Ricky* described his Chinese built carbon wheelset as "having failed". As part of our custom wheel building process, we always seek to understand what has been working for the customer, and what has not (along with all the usual stuff like weight, riding style, road surfaces, tyres, easthetics, preferences, goals, and a whole lot more).
After a little discussion, Ricky* let us know that he had been descending a well known road at nearly 90km/h, to turn a corner and find a police officer standing in the middle, commanding him to stop. The legal speed limit was 60km/h!
Being a law abiding citizen, Ricky* pulled his bike up as quickly as possible, and in that single 20 second process, cooked the braking surface on his cheap carbon wheels. We must mention that these rims were a few years old, and used older lower Tg resins - but still, one could expect a bit more than one hard stop to ruin a set of rims.
Ricky asked what would be a good all alloy round rim to use his DT Swiss 240s hubs on - considering he weighs 95kgs. The hubs were 20h front and 24h rear, so in order to preserve stiffness and reliability, a sturdier deeper section rim is required. The Kinlin XC279 was an obvious choice. It's 23mm wide, 28mm deep, and tough as nails.
In order to further promote stiffness and reliability, we used DT Swiss Champion plain gauge spokes on the rear driveside, and Competition spokes on the front and rear offside. The front was laced a light and stiff radial pattern, and the rear 2x on both sides.
DT Swiss Red alloy nipples were used on this build, being lighter where it counts most.
With alloy wheel builds, alloy nipples make sense - they are the least expensive way to shed weight, and that weight reduction is where it counts most, at the extremity of the wheel. Less weight at the rim means or faster acceleration, with no detriment to wheel stiffness.
Total wheelset weight 1635g.
*not his real name. Rob** probably doesn't want his wife to know.
** not Ricky's real name.
