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Does it? You get more discount on the rims, but no discount on hubs, spokes, nipples and labour. Not to mention they come fully laced up in the same time as the rims.
I think it makes sense only if you already have hubs or buying them as replacement/upgrade rims on wheels you own
giofox-
By my really quick (and probably flawed) calculation 30% of the cost of 2 x WR40 rims is actually more than 15% of the cost of 2 x WR40 laced up to the bites hubs I was going for. I.e. the saving of just rims is actually slightly more. That is partly because I was going for cheap hubs (so the rims account for more than half of the full wheelset).
The above doesn't take into account the cheap labour etc. But I was very on the fence re full wheels vs rims anyway, as I have another wheel set that I could take some nice hubs from.
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I think it depends a little on the hub, I was working out the cost of getting just a wr38 rim (my current order) vs. a complete rear wheel (wr38 rims with Hope RS4 hub: the same as order no.9) and it seems to be not that much of a difference.
The hub is currently £162 on SJS, I priced up spokes the same as on light bicycle's web page, plus labour at £60 (roughly what my local wheel builder charges). Didn't factor in nipples but that would be probably offset by the fact that the share of the overall postage cost would be slightly less.
Perhaps given that LB have to source Hope hubs from the UK you're paying slightly more?
Regardless I think the main benefit of ordering wheels over rims in this case is convenience.
urbs
SoYaap
Thanks for doing all this. Given it makes more sense cost wise, I've updated the spreadsheet to change my order from a wheelset to a pair of rims.