Velocity A23 rims
 

Hello again everyone,

I am looking for some thoughts on or experience with Velocity A23s. Reviews I have read so far are positive, however I haven't been able to find much information on durability especially with lower spoke counts.

So straight to my questions...

Are the rims durable enough for high mileage or would you only recommend them for racing? (I know this is a bit subjective, but maybe compare to Shimano 501 rim durability?)

Would it be safe and/or would the rim be able to take serious mileage on not so great roads with a 140lb rider on a 20 spoke radial front and 24 spoke two cross rear?

If anyone has experience or additional info on velocity race hubs I would appreciate that as well.

Thanks for any assistance!

bump, I'm interested too.

I have lots of opinions and have built with a ton of them. I will hold off on commenting in a public forum until I have a meeting with Velocity to discuss some of my current concerns with the rims.

That doesn't sound positive :-/

I have some on my fixed gear(32h laced 3x F&R) and weigh 230lbs. I've trued them once in the past 18 months.

I'm about to build another set for my road build. I couldn't be happier with them.

Why be useful when you can be cryptic?

Thought I was about as useful as I could be before giving Velocity another chance. It doesn't take much to read between the lines.

Why not take a shot at me when I didn't even need to post in here?

I have a set on my Spec. Roubaix that I use for long rides. I run Hutchison 25's tubeless on the rims. Plenty stiff for my 6'6" and 245 pound frame. No problems at all.

I put 7k miles on a set of A23's last year. I like them a lot. I did have what appeared to be a fatigue failure on one spoke hole where the nipple tore through the rim. That required replacement of the rear rim after about 5k miles. Velocity took care of it. I still like them, and have since bought another set for my wife's bike.

I'm a bigger guy at 6'-3" 195# and my wheels are 24-2X front and 28-3X rear. They are nice, stiff, and relatively light and I anticipate that they will carry me through many more miles to come.

Low spoke count and durability are diametrically opposed with any rim. If you care about durability, low spoke count with a 19mm deep rim section, even if it is 23mm wide, is simple another manifestation of the weight-weenieism gone silly in the wheel market of today IMO.

It needs to be pointed out that A23's made before last summer were ones that were made in Australia - BEFORE the relocation of Velocity to the US. Since then the rims has been 100% different. New dies, a UST bed, less material, new processing, anodizers, machining....Let's just say that there has been a bit of a curve...

Understood Rob.

If you would be willing to elaborate further on your experience, please PM me. Thx. Jesse

I'm not really sure what your question says.


But my understanding of the purpose of this forum is that it is a place to share experiences and information. It doesn't make sense to me to write a vague negative post and then say you are not commenting. That is a comment in itself, but not a helpful one.


If there are problems with the current rims that you know of you are not being a helpful forum member. It may be that your concerns would not bother some readers if they knew what they were. But by saying you have concerns without elaborating you could be doing both Velocity and a forum reader a disservice by leaving a vague but negative connotation.

Will do.

CC me?

Are all the rims now being made in the US plant?
I have Synergy's on two bikes and Aeroheads on a third one.
I built all the wheels and have never had an issue.

For those of us who already have A23's, is there a way to tell if they are the good ones or the bad ones, and can you let us know what we might look for, in order to avoid wheel failure? And are the good ones the new ones or the old ones? thanks.

I ran into some of the same issues with the Major Tom rim as Rob is seeing with the A23. For me it was right at the joint of the rim the brake track suddenly dipped in about .3mm. It would have caused a lot of pulsating when on the brakes. I have been waiting since July to get my replacements from them.

Running Velocity A23 20/24 with Novatec hubs. So far so good, but they are relatively new! I got them in December and have put a few hundred miles on them so far. My only suggestion is to get wider rim tape (running Velox 22mm) or you will get flats.

I don't think it's possible to break it down to "the good ones and the bad ones." Chances are excellent that if you bought wheels from a good wheel builder, your rims are good. If your wheels have been good so far, there's an overwhelming chance that your rims are just fine. Sort of by definition, if the wheels can get off of a good wheel builder's bench, the rims are fine. Diligent wheel building involves stressing things in ways that aren't likely to happen in use.

We've had some frustrations with Velocity lately (many recent emails back and forth with them). The most frustrating thing from our perspective is that it takes most of a build to really figure out that a particular rim isn't behaving how you like it (which happens at the joint), and that costs a bunch of time to then undo what you've done and start on another rim.

A good wheel builder is a very effective filter against any deficient components making their way into your wheel. We've shipped many many wheels built on US-made Velocity rims, which never would have made it into the wild with bad rims. I'm not an apologist for Velocity at all - one look at an email exchange with their president would instantly disabuse you of that idea - but we use well more than enough Velocity rims to know that there is no pandemic. They've had some teething problems shifting production from AUS to USA, any of which should have been filtered out (at frustrating cost of time and hassle, to be sure) by a good wheel builder.

