Wheelbuilding / Wheel Building / Wheel build help

These will be a second set of wheels (my every days are XR31’s to DA 9000 road hubs) and for dry miles only. I’d normally go for Hope RS4, but as these won’t be used all the time and never in bad weather, I’m thinking of saving some money and going for something like Bitex. Any first hand experience of these or recommendations for something at a similar price point?

Novatec would be the obvious alternative, but my experiences of Bitex have been positive to date. Like the Novatec hubs they just tend to work, but the bearings fitted as standard can be a bit short-lived. The Bitex RAR9/RAF10 is the classis budget weight-weeny combo, but unless you really want to save the grams I recommend going for a RAR12 front hub instead. The bearings on the RAF10 really are tiny, whereas the RAF12 uses 6900 bearings. You could also go for the slightly heavier RAR12 rear, which has two of its bearings in a larger size than the RAR9, but I've found the RAR9 pretty durable.

Secondly is a disc version of the same rim that will be built onto a fixed hub. Again 24h. The only slight complication is that I’ll run this rear with the front discussed above, so in a dream world this fixed hub would be from the same manufacturer and look similar to the front too.

I've got one wheelset with Light Bicycle rims using BX312F and BX312R hubs on my Lynskey and I really like them. They're for straight pull spokes though. The BX106F/R hubs would look closer to the RAF/RAR rims brake hubs, assuming you're using centrelock discs.