels, even though the old were way out of warranty. I think that was a very nice offer and does represent good customer service. I doubt many companies would even do that much.

Three years is not "way out" of a two year warranty.

"Cut a good deal" to replace a bad deal? Fool me once.. nevermind.

Wit the wheels being older model, the only option is to put new rims on them.
I hate that we have to prepare for the worst that can happen, but if all of a sudden it was known that by damaging your 3 to 4 year old wheel you would get a free upgrade to the newest wheels we could see people purposely damaging their wheels in hopes of getting an upgrade. I am in no way saying that is what happened here, but it has happened to us before. We had a guy who cut every one of his spokes in the middle and claimed the wheels just exploded while sitting in his garage, it was very obvious that had been cut.

We have the warranty to protect the customers, and we do have ways of extending our service after the fact. We've had people who have crashed 4 year old wheels and we have gotten them up and running very inexpensively. There does have to be a limit with timing to everything, we can't take the risk of people damaging stuff on purpose to get a free upgrade 4 years later.

I can certainly understand your concern... but on the other hand I'm sure you know that with a two year warranty, these same dishonest people could damage their own wheels at the 1.5 year mark. You've likely encountered it. Maybe handle defective "old" wheels the same way.

I'm not sure there are many people who would argue that a delaminated brake track would be pretty hard to fake. It seems the design flaw was enough of a concern to influence you to use better resin in the launch of your personally designed wheelsets.

When I bought my Zipp wheelset, I bought them for TT races. I raced less than 500 miles on them. They were out of warranty when I started riding them full time. They cracked at 11 different spoke holes before the 1500 mile mark. My Zipp wheels cost me over $1 a mile and Zipp basically said "you are out of warranty". They didn't trust me that the wheels were defective, so now I don't trust them.

Before I buy another set of carbon wheels, I will have to trust the company I buy them from. When you say "we could see people purposely damaging their wheels in hopes of getting an upgrade." I read it as you don't trust your customers. Trust is a two way street. If you trust me enough to accept my money, I'd expect you'd trust me to be honest in a warranty claim. I would guess that very few scammers have $1500 to drop on bicycle wheels.

Maybe my expectations are too high.

Maybe reading "We view Boyd Cycling like these smaller craft breweries. We don’t have pressure from investors or upper level management to cut corners and produce something we are not proud to sell." influenced my expectations.