RS1400 Rose hand built wheels

lgcbiking

Hi,

just ordered a Rose bike, and opted to upgrade the wheels from the Mavic Aksiums WTS (i.e. with aksion tyres) to the RS1400 Rose wheels with GP4000S tyres. Given the bike won't be built for a few weeks, thought I'd get some thoughts on this, given there's not much information online on these wheels..

http://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/rose ... aid:715928

The upgrade costs £100, and for that I get much lighter wheels (1400g, so ~2000g all in vs 2400g of the aksiums) with wider 25mm tyres. The guy at Rose compared their stiffness/durability to the Mavic Ksyrium Equipe. Where I am is very flat, so weight is probably not so important, but I'm likely to move in the future (who knows where), and not likely to mess around with the bike once I buy it.

As far as I can gather the Rose wheels are handbuilt by them, with kinlin xr200/xr300 rims (front and back) and novatek hubs. Being completely ignorant on wheels, how is this setup?

Cheers!

ugo.santalucia

When you go to such low weight, the quality of the build and your weight become essential ingredients in the equation.
I would be happy to build something like that for someone up to 80-85 Kg.
You got them at a discounted price, but the full price is reassuringly high, meaning there is a chance they are actually built by a professional in Germany, rather than in a sweatshop in the Far East.
Including the tyres, there is 350-360 worth of material at retail price, so the building fee is quite hefty

lgcbiking

I'm between 75-80kg, so should be ok then!

I was told they build them there themselves, and from what I've heard Rose customer service is very good, so I'm guessing the build should be good too, although that's all I have to go on. I did think the full price was high (most bike related things seem expensive to me though, not having cycled for long) given the relatively small price surplus for the upgrade. They sell the aksiums for £190 as a comparison, and most upgrades are priced at the price difference. Given they build them themselves, maybe they put them on at cost when included with a bike..

styxd

They look like a worth while upgrade for sure. I'd swap the tyres to 23c though, the 25c are actuall about 27/28 size.

lgcbiking

Thanks for the feedback styxd. What do you mean by the 25c actually being 27/28 size? I was under the impression that generally 25c actually worked better than 23 (and sometimes, even higher is better). I think they also do a set of 23 front/25 back. Admittedly, probably won't be life changing, but given I'm getting new tyres, might as well get the right ones!

styxd

Those tyres measure up pretty big. The 25 is actually close to 28. The 23 is probably closer to 25.