Road Wheels & Road Wheel Recommendations?

Stans were decent to work with due to the way they designed the rim profile, you just need to grind it and bear the loud POP noise of the tyres bead hooking onto the rims, sound very unnerving thinking it might blow up.

Having had Novatec disc hubs, it's worth noting that they are really difficult to service yourself (should that be a factor).

I've serviced a pair and found it OK. Lots of work with a vice, drift and a rubber mallet.

Exactly, a vice, a drift and a rubber mallet are not things I'd normally associate with servicing a hub.

Par for the course with cartridge bearings I thought.

Although I suspect they don't want you replacing the freehub bearings because those required real (weakling) force to remove and replace.

Using them for cross, so I want something where I can get at the bearings easily if needs be.

I hear ya. Cross killed mine, too. Rather too quickly.

It would have been OK if the front hub had used a common bearing size. Alas, no, two replacement bearings at pretty much the cost of the hub.

Thanks. I was reading up on them after Fred posted the suggestion and I have been reading bad things about the bearings, support and getting spares.

Might just stick with the slightly heavier safe bet of Hope Pro 4's. I've got four bikes with Hope hubs on (well, three right now as I've just split one). If it ain't broke...

TB14's are rims for real men with strong hands

I'm sure that has nothing to do with the width and everything to do with the depth - the bottom of the dip in the middle is hardly lower than the bead seat.

I have them too, I actually hate them for this reason.

To stir the pot more, my DT Swiss R23 (thanks to @mdcc_tester for the recommendation) have been super easy to get my Schwalbe 1s on. Good enough seal to go up tubeless with a track pump too, which was nice

I've got a set of Mavic Krysiums. They are the most difficult wheel to get a tyre on ever.
Is that legit? So irritating tbh

The remedy for this is to stop riding your fucking motorbike.

Smelly cyclist. Get off the road.

But seriously. Fitting tyre onto fulcrum 7, easy. Same tyre onto krysium, impossible.

Wait till you try fitting tyres on Tesco's Finest Vertigo Piccadilly road bike.

Rims narrower than 13mm!

Honestly took skin off my thumb trying to get them on. Then when I resorted to my park tool lever I got a pinch flat.
Just un-usable wheels imo.

Silly question but should I expect a stock pair of Shimano RS11s to go out of true every 3-400 km? Second time I've needed to true the wheels that came with my Synapse, and I'm only riding on Hertfordshire country lanes...

Could anything else be the problem? I thought these wheels were meant to be solid (albeit cheap)?

Not RS11s but my RS10s started going out of true after about 50 miles. My RS20s have been bombproof thought. Read somewhere that the difference between them are the spoke material.

Shouldn't go out of true that often, either that or the mechanic didn't stress the wheels after truing it.

Honestly took skin off my thumb trying to get them on. Then when I resorted to my park >tool lever I got a pinch flat.
Just un-usable wheels imo.

Dunno man, they're fine, it's usually new tyres that make it trickier to fit.

Then again, I do puncture repair on a dozen of them every weeks.

Never struggled too much with 4 Seasons to be honest. And I am a weak man.

Perhaps mine were on the rims for plenty of time before I had to change and the tyres were plenty stretched.

When they're are 10 club mates watching you and itching to get going again, it tends to focus your mind I find.

Ha yes!
Weird.

Bang for buck disc wheelset: Strength and low maintenance are the main aim. £100-150 budget
What options are there?

I understand a tyre stretching over time, but surely not the bead, which to be honest is the bit that creates the loss of skin. Surely it's just a rim/ tyre problem, some rims are easy to fit tyres to, others aren't?

Beads do stretch