I bought the 50mm tubulars form HongFu, the hubs from MoYon (bikehubstore.com) and the DT Aerolite spokes through a chop contact... I got a particularly feathery set of 50mm rims... I've seen others that are heavier- as with many products the weight can vary...

also, that's the weight without tires, or cassette and sewer... so not exactly "ridable" but fun nonetheless... I also have yet to confirm the total build weight on a proper digital scale... I was using an analog scientific tripple beam balance... the kind you used in college...

Suffice ti to say, it's not all about weight... in fact for my team it's more about cost- when you trash a set of 404's it's an expensive situation. When you trash a set of China rims... eh... not so bad.

Another point- as a set of wheels costs about 1/2 what we get brand wheels for, we can take that savings and go out to California or North Carolina in the spring for a week to train... not bad.

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Please do not PM me about Chinese carbon wheels. I will not respond.

showdown, add some credibility and tell us what team you're with and who you are. (that's strictly an aside, not meant as critical)



As for this thread and the other china direct threads that are showing up almost like clock work...

seems like spam.


The classic part is that this forums trollers seem to give this garbage a pass and it's for one of the reasons I would never buy this junk. There is virtually no information on it for raw materials, QC, testing etc...

Quick, name 3 china direct companies...

It's pretty damn tough to have a bad track record when nobody knows sho you are and you rebadge or leave your product blank simply by opening a new EBAY account when you've fuched over enough people to spoil your old rep...





The second reason I wont buy any more of this crap is because I have purchased some of it... Just to see what was what. Bottle cages that were virtually unusable due to flex, a set of bars that I broke while tightening hoods on with a torque wrench, a stem that I literally threw away on inspection. I ride with a guy who's goal is to spend as little money as possible that bought rims from China and they failed while building them (both the front and rear spoke beds cracked.


Is it all junk? No.

Is it a crap shoot that has no business at all being compared to top brand products that go through QC and have track records... You bet your a$$...

(literally, you bet your a$$ every time you use this crap)

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charles@pezcyclingnews.com

I think he was bit confused. It is almost possible to build a ~1100gr tubular wheelset with chinese 38mm rims. My friend has built a set with taiwanese 64/194gr hub, CX-ray 20/24, alu nipples and his set weighs 1120gr on scale. Chinese 50mm wheelset may weigh ~100gr more, which is still lighter than most brand carbon wheelsets like bora and easton.

I have a bunch of friends who regularly rides and races with their chinese CF wheelsets without any problem, and I know TWO people who have broken their shiny schmolke handlebars, TWO people with broken LW wheelsets, and more with broken zipp wheelsets. Face it. They are expendable. They will break when you crash anyway.

Of course cheaper parts are clearly worse than expensive brand parts, but not everyone is willing to pay premium for top products.

Raxel - good catch, the 50's came in at 1293g- I think I was trying to reference the 38's but my brain was moving faster than my fingers- even with all that coffee!!

PezTech, While the PM assuring me that I was not being "called out" was well, cute- perhaps it should have been part of the post... That said, I understand your point about trolls so no harm meant... I race with a team based out of Chicago, we're a bunch of 2's and 3's. None of us want to be pro and race as amateurs with full time jobs, and kids etc, though we feel we're pretty darn competitive. We have something like 5 out of the last 7 state titles on the road... several Illinois Cup and Chicago Cyclocross Cup titles and plenty of wins... We're nothing more or less special than a hundred teams across the country... But that's mostly irrelevant. I personally ride every day- I commute to work all year long (even throughout the winter) and train a minimum of 10 hours a week all the way up to a dizzying 20+.

I've owned and raced so much equipment that I can't even begin to list it all... Every year we get new stuff thanks to our generous sponsors- some we buy some is free. Sometimes it's part of product development sometimes it's off the shelf...

I've raced on so many courses, again I can't even begin to recount them... I've raced in every type of weather (hail and a blizzard included, and once at Superweek when the road's temperature was 158 degrees fahrenheit the official let everyone off the star line and held up the race to let anyone change to clinchers if they wanted...)

This will be my last post about China Carbon rims... (well, maybe I'll post some photos of the stuff as it arrives - we all like to look at bike toys! It seems that folk are pretty engrained in their opinions and we're not having a dialogue but rather attempts at surgically disassembling one's post and character...

So my parting words will be (hmm, gotta make it good right..) The shortest distance between two points is a straight line... in the opposite direction...

I kid, I kid.

For me and my team going with China carbon wheels was a great opportunity to try something new at relatively low cost- a chance to do something unique and our own. If it works that's fantastic, if not, so be it. I can't claim this is right for anyone else but for us it was. I tried to lay out our rational in my previous post if only to shed some light on the why, I make no claims to any quality other than what I can see and feel, I can't refute anyone else's opinions and don't care to... Bottom line is that if you're interested, go for it! You may like to share your opinions both positive and negative... If not well, then don't. If you have firsthand experience, share it... do so kindly though, if you're just pontificating... well, that's ok, but maybe a disclaimer regarding the lack of first-hand experience would be appropriate.

Anyhow, it's like 50 degrees out today with snow on the horizon... so I'm going for a ride.

-J

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Please do not PM me about Chinese carbon wheels. I will not respond.

