skinnywellfed wrote:spartan wrote:november cycles is developing new rim. real independent development in a2 windtunnel.
So you're saying that a company that takes pre-orders and customer cash up-front is now investing research dollars into wind tunnel testing? Have I got that right?
If you had a business wouldn't you be excited to invest in it and have it grow and be able to take advantage of opportunities and try to continually improve what you do? That's pretty much exactly what we're doing.
I don't really get the knock against pre-orders. It works out to an incredible APR in the customer's favor ($100 off a set of $945 wheels for 90 day delivery is about 40% APR) and a lot of people take advantage of it. Except when we sell a lot more than we've forecast, which is where we are right now, we keep every type of rim available for for builds at all times. We keep warranty stock of every rim available at all times. People love the pre-order. It's become a less significant part of our business as we've grown, but as long as there's still the strong demand for it and it doesn't conflict with the rest of what we're doing, we'll do it. Other bike companies have done pre-orders since we started it, and this "Kickstarter" thing that seems pretty similar to the pre-order.
We offer a lot of options (each rim type has 2 different spoke type and color options, at least 4 different hub options with between 2 and 10 color choices, some of our builds have 2 or 3 different drilling options) so most of them amount to custom orders. It's not at all unusual for custom orders to require payment up front. Other companies offer nowhere near the level of options we do, and it would be impossible for us to keep all options in stock, ready to go. We are gradually building up the stock of wheels that are available for immediate purchase, options are obviously somewhat limited on those, and those will ship within a couple of days of order in any case.
When you make rims wider, you have to add weight. The parts of the rim that do the hard structural work get bigger, and as BobDopolina says more material means more work. Rim sidewalls are thinner, so when you go deeper you don't add weight as quickly. Also, the more blunt profiles aren't as inherently strong as V-shaped profiles, so you need more material to keep the level of strength that you want there.
Prendrefeu - You can use the results of our rim test as a general indicator of how your rims do, but ours are different from the ones you have. Similar shape, but definitely not the same rim.
Thanks
Dave