Road Wheels & Road Wheel Recommendations?

I leave an evening per wheel because if I rush I will mess it up. That's for lacing and truing. I'm a cackhanded amateur.

Buy a spoke tool if you don't have one and borrow a stand.

Truing uses quite a lot of beer but don't drink in charge of the spoke calc.....

After years of using Michelin latex tubes no problems I seem to have hit a terrible batch of valve stem failing bastards. £20 of tubes dead in a day :(

It does seem to be a batch thing, I had a few go in rapid succession but then found a good pair and rode all season on them.

Surely you can get refunds.

Ain't Nobody Got Time For That - YouTube

You have got to be kidding me. I've just stocked up.

Happen with all brand, though Specialized seemed to be the worse base on nothing but mere observation.

gave up on Spesh inner tubes ages ago

I'm still using them just fine. You lot are just clumsy.

tell me again the benefits of latex inner tubes (besides weight)

Puncture resistance and rolling resistance improvement.

I think they suffer from the constant pump head on/offs.

Might switch to a clip on head rather than the Silca push on/off which is a bit rough on them

A very interesting read by Paul Lew from Reynolds about wheels

http://www.reynoldscycling.com/reynolds/news/Understanding-Wheel-Dynamics-Wheel-Stiffness

The hub of the wheel is its central point, or anchor. It determines forty percent of a wheel's stiffness and compliance

My BS detector kicked off at this in the first paragraph after the intro. Forty percent of what? Are hubless wheels only ever going to be 60% as stiff as ones with hubs?

And this:

a stiff spoke (one that resists bending) decreases side-to-side deflection and at the same time decreases vertical deflection, whereas a flexible spoke (one that is easily bent) decreases side-to-side deflection and increases vertical deflection.

Is utter bullshit too, as long as we're considering spokes which always have at least some tension in them under all service conditions. For a spoke's bending stiffness to be in play, at least a part of the spoke's cross section has to be in compression, and then we're talking about either a wire spoked wheel which has already failed or a solid wheel like a HED3 or Arospok.

Paul Lew is obviously a clever bloke, but either he knows nothing about wheels or he has dumbed the article down so far for a lay audience that it has become meaningless drivel in the process.

can't say much about the hub part but I too was very confused on the whole spoke section, his affirmations were opposite what common knowledge dictates.

A very interesting read by Paul Lew from Reynolds about wheels

http://www.reynoldscycling.com/reynolds/news/Understanding-Wheel-Dynamics-Wheel-Stiffness

Paul Lew is obviously a clever bloke, but either he knows nothing about wheels or he has dumbed the article down so far for a lay audience that it has become meaningless drivel in the process.

Probably the second... although... he is a composite man... were Lew wheels actually assembled by Lew or he was the mind behind the use of composite in the rims only?

Paging andyp.

Paul Lew was from aerodynamics and materials with a military background (drones etc.) I think.

All this latex tubes chat has got me wondering. If you don't pump them and they go flat, will anything bad happen to them or should you be keeping them off the floor like tubs?

Maybe if you have sealant in there.

All this latex tubes chat has got me wondering. If you don't pump them and they go flat, will anything bad happen to them or should you be keeping them off the floor like tubs?

They'll be fine. Its the tyres that may suffer over time if the bikes resting on them.

Maybe if you have sealant in there.

Worth noting that latex inners dont like ammonia. So I would'nt use standard sealant in them. Apparantly cafe latte is latex friendly. I plan to order some of their Expresso as a roadside fix for my tubs.

My latex inner tubes tubs go down, the sealant does stop butyl from gradual pressure loss, or at least slows it down significantly.

Just doing some random browsing and came across these Boyd Altamont alu clinchers:

$650USD
Rim depth - 30mm
Rim width - 24mm
Internal Rim Width - 18.3mm
Rim weight - 475g
http://www.boydcycling.com/products/altamont-alloy-clincher.html

I guess the downsides are postage and customs risk. Plus they're a similar or slightly higher cost than archetype's.

Flo 30s do much the same for $500

Good point. I remember looking at those a while back.