PezTech, it seems that once again we disagree. I'm reminded of a time when all steel frames were junk if they weren't welded in Italy. The fact is though, if you follow some simple guidelines just about anybody can braze together a set of tubes and lugs. There's no magic to it. Sure, there are some "gotchas" like having a heavy hand with the torch creating HAZ's (weakened Heat Affected Zones). But even this can be compensated with some annealing.

Where am I going with this? Working with carbon these days is very similar. It's not rocket science and can be done without years of training from the "masters", just like with brazing. There are some big "gotchas" like voids that can't be seen (an analogue to HAZ's). Supposedly QC is going to catch this, but other than destructive sampling I'm not sure of any way to be 100% sure a part isn't affected. The rest comes down to layup and design. Zipp paved the way in showing us where the limits are in terms of rim design (they really did have a fragility problem until they put enough carbon in the right places). Rim designs these days are pretty much set in terms of how much carbon is needed and where. And similarly, there are almost two decades of frame design that builders can rely on.

In short, I would tend to believe the previous poster's anecdotes of getting similar performance and durability from generic Chinese made frames and rims as from big name Chinese made frames and rims.

John Swanson

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www.bikephysics.com
www.lanternart.com

You know, re-reading this post I think I might actually find parts of it offensive.

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www.bikephysics.com
www.lanternart.com

Showdown thanks for the reply.

With your post about buying a lot of variable profiles and being sponsored by Colnago, SRAM, Fizik Giro etc, I was getting the impression that you were part of a larger organization and that telling us who you were and what the team was would be a nice addition to your follow up posts.

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charles@pezcyclingnews.com

I believe the weights on these rims tells the story.

You hear talk of people getting a particular feathery rim or set of rims (as above) or a rim that weighs 40-50 grams more than average. You have companies in china putting out 20mm carbon rims that sometimes arrive around 210 grams, which in my mind is absurd.

When you buy a rim from a reputable company they might deviate a few grams because they do pay attention to layup, they do have quality control, and they actually did design/engineer the rim.

What you pay for 'Brand' is QC, warranty, aftersales service, excessive R&D(sometimes thats not the case) and last but not least 'bling brandname'. Lets make it this way. Zipp made cheapo 101 wheelset that really is cheap wheelset with a pricetag of almost highend wheelset from cheaper brands. Of course ZIPP is quality brand, there have been some failures, but ZIPP paid for their mistakes. They are sponsoring pro teams, they have huge R&D and they are one of innovators in industry. They have serious QC and also they have their ases over aftermarket service. They can make you pay a lot more for their brand becasue they can and they should. This is business, they are not chinese girls with salary of a sora crankset.

But that doesn't make some generic ebay frame/rims a bad product. Not at all. Of course QC is close to none, warranty, well, i should say there is (refunded $ for broken carbon saddle but forgot to refund bottlecage) even if it was half of my fault, aftermarket service also is skechy, but there is one if you get lucky. Talking about R&D i'd say there's close to none. Chinese just copy stuff Europeans and Americans did while ago. But that doesn't mean chinese products are bad. You don't pay for all that stuff that you pay for purchasing 'Brand' product. But you have to be carefull with chinese ebay stuff. You can get good stuff and you can get bad stuff. Get a good stuff and you're fine. I have sellers i've spoke with and they have good products. Genuinely good products. But you got to be carefull none the less.

Same as electronics. There are MP3/usb flash ripoffs with fake programmed memory size and there are genuinely good products for cheap price becasue they don't have a lifetime warranty, blingy package and big brand stamped on.

sorry guys didn't mean to start a war !! just wanted to know an answer to an obvious question !!, thanks for everyboy's comments ! i still don't what to do !! to be honest I think reading all the comments I might just stick with alloy wheels, seems like carbon is too much hassle all round !! I have shimano rs80's right now, just out of interested would a 50 mil deep section be That much better ? !!

If I do go for carbon I am torn better going cheap chinese carbon and risking life and limb !!

or mid price renolyds assults or just sodding it totally and spending a months salary in a set of zipp 303 (cross)

Cheers Paul !!

just out of interest anybody had any experience of the specific wheels that I was looking at ?

Are they build up yet?
Wish to see some of the wheels.

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Isaac Sonic | Isaac Impulse | Turbofiets
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One point on the cost vs. big brands that hasn't been raised is that showdown is in an unusual position of buying lots of wheels and by his own admission trashing lots of them. In those circs the savings add up.

BUT, if you're only looking for one pair of wheels and you're considering $600 Chinese hoops vs. say $1000 EC90s on pooh-bay why would you bother? The re-sale value of the Chinese wheels is approximately $0, while the Eastons will fetch good money, have warranty support, QC, brand etc. etc.

Doesn't make sense.

Maybe the Easton stuff is not a good example. It seems that they are having lots of problems with wheels hubs and crank sets.
I do agree with your point.
If you are buying one wheel set, probably going to be happier with something more reliable

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TIME RXR

But are Easton wheels less reliable than a Chinese no-name shot in the dark? Even if they were, you'd still have warranty support.

Re-sale value can actually make the Chinese stuff a very poor purchase. That changes of course if you do actually trash a wheel, when your Boras go from being worth $1500 to very little.