Weight Weenies

My wheels finally arrived!!!! I weighed them at 628gr rear and 438gr front. That's 1066 grams for the pair... 66 grams above target weight but WAY below budget. Total cost including shipping and build labor was $717.00. Parts alone were under $600.00.

Since these are for climbing I used lightweight tires... Vittoria Crono EVO 290tpi 700x20c. My bike weight came down to 5.72kg with Garmin hardware attached. Here are some photos...

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Beautiful!

Now I really can't wait until the 'generic carbon group buy' rims come in! We're going to see some amazing builds come out of that - especially in the $/g ratios.

Nice!!

Mission accomplished. Bravo and great job.

I agree! I'm a bit disappointed mine came in over weight, but I don't think I could have gone lighter without a significant increase in cost. $/g this is about as good as it gets. This wheelset and tire combination dropped ~800 grams off my standard wheel/tire combo. That is about a dollar per gram of savings when you add in the cost of the tires. I can't wait to get out and ride these things!

xnavalav8r wrote:Happy Day! My wheels survived the Tennessee floods. They were apparently stuck in a distrobution center but remained high and dry. The tracking info has been updated. I will have them Tuesday.... finally! This project has been dramatic.

I should have put 2 and 2 together and realized that those were your wheels. I saw the rims and hubs when I was at Merlyn's place and made the comment that there is group buy on WW for these rims.

I ordered a pair of generic carbon 20mm rims from Henry. Jason of FWB is also sending me a pair of Soul-Kozak "Soul" Road Hubs. Spokes will be DT Aerolites. It should be sub 1000g for sub US$1000. Thanks for starting this thread.

Carbon 20mm rims pair - US$204
Soul-Kozak Road Hubset - US$395
DT Aerolite - US$130

Total cost of parts - US$729

bikemessenger - Merlyn is a great guy. I've known him for a long time and trust his judgement. He's trying to convince me to ride these wheels in one hillclimb and then hang them up as wall art. While I don't plan on using them as daily riders, or even for road racing, I'm hoping they'll be durable enough for more than one special event. I guess I better test them out soon.

Considering that these same rims are being re-branded all the time under some other moniker here and there, I'm sure they'll be perfectly fine for continual use.

Be sure to post how your wheels come out, that's the exact spec I was playing with the other night. Sounds like a winner!

And for the rest of you, is there another group buy scheduled for the future? I'm interested pending some durability reviews since a new pair of 303's is not currently in the budget Seems like there is more then enough interested for the 5 pair minimum.

Rob

Sure will do. I hope the rims will hold up. I've been told that its similar to FFWD been using.

http://www.ffwdwheels.com/product.asp?i ... =95&page=1

Lots more riding done and I am really impressed with these wheels. I've gone up and down mountain roads, hopped curbs, blasted down rough dirt/gravel roads and they are still round and true despite my 180lb heft.
I really didn't mean to abuse them like this, thought I would baby/save them more but they just ride so nice.
My wheelbuilder is so impressed he's ordering some for his personal use.
The circus monkey rear hub started making nosie under load and needed lube on the pawls already, I would use different hubs if doing it again.

Sounds like you scored for sure. Hopefully the paw's hold up under continued use.

xnavalav8r wrote:My wheels finally arrived!!!! I weighed them at 628gr rear and 438gr front. That's 1066 grams for the pair... 66 grams above target weight but WAY below budget.

I am a bit perplexed about the final weight. Summing the parts weights based on your FB pictures, I get 1018g...

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The spokes in the FB pictures were not used in the final build. They were the wrong length (too short) so lighter than the actual spokes used in the build. I think that's the difference.