plowmanjoe

Looking to build up my next wheel set. Thinking about some carbon rims from China for under 300 and then building them up myself. It will be my first build, so it should be a fun experience.

Just looking for some good hubs I should be watching out for. I want to keep the build under 600 total. Just made 900 selling my old hed 3's.

Nagrom_

If its your first build, you probably don't want to build carbon. Tension is a real issue.

8bits

yeah I would let a expert do it even more because china carbon rims are known for quality assurance issues that a wheel builder would spot and tell you right away.

prooftheory

Some pro-wheel builders won't even deal with them.

ColonelJLloyd 

I'm no pro, but I build my own wheels and I can imagine Chinese carbon rims being a nightmare. First build plus inexpensive carbon rims likely equals frustration.

Nagrom_

also, novatecs are great hubs, and thats what they sell the carbon rims laced to.

Just get those, they're less than 600.

tgscordv6

Someone on the roadie subforum almost fell off the mountain because his Chinese carbon clinchers overheated.

Scrodzilla

I built a few of them for a local guy and they were a bit of a nightmare because some of the spoke holes were drilled off-center and unevenly spaced apart from one another.

8bits

I would get the complete wheelset from the chinese store, as said above they usually build it with novatec's wich are some of the best bang for the buck

Crandrew

a lot of folks are moving into cheap chinese carbon wheels. Are they really that much lighter/better?

Nagrom_

no.

dddavid

this can happen with any full carbon rim

plowmanjoe

hmm, didn't realize the difficulty with carbon. i string tennis racquets as a side job, figured i could work my way through wheel building.

one of my friends bought set and they look great. i'm pretty sure some smaller companies are building from these chinese rims. affinity has an 88mm wheel laced to a dura ace hub. i'm 95% sure it's from one of these chinese companies.
maybe i'll just buy the complete wheels.

chriskmurray

We have built about 4 sets of china carbon wheels, one of their road wheelsets and 3 of their mountain wheelsets. They all were actually very nice to work with (could have just got lucky) and the mountain rims look almost identical to the Roval rims from Specialized.

plowmanjoe

so, maybe if i get my hands on some good hubs, i might just try to build it just for the experience.

Nagrom_

You should probably first ask him how many wheelsets he's built.

This thread has unanimously advised you against it, yet you still want to.


Is your safety not a concern?

chriskmurray

Can you blame him? I have built many wheels but we all start somewhere and it is highly unlikely he will mess it up so bad without realizing it that his safety would be in jeopardy.

True, a carbon wheel is not the ideal place to start because if you really mess something up it might cost a little more to fix but if he takes his time, uses a tension gauge chances are he will be just fine. It is never a bad call to have a friend who knows how to do it double check you but really, how many wheels have you seen catastrophically fail because of poor build? If he strings tennis racquets regularly, chances are he is good with tedious tasks that require attention to detail which is pretty similar to building a wheel.

In the end though, other than learning the lacing pattern and the basic theory behind it, building bicycle wheels is really not as difficult of a task as people think. It takes some skill to really get them "perfect" but safe, or close enough to still feel good about a first wheel build is really not that hard to achieve.

Adrian_

I built my first wheelset without a tension gauge and it came out great. Took it to my lbs and they didn't have to make any adjustments, even made jokes about hiring me as their part time wheelbuilder. Took almost six hours to build though....

chriskmurray

There are even people who have made an app now for tensioning spokes, you can also use a piano tuner. I should download and compare one of the apps to a real tension gauge one day just out of curiosity.

You can get them pretty close just by comparing to the spokes of a known good wheel even.

First wheels always take a long time, soon you will doing it in less than an hour per wheel.

xavier853

So you are saying the deep Chinese carbon road wheelset is actually decent for the price? I was simply looking at them to have something lighter and to be replaced by an eventual upgrade on my new road bike build.

mconlonx

High end hubs, you say?

Curtis Odom hubs. Ka-bling!


Or something from:
Paul Components
White Industries
Chris King
Phil Wood
DT Swiss <-- do they even make a track hub...?

And I hear a favored vendor hereabouts has Chub Hub on sale...

ddeadserious

I've been super happy with my Novatec track hubs and honestly have no desire to change them to anything else.

Scrodzilla

+1

People who see my Gara always say something along the lines of "Your bike is so nice, why didn't you use better hubs?" but aside from bling factor, I have no real reason to.

ddeadserious

I feel like they have a stigma attached to them based solely on their price rather than their actual quality. It's just like any quality item that is sold for a below-average price, people then associate it with a "bang for your buck" thing rather than just simply being good on it's own. If the Novatec hubs were twice the price for the exact same thing, they'd probably be considered as "high end/high quality" hubs.

Nagrom_

And I'd still buy em.