Carbon clinchers- dodgy or sound?

mcstumpy

Hi,

My brother is eyeing up these on eBay-

http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/700c-carbon-bicycle-wheels-50mm-clincher-carbon-road-bike-wheelset-Only-1530g-/221804816824?nav=SEARCH&varId=520668348338

Sound purchase? Or likely to end in tears?

Cheers

Grill

I can't even begin to describe what a waster of money those are.

SoSimple

Just ask yourself how its possible to produce a set of carbon wheels at that weight for that price and then whether you'd be confident hitting any kind of bump at speed with them. They are built to a price not a spec.

Buy cheap - buy twice!

trek_dan

I've got a similar set (from FarSport, with Novatec hubs and Sapim spokes) and after I had them tensioned up properly they have been riding great. Word of warning - not for riding on long descents.

...but the real question is why take a punt on these when you can get a very good set of alloy wheels for the same price?

keezx

If you want deep wheels, these are.
So buy them.
Normal price for a Chinese carbon wheelset.
Be prepared for some tuning, but if you can do that, not much against it.
Some better known sources are available, but if you're lucky these are as good as.

john1967

I had an interesting chat with an cycling industry guy recently who uses Chinese wheels and reckons the qualitys equal to most stuff you can buy here.
check this guy out,some good information ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59MsPG3lzkU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbXcjpxAS08

SoSimple

[url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19761478#p19761478]john1967[/url] wrote:

I had an interesting chat with an cycling industry guy recently who uses Chinese wheels and reckons the qualitys equal to most stuff you can buy here.
check this guy out,some good information ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59MsPG3lzkU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbXcjpxAS08

I'm sure there are likely to be wheels of decent quality but the problem with buying this kind of stuff from China is the lack of quality control, dealer network, sales back up etc. I don't buy the fact a set of wheels at £250 can be anywhere near as good as a similar looking set made by a well known and trusted brand, even allowing for marketing costs, mark up etc

You only need to look at the Chinese lights(and yes I have a £20 Cree which does everything very well), but dare I leave it on charge overnight...not a chance.

As someone has already said, for that money you can get a seriously good set of alu wheels

ic.

They will be total carp. You may get lucky, you very likely won't. Avoid. £250 will get you a great set of handbuilts that will out perform those on every level, save maybe looks, if deep section is your thing.

trailflow

Avoid any Ebay sellers and pay more and go with reputable sellers like Farsports or Yoeleo. They have more feedback and you will have a better idea of what your actually getting.

I took a chance on some 38mm's from a seller on Ebay called ''CNcarbon''. I'd put money on they are the same company as ''cycling-cycling'' above.

I paid around £250 and £17 import duty iirc. At first i thought they were amazeballz. Superlight around 1380 grams. Wide. Reasonably true out of the box. Braking felt excellent. No pulsing. Rode stiff and felt pretty nice to ride. All was good until after 6 months or so, the basalt brake surface started to chip and disintegrate at various points along the rim. Which made the brake track very abrasive and caused the brake pads to rapidly wear down. After a 3 hour ride the pads were nearly toast.

The quality of the rim was dreadful and really low quality on closer inspection. The edges of the bead hooks looked very tatty from the start. And got worst as time went on. They just looked like a slap together jobbie. Had loads of excess resin inside the rim that looked to cover up some of the manufacturing faults. No care taken whatsoever. I had no choice but to retire them. After dismantling the wheels i found some of the spokes to be the wrong lengths.

Next i did a strength test on the bead hooks with a small spanner to see how strong they were and it broke and snapped off surprisingly easy. Not a very scientific test but it's totally made me re-think carbon wheels even from a professional company. Any alloy rim has way stronger bead hooks. And now im not suprised these carbon wheels fail the way they do.

Will update with pictures of the crappy rims.

supermurph09

I'm sure these would be a much better option: https://www.cycledivision.co.uk/cero-ar30-alloy-clincher-wheelset-6528

redvision

I wouldn't bother. Would be a gamble.
You get what you pay for at the end of the day.

jdee84

Has anyone any experience with the borg 50mm carbon clinchers from cycle clinic thinking of them or a set or reynolds strike for a bit more

Grill

Strike are good.