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

Thanks. They do look good. Does the rim depth profile jump from 50.7mm to 77mm?

What hubs have you got on yours?

I know in real world terms it’s going to make little difference to me but I was thinking of 55mm or even 50 front and 60 rear.

I've got Bitex on both of mine. They do a 67 mm in disc brake version on sale as well as the 507. I'll see if I can find an extra discount code. I did order a pair of rims direct from them once as my guy didn't have stock and the price i was charged was what they were stating as without Vat maybe i just got lucky with that though
https://www.venn-cycling.com/en/product/venn-var-507-tcd-ss-road-disc-brake-bike-carbon-wheels/
https://www.venn-cycling.com/en/product/venn-var-67-tcd-se-filament-wound-tubeless-clincher-disc-brake-bike-carbon-wheels/
Here's my rim brake 77's hard to show the profile in the pic but they are fat and handle great in crosswinds

2 Attachments

Voucher code First5 should still be valid 5% off first order all larger discounts only appear applicable to full priced products

Anyone with a spare carbon tubeless disc rim ? for a front wheel, 20, 24h or 28 holes

I bought these for my Fairlight off snoops;

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000410662996.html?spm=a2g0o.store_pc_allProduct.8148356.1.89fc6d98sso7rD

unfortunately they don't work on my fairlight (on the seattube) due to my band-on derailleur. i could fit them to the lower bottle cage bosses but it would be too low for me

actually a real shame as they hold the bottle really well - anyone interested? will knock them down to £40 posted (aliexpress adds VAT so costs more than above + shipping times etc. etc. etc.)

The ee copies getting well reviewed on here have got me tempted. Whilst looking around i came across these zero gravity copies which are are widely available all over the place. They look decent but performance is meant to be pretty poor. so the ee's are still firmly on the top of my list. This guy is a bit like an excitable cbeebies presenter but I've subbed anyway as I've found his reviews useful especially regarding Chinese knock offs. He does flounce around a bit but he still covers all the important points and at least he's not spitefully offending anymore. He's worth checking out https://youtu.be/V1-CP4YRnuU

New cage fitted and it looks nice on the bike. I've managed to get the bottom jockey spinning quite nicely but the top one is still a bit rough. I've had a look at replacement bearings. I need 689-2RS full ceramic but I've only been able to find cheap hybrid aftermarket replacements on line which i assume will be the same as what's already in these. They are cheap enough to try just incase and I'll carry on looking for some quality full ceramic ones. I've also got a rainbow waxed yaban tiawanese chain I'm hoping to get on tomorrow. £54 will a discount code from NRG chains

3 Attachments

• MOV_0686.mp4
• 
• 

I've got those, and I rate them highly. They're not as good as Dura Ace, but I wasn't expecting them to be. They work well enough for me and look gorgeous. But if I was a proper racer I'd want something stiffer and stronger with more bite. E.g. Dura Ace. If I was a minted weight weenie racer I reckon I'd want £1100's worth of THM Fibula. Never even seen a pair. They've got to be the sine qua non. Dreamy!

I don't think the so-called ZTTO ones are fakes, I reckon Ted Ciamillo fell out with his contractor, who ended up stuck with some stock. The Lekki8 is such a fringe, low selling item that it would make no commercial sense for a faker to duplicate them. And they're not quite the same shape as the Lekki8. If you compare pics you can see that the angle of the upper arm bit (?) is slightly different. This seems to prevent them accommodating wide tyres. I reckon 30 or 31 mm is probably the limit. I think Ted probably specced this product before wide tyres became a thing, and then he decided not to sell them.

Also, the entensions which hold the padholders are longer than the ones on the Lekki8. They look the same length as the ones on Ciamillo's Brompton version.

So the long and the short of it is that they're a genuine Ciamillo product, but never released by him, and can't fit such wide tyres as the Lekki8.

Thanks for the pics. That Argon 18 looks great. I’ve always fancied one of that era.

I had the Knot 64s on my SystemSix and they were the limit of what I’d want to handle on a windy day.

Thanks for the code. I’ll post up in here with pics of what I choose to buy.

Bought the Avian Store ultra light cages for my upcoming build and they just arrived (a week ahead of the estimated date).

I have the Carbonworks version of these cages (plastic coated) and, to be honest, there’s quite a bit of a difference to the quality of finish in favour of the Carbonworks BUT the weight comes in almost the same (the two Carbonworks cages with bolts totaled 18g vs. the ones I just received that total 17.3g with bolts).

