Orient Express - Cheap Chinese Rims / Wheels / Forks / Frames / Cranks / Etc

I've got something for you. I'll drop you a PM.

It depends how much you want to ride the bike, carbon clinchers brake like shit unless you buy top end ones. For the money it's probably worth buying those carbon ones for fun rides and some el cheapo aluminium ones for when it's wet or windy.

Yes, so my thinking is when it's nice and sunny and I want a fun / play around ride I'll get the Bowman out and when the condition don't look promising take the Equilibrium which is equipped with PDW guards.

Admittedly, looks also come into play here and the Bowman looks much nicer with deep rims

I know what you mean, I have the same setup, a carbon bike with carbon wheels for racing/sunny rides and caadx with fatter tyres and mudguards for commuting/rain. But there's still times I want to bring out the carbon bike with some more practical wheels because it may rain, or going up/down lots of hills etc.

Yeah that sounds like an ideal setup.

When you say coming down lots of hills, what sort of elevation would you consider that ride to be so it's challenging in terms of breaking on carbon rims? Would it be something over 5k feet or below?

Also, maybe something worth mentioning but I'm not too heavy at around 70kg, that might make a difference?

It's more about individual hills than the total. Especially if it's wet. Certain hills can be shorter but shitter because of steepness or traffic lights. I mean, there's nothing around London that will challenge their heat capacity or anything, it's more that it sucks white knuckle gripping the levers for 30 seconds before you even start slowing down and doing that multiple times in a ride.

I must say, I bought two of the originals from when they were crowdfunding, and they're incredibly disappointing.

Feel very flimsy, need to be set up very carefully as they're prone to 'dulling' at the slightest misalignment, and produce a very weak ring.

Splashed out on a Spurcycle bell in the end - a stupid amount of cash monay to spend on a bell, but it's infinitely better than the Knog.

I just got one of these

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/252628184771?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&var=551538677432&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Better than the original knock off spur bell, nice and loud. Kind of like a mini version of the Crane E-ne bell (aka. best bell ever, had to bend the arm to make it quieter as it hurt my ears to use)

Trusting your recommendation, just ordered 2. Nice one!

top tip - Do the bolt up just enough, if you over tighten it they'll bugger up the rubber washer and the bell wont ring. If you do, its easy enough to replace it with a little piece of inner tube, but its a bit of pain.

Alright, cool thanks. One is for the girlfriends bike and one on my silly risers town bike.

Can anyone recommend a good SMP copy? Either carbon or not, it's more the shape I'm after.

From reading others' experiences, I'm not sure there are any that accurately replicate the shape of genuine SMP.

Steve Hogg's and Pearce Coaching's pages are a little out of date now (SMP line-up has changed), but will give you an idea as to which model is likely to suit you.

Then you can look for a cheap/beat-up version with the same base: the heavily padded/ugly coloured models tend to go cheaper and you can strip and reupholster them easily for a few quid.

Check the SMP thread for "how to" posts.

Oops! I meant the Selle SLR. Anyone know of any good versions of that?

Many thanks for the info anyway...

Ha!

Just letters innit?

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current go-to crabon 27.2mm post? think my caad10 could lose even more weight and my vcls rip off is quite heavy

My Enve copy is 180g for 400mm and works fine. Uses a bontrager clamp design so spare parts are easily available

Where'd you find it with the logo?

I'm considering this type in matte for the same look but with the black clamp

Off Alibaba eons ago. Think thats a copy of the enve clamp, which will probably be more secure.

I've got one of those and I haven't died yet. Clamp is slightly different to the one @Turkish has, but it seems to work fine. Note that I'm a little over 90kg.

Nice one, I'm a shadow of a man at just over 60kg so I should think it won't kill me in the bum if it can support a normal sized person.

There's an Irish company doing them. Also see Fouriers on ebay.

My Light Bicycle rim is "Depot, Awaiting payment of customs charges"

Any idea how I'm supposed to
a) find the depot
b) pay the charge to get the fucking thing delivered

If it's parcelforce, either wait until they post you an invoice or call up their helpline with tracking number and ask nicely if you can pay over the phone without invoice number.

If it's London, then probably their Royal College Street depot

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Parcelforce+Worldwide/@51.5384739,-0.1353321,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x3e25d5ca7da48cb9!8m2!3d51.5384739!4d-0.1353321

If you give them a call and they have your parcel, they'll probably let you pay over the phone...although I have no experience of this since I work about 200m away from them.