To answer the OP's original question - at 140, if you use an OC rear rim, that will be a great setup for you. I am 25 pounds heavier than you and have that build on my cross bike, which currently gets used for trail rides including a bunch of singletrack. I have a Novatec A291SB front hub and Powertap Pro+ rear hub and CX Ray spokes. The front is perfect. The rear could use four more spokes, but Powertap Pro+ geometry isn't great, I'm notably heavier than you, and I beat the living snot out of this wheel. A 28 hole A23 rear wheel that I use lots on the road, with a Novatec F482SB hub, is fantastic. I'm getting really into the 20/28 build, I think it works well for a huge number of people.

^^^ Thanks. My wheel is from Wheelbuilder and I've had it a few months w/o issues, so I guess I'm in the clear.

Don't freak out. As was so well stated by November Dave there have been problems with some. The rim I had problems with was apparently Australian made.

You pro builders correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the Aussy manufactured rims look like this: http://www.velocityusa.com/img/a23%2...close%20up.jpg

The newer US made rims look like this: http://img.bonnint.net/c/2745/274588...r=ksl/gallery1

Here is what happened to my rim: http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=298945

I had some initial brake pulsing with my Aussy made rims, but after about 200 miles it went away. I haven't had any problems with my US made A23's.

I have to admit it is quite weight... weenieish? of me to worry about getting 24 on the back instead of 28 or more, but I cant help myself.
Thanks for your input, and what hubs do you have?

That makes me feel pretty good about the durability.

Thanks for the tip.

Awesome response Dave, thanks for all of the good info. From what I have read, the off center gives a more even spoke tension and a smoother ride? Would it hurt to stick with standard A23's for the rear rim, maybe some pros/cons are in order?

Thanks for the pictures for reference.

_____

Instead of starting a new thread I would like to ask a couple more related questions in this one, specifically what are some comparable rims to the velocity A23's other than the DT Swiss 465's or Kinlin XR 270's?

Also, there hasn't been much talk about velocity hubs. I have gotten pretty mixed impressions about them online (race hub specifically) mostly positive, some negative, but not many people seem to give any reasons why, just opinions (although those are somewhat important too).

Finally what are some good sites to poke around similar to prowheelbuilder and the like?

Thanks!




Psimet can you also send that PM to me? (I understand if you don't want to, as you might as well PM everyone on the thread at this point.)

I have Velocity Race hubs and they have been very nice. No complaints or concerns.

The distinctive feature of the A23's is their cross sectional width and relatively low weight for their rim strength. That said, I personally do not consider Kinlin XR 270's as comparable.

HED C2's, and H Plus Son Archetype's are other aluminum clinchers that have the 23mm sectional width and a shallow profile. The C2's are very nice but a lot more expensive than the A23's and they are not readily available. The Archetypes look quite nice, but I haven't found anyone that has real experience with them. Maybe I'll try a set and let you know in a year.;)

The newish Velocity Race hub is built for them by Novatec. I believe the flange geometry is exclusive to them, though. But I have no experience with it. Velocity used to push offset rear rims to help increase nds tension, but the Race hub uses hi/lo flanges instead. I haven't used one so I can't tell you how well it works. I would expect bearing/freehub performance to be similar to other Novatecs, which is considered very good at it's price.

The other Velocity hubs are all made by Formula.

I have a set of A23 that I built up on White Industries H2/H3 hubs because I at the time I liked their Shimano flange geometry. But I haven't looked into the 11sp hubs so I don't if I would still pick WI on a new build.

Depends on the hub. They (the guys at Velocity USA - not Velocity the rim company BTW...the old US importer that is now the front office and builds wheels out of another "sub-office" called "the wheel department" or some such thing) import a lot of different hubs from different manufacturers and re-brand them. Common in the business as we all know. The "race" road hubs are indeed Novatechs. There are some from formula also some from Chosen, as well as some from companies I had never heard of. We covered a laundry list during interbike a few years ago. Regardless they should represent fairly decent quality import hubs and in many instances are the same hubs that many other builders are branding and selling in their pre-builts. I myself use some of the same ones. I just don't re-brand them. That's my choice.

The White T11 geometry - sure it's less tension blanced than the shimano 10 (H3) version, but....its exactly the same as the Campy setup has been all along (H2/H3). Not many Campy riders have been complaining about it. Of course that can be chalked up to the fact that only a small handful of holdouts still remember that little company exists... ;) :innocent: (duck!)

There is nothing wrong with the hub and honestly I have already blown through 100+ in the last few months roughly. Coupling them with the poor ability for the Velocity rims to take tension anymore though....is a recipie for disaster if you don't know what you're doing....oh wait....I am supposed to be vague.

For those that didn't see the need to comment to the fact - I did in fact pm many on the thread who asked for my reasons. I fired my shot over Velocity's bow this morning. Have yet to hear anything and honestly don't think I ever will. Roughly put if they don't identify root causes and implement corrective actions with actual action plans then I will move on and most likely contract my own rims to fill my needs.

If you have a set and they are riding fine then don't worry. These issues are more about general rim quality and will be easily identified by any builder worth $0.02 or more.

The point is that if you are a general enthusiast who is thinking of building with this rim and don't have a lot of wheel building experience....you might find yourself very frustrated. You also may have less than desirable results.