I’ll keep the torque fairly low, but initial impressions are promising.

Thanks for the tip upthread.

2 Attachments

Looks like it'll walk the walk, but will it torque the torque...?

Cracking pun…

New Yaban waxed chain on and the chain/ pulley combo does feel nice and smooth but i expect most of that is coming from the chain. Shifting if good in a stand but won't get it out on the road until Tuesday. £130 for the combo. I'm pretty sure the pulley was a waste of money and i should have just upgraded the jockeys in my standard cage and waxed the KMC sl gold chain that was on it already. That would have cost less than half what i spent on this lot.

1 Attachment

They are onto us! Hopefully customs will continue to be asleep at the wheel now that we are free of the EU rules.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/uk-faces-fine-eu-chinese-imports

I've also been really tempted by the EE copies so did a bit of digging. There was a thread on WW which got locked, but there's also an informative Paceline thread.

In amongst loads of hysterical hand-wringing about buying stolen goods, a couple of users bought them to compare, one has ridden them and reviewed them as "hot trash".

Look for posts by Krooj from this page onwards.

This same guy also contacted CC, who said these may be CCs own Taiwan-machined arms which failed QC and I presume were knocked together for back-door sales. CC were also unsurprisingly negative about the quality.

Still very interested to hear @BlackMath's verdict, after a (hopefully careful) test ride.

This same guy also contacted CC, who said these may be CCs own Taiwan-machined arms which failed QC and I presume were knocked together for back-door sales. CC were also unsurprisingly negative about the quality.

Thats interesting. I'd assumed real ee brakes were made in America. The £600 price tag is even more laughable if they are Taiwan sourced.

I'd assumed real ee brakes were made in America

I think they were 10 years ago, before EE Cycle Works discovered that they couldn't make money from such a product and partnered with the much larger Cane Creek to make and sell their designs.

Indeed, I thought this was one of the slightly embarrassing or revealing aspects of it for CC.

I'd assumed the same but it turns out they only say they're assembled in the USA. I'm sure they've sold a few pairs on people not noticing this distinction.

I saw a blog post on the cc website where they spent a few hundred words trying to avoid any explicit mention of China or Taiwan.

Yeah a quick google shows I've been fooled by assembled in America

It makes me wonder about the eewings Ti cranks, I'm guessing they are Taiwan made too. I can't find any mention on manufacturing location for them.

The forks and shocks are stated as being hand-built in North Carolina. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if they are simply assembled in NC with parts sourced from Taiwan or China.
If the crowns, stanchions, damper and lowers were all manufactured in USA then I'd expect the rrp to be significantly more than it is.

edit - this article shows that the fork parts are foreign made and its not that big a secret
https://bikerumor.com/hands-cane-creeks-new-helm-suspension-fork/

but the 'made in usa' tag is still a bit wank

I've been fooled by assembled in America

'merkins are weirdly parochial, which leads a lot of US brands to come up with a variety of weasel words accompanied by big stars and bars flag decals to make them think they're getting more local content than is the case.

More testing to be done then

1 Attachment

I wouldn't be surprised if they are simply assembled in NC with parts sourced from Taiwan or China

I know for a fact that glasses frames that say ‘made in Italy’ are injection moulded in Shenzhen and the ‘making’ refers to the lenses being added in Italy.

I looked into this many moons ago and, then, it was all about the nomenclature of the imported good/component part vs the sold good.

The sunglasses are made in Italy if prior to their making, the manufacturer imported frames and lenses – neither of which individually constitute sunglasses.

This was illustrated with the printed T-shirt analogy. If the T-shirt is made in China and printed in Italy, it’s still a T-shirt made in China – as it arrived as a T-shirt and is sold as a T-shirt, regardless of the print. But if a roll of cotton arrives from China…blah blah blah.

It comes down to semantics and individually/societally held definitions of ‘making’ vs a Gov’s definition. It may have all changed since I looked into it, so feel free to ignore this unqualified internet content.

I wouldn’t be on this forum if I didn’t like unqualified internet content.

I know for a fact that glasses frames that say ‘made in Italy’ are injection moulded in Shenzhen and the ‘making’ refers to the lenses being added in Italy.

Exactly. A good friend works for a very large designer sunglasses company. They make glasses for huge brands with > 300 quid price tags. All from the same place and then finished in more glamorous locations. She gets cost price glasses for about 20 quid a pair.