Sturdy wheelset for 110 kg abuse :-)

padyjoe wrote: »

It must be a wheelset not only a rear wheel, is that right?

You can buy single wheels, no need to buy both if you don't want to.

Lumen wrote: »

But....but....they won't match!

There's not a day goes by that I don't wistfully think about those three odd wheels that I have.

padyjoe wrote: »

Mavic vs Xtreme.

Xtreme is Rose Bike's own-brand.

They re-badge products from other brand-names. I've no idea who makes their rims but their Freejack Xtreme hubs are by Miche for example.

In my opinion, the Xtreme rims are going to be better value than Mavic. Mavic is a bit over-priced IMO as it's an old well-known brand name which charges a premium. The Xtreme rims get great feedback online - I have one of them myself in a cheap Tiagra hubbed rear wheel that I built. Almost exactly the wheel I'm suggesting for you, except I built it myself because that's more fun

Here is a wheelset with Tiagra hubs and those Airline 4 rims. 99 euro and IIRC you can get a tenner off by signing up to their email newsletter so that'll cover delivery.

http://www.rosebikes.com/article/road-wheel-set-28700c-xtreme-airline-4--shimano-tiagra-4600/aid:202988

Tiagra or 105 doesn't really matter much. They're both great value basic hubs. Here's the same wheelset but with 105 hubs
http://www.rosebikes.com/article/road-wheel-set-28700c-xtreme-airline-4--shimano-105-5800/aid:162960

It's 125 euro.

105 has the advantage that it'll be 11 speed compatible. Beyond that, there's not much of a difference really. Neither of them is a fancy hub that you are likely to be rebuilding into a new wheel when the rim wears out - ie it'll be almost as cheap to buy a new wheel and throw this one out than to buy a new rim (and possibly spokes, though I'd re-use) and re-build it when the rim wears out.

Beyond the fact that these wheels will be stronger than factory bought ones like Zondas or even Aksiums, they are also much easier for a bike shop to repair if a spoke does break. Any bike shop should have a suitable replacement spoke, they won't all have suitable proprietary Mavic ones and the Mavic ones will be more expensive. Additionally if a spoke does fail on a 36 spoke wheel, the wheel will go only slightly out of true and should still be ridable. This gets increasingly less true as the spoke count drops. This affects how likely you are to be able to ride home on it.

Honestly. if you want bomb proof because you're a big rider who is hard on his wheels then I don't see you doing better than either the Tiagra or 105 version of these wheels.

If you want to spend more money then here's a pair with Freejack Hubs for 137e.
http://www.rosebikes.com/article/xtreme-road-wheel-set-28700c-airline-4--free-jack-shimano/aid:15102

From reading about it, these look identical to the Miche road hubs and even come with a Miche lock-ring, so I'd be pretty positive they are Miche. All the Xtreme stuff is rebadged other brands.

Fancier hubs, again very servicable. Again easy to replace spokes, and again you shouldn't have to as they're 36/36 spoke count.

Here they are with Ultegra hubs for 174e http://www.rosebikes.com/article/xtreme-road-wheel-set-28700c-airline-4--shimano-ultegra-6800/aid:716725

Really though, I don't see what benefit you'd be getting from the Ultegras. They're the sort of hub that when the rim dies you should be rebuilding them with another rim. If you're not doing that yourself then what's the point, and they're not really fancy enough to be paying someone else to be doing it for you. They're a bit lighter but that's not much of an issue if built into a 36 spoke wheel with a fairly heavy rim. Any weight saving will also be small compared to you and the bike's total weight. I'm 75kg and that's still very true for me

The reason that I keep recommending Rosebike wheels is that they are ridiculously good value. They are the biggest cycling chain in germany and have wheel building robots to mass produce these wheels. They sell pre-built wheels significantly cheaper than they sell all the components to build them for - and they already sell the components cheaper than almost anyone else. I've paid a premium to get the components and build the wheel myself because it's fun

quozl wrote: »

Xtreme is Rose Bike's own-brand.
...

Is there any difference between 105 hub and freejack?

I am 98kg, i might get that xtreme rim.

The Rose Xtreme rims are made by Rodi in Portugal.

The Miche / Rose hubs are fine. There are two things worth watching for:
1) They don't use a lock-nut / cone to maintain the bearing pre-load the same way as, say Shimano. Instead, they have an alloy nut/ collar which you set and then secure with a tiny grub screw. Not as secure, in my experience.Its usually a trade off between having the grub screw secure enough to prevent loosening and tightening it too much and stripping the head.
2) They have an alloy freehub body. All very light & sexy ~& everything but prone to having the cassette dig into them. The Shimano 105 body is steel - heavier, but you don't end up with a cassette embedded in the splines.

One point in the rim discussion. The Mavic Open Pro, CXP 33 and Xtreme R490 rims on the previous page are eyeletted. The Xtreme Airline rim isn't. This isn't that much of an issue with handbuilt wheels, but the Rose wheels are machine assembled. One wheel manufacturer(Stan's) has commented when asked why their rims didn't have eyelets: "Single eyeleted rims serve primarily as a means to reduce the lubrication needed between the spoke nipple and rim interface for automated wheel building equipment." This would seem to imply that machine-built wheels on non-eyeletted rims may be prone to issues like spoke-wind-up. Alternatively, Stan's may be talking through their rim.

That pinging noise you heard when you first got on them is 'spoke twist', so as Quozl rightly pointed out some of the spokes are unwinding. This is most likely due to machine/robot build (not all the machines perform an adequate 'destress' process during the build as robotic builds remove a lot of the stages a handbuilt wheel will go through). It's a very common trend these days and a lot of the OEM wheels on major brands bikes do this from new too.

Do take the wheels to a bikeshop or wheelbuilder and get them checked over before embarking on any major spin as the loose nipples will continue to unwind as you ride and potentially could lead to a failure of some kind. You don't want spokes falling out on a 60Kph decent!

Surely it's very unlikely that the spokes are actually lose. The spokes are probably unwinding a quarter or half turn. You'd struggle to get a spoke to twist much more than that even if you wanted it to as the more it's twisted the more force pushing it back to untwist.