Does a wheel investment make sense?

jacksoneaker

Hey all,

At this point in time, with disc brakes beggining their ascension to ubiquity among road bikes, does it make any sense to invest in rim brake wheels? Or would it be better off to not buy top of the line rim wheels, knowing that whatever my next bike is, it will have discs and not be compatible. Just curious and wanted to add this to the discussion

raisinberry777

Nothing bike related is an 'investment'. Ever.

Semantik

jacksoneaker wrote:

Hey all,

At this point in time, with disc brakes beggining their ascension to ubiquity among road bikes, does it make any sense to invest in rim brake wheels? Or would it be better off to not buy top of the line rim wheels, knowing that whatever my next bike is, it will have discs and not be compatible. Just curious and wanted to add this to the discussion

This is probably easy to answer if we knew how many rim braked bikes you have already. If, like a lot of us, you have a few already, including some nice ones , then continuing to buy quality rim braked wheels makes perfect sense to keep your fleet going.
Personally,I would quite like a hydraulic disc braked road bike but part of my reluctance to buy one has to do with the fact that wheels and shifters would then no longer be interchangeable between this bike and all the others. Bad enough that I have 2 bikes that are 11 speed, 3 x 10 speed, 2 x 9 speed and several 7 speed. Don't want to complicate the mix even further.
if you only have one or two road bikes and they are old shitters, then maybe go for a disc road bike soon and don't look back.

chrisw12

For me personally it didn't. i was faced with this question a year ago. Both sets of my wheels were approaching their half life and I was thinking about getting another set. I held off thinking my next bike would be a disc. I've now bought a disc bike, I'll use the rim braked bikes as a spare until they die. For me there was no need for another set of nice rim braked wheels.

MiddleRinger

If your next good bike WILL have discs then no, probably not worth buying expensive rim brake wheels.

All my bikes are rim braked, I'm hoping that I won't have to buy any more wheels until I buy my next really good road bike. Hopefully they'll have sorted out proper standards for discs by then and I'll "invest" in some quality disc equipped carbon wheels.

larmurf

raisinberry777 wrote:

Nothing bike related is an 'investment'. Ever.

Everything bike related is an investment ..!!!

In your health ...!!!

And as they say around here ..

Your health is your wealth ...!!!

ZMC888

I just spent about 500 pounds on some DT Swiss rim brake alloy lightweight climbing clinchers (RR21 Dicut) to go on my one month old rim brake bike (Fuji SL). This is a climbing/KOM/Everesting bike, so dragging an extra kg up the hills and the extra outlay wasn't worth it. As a mountain biker familiar with Shimano SLX and XT brakes the performance of Shimano rim brakes (105 and above) in the dry is excellent, better than many mechanical disk brakes IMO and a joy to work on and live with. Luckily where I live it's usually dry, but if I lived in a wetter country I'd certainly be keener on disks.

I think I'll wait for hydraulic disk brakes sizes and axles to be much more standardised and for R&D to substantially drop the extra weight, maybe in two to five years will be the time to change over.

stueys

I think life's too short to worry about it, if you get a disc bike next year then ebay the stuff you no longer need.

Personally I think the majority of bikes will slowly move over to be disc based, the standards are pretty much there now and the benefits of discs are fairly compelling. But I think we are talking a 5+ year gradual shift here, nothings going to happen instantly as there is too much rim based frames, wheels, etc, out there. So if you want a nice set of wheels for your rim bike, go buy them

bmxboy10

Sometimes things go full circle.

Done the disc brake thing and yes they work great but I had issues with brake rub, brake noise, pad contamination etc...plus they are now stupid expensive.

My rim bike is nicer, lighter and for the most part stops just the same. Sometimes the simplest things in life are the things that give the most pleasure and right now this is my logic. Anyway as soon as the Open Pro is out I will be investing in some nice rim brake wheels as for me a best bike is a summer bike and no summer bike needs discs.

I feel the same about tubeless at the moment having had an issue on the side of the road.

cougie

Just buy a bike to ride. Not wheels that you may or may not ride later.