Hoops

I recently decided that I'd like to own and ride a set of carbon rimmed wheels. Rims? Made of carbon? Madness I hear you cry.. Well I thought the same thing a couple of years ago and it was only really until Ibis brought out their version of the carbon rim that I kind of sat up and took notice.
 

The thing is, I've always liked the concept of super light wheels, but as I'm a heavier rider (I'm usually hovering around 84kg), add to that a desire to plummet down and through rock strewn and root riddled descents as fast as I can, I have been known to bend the odd wheel. So how is carbon going to stop that? Well it's all about strength to weight ratio really. Carbon allows us to build a similar strength rim for much less weight, or looking at it differently, a much stronger rim for the same weight..
 

Now I firmly belong to the second camp on this, mainly because as I mentioned I'm not light, but also because I can't afford to buy two sets, one for race day and one for training and general mucking around. And I want to ride them all the time too. So, I've ended up buying a pair of rims that have a whopping great 38mm footprint and weigh only a few grams more than my much skinnier NoTubes Arch EX alloy rims at around 24.6mm. The Arch EX has been an excellent rim and looked at in comparison to other rims made of the same stuff it holds it's own very well. It's light, strong and dare I say it, relatively cheap (thus exploding the engineer's myth of strong, light, cheap, pick two..)..Well ok, not quite. Because there are lighter, cheaper and stronger rims out there but probably not all in the same wheel. I have given them a fair bit of abuse too, from racing to poorly chosen lines through tasty rock gardens and they have come out reasonably well. I say reasonably because they are not totally free of collateral damage, slightly wobbly now and looking a little sad and dejected..
 

So back to Ibis. What a cool company. Innovative, passionate and producers of beautiful bikes, and now purveyors of choice wheels too. Their own design of the carbon rim has I suspect led to many reversed engineered designs, one of which I bought (light-bicycle). The reason I chose them over Ibis is for a couple of reasons, 1- they are way cheaper, and 2- Ibis do exactly the same thing, get a rim made in China because it's cheaper and then sell it for a profit. I'm just kind of cutting out the middle man, in this case Ibis. So sorry Ibis.

Although being that I'm about to pay $4100 AU for an Ibis Ripley 29er LS in Tang, I don't think I'll lose sleep over it.. and I'm sure they won't either (http://www.ibiscycles.com/bikes/ripley_29/).

 

I'm also currently looking into having wheel builder supremo, Adrian from Melody Wheels in Fremantle, lace a Powertap G3 hub to the rims so I can train with power on the Ripley, and any other 29er I choose to add to the stable at a later date (http://melodywheels.com/).

 

So once these wheels are built and rolling on the Ibis I'll report back with an update.

29er rims 28 hole (38mm width)
Hope Evo2 hubs (probably)
Sapim x-ray spokes
All black