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

^this. I've managed to glaze my swissstop green pads over under heavy braking on alu rims. Made the most almightly squeels until I filed off the offended glazed bits

No problem going 20mm, just use enough spokes. Carbon clinchers are suspect unless the braking surface is a high temp resin. IMHO

can anyone point me in the direction of a 20mm clincher rim set with decent braking surfaces? I've done a few searches, but on the whole the websites don't say much about braking surfaces.

You mean with alu, or the basalt surface (or whatever they call it)?

IIRC pretty much all the farsport ones have it.

the high temp resin / basalt ones.
will check out the farsports ones, thanks.

edit: is** farsports** the same as alibaba?

farsports website (no 20mm clinchers)
farsports.alibaba website (with 20mm clinchers)

gaz, alibaba is a website uniting different vendors, not a company.

sorry if you knew that, but just wanted to clarify as last night, when we were discussing alibaba website, fox thought I was being racist about somebody from middle east....

Didn't know that.
So... Does anyone know if these have high temp resin / basalt braking surfaces? It says farsports all over the jpeg, but it seems odd that the same rim doesn't appear on the actual farsports site.

it seems odd that the same rim doesn't appear on the actual farsports site.

I wouldn't worry about that, many companies update their AliExpress/Alibaba listings before their own websites, because they do more trade through Ali and because the site is designed to make it easy to update listings

Worth checking hongfu-bikes.en.alibaba.com

They also have the same brake surface.

Thanks both

I'm going to be buying a wheelset from Farsports in the next week or so - if anyone wants to join me to reduce shipping costs let me know.

SF, have you retired your rear wheel because of what happened to the front? Or has something similar happened to the back too?

The rear is OK. Brake surface a bit worn. Retired because I want matching wheels. I've ordered the cheapest rear hub I could find, and am rebuilding the rim into a bling turbo trainer wheel.

Anyone ever had dealings with Factory Five in Shanghai? Their frames look hot and they come in little peoples size.

www.wearefactoryfive.com

Anyone ever had dealings with Factory Five in Shanghai? Their frames look hot and they come in little peoples size.

www.wearefactoryfive.com

I've heard those frames come from same manufacturer than colossi/superb. Been thinking of getting that F5100, but haven't decided yet (also poor student, no extra money atm).

I was reading about taxation of imported bits and bobs when I stumbled across this.

Apparently the EU has enforced heavy taxation on bicycles imported from China as bikes from there were deemed to be much too below our local market prices. A whopping 48.5% !!!!!

Up until recently the exporters managed to sidestep this by routing their shipments through indonesia, tunisia, malaysia and other such countries. But the EU people have now put a stop to that.

I just thought this was massively surprising and a bit shocking, it is OK for commodity traders and bankers to enjoy a free for all but the notion of a free market is not compatible with the humble bicycle.

Some chinese stuff already seems so cheap (particularly BSO's) it would be interesting to see how much cheaper they could be without this outrageous tax. Perhaps it could allow better quality bikes to be sold at more reasonable prices. Decent Entry/Enthusiast level brand name OTP's have gotten crazy expensive over the past couple years. I think it would be better to have laws banning "disposable" BSO's and encouraging quality bikes that can be upgraded and repaired.

Did you know that Laptops, Games Consoles and Camera's are duty free? What is this madness.

Anyone ever had dealings with Factory Five in Shanghai? Their frames look hot and they come in little peoples size.

www.wearefactoryfive.com

I think TM has had some dealings with them for the restrap frame they did.

Why just bicycles then? Seems pretty focused. What does that mean for retailers who import chinese components and rebrand them?

PZ Racing carbon crankset
Gigantex full carbon CNC crankset
Gigantex full carbon crankset

Has anyone every tried these? They seem ridiculously cheap. Opinions?

Planet-X picked them up as end-of-line dumped stock on their latest shopping trip to Taichung. They were never worth the rrp, and even at PX prices aren't really any better than similarly priced metal cranks. I'd take an FC-5700 over any of them.

My Chinese wheels were brilliant until they started shearing nipples. Very annoying.

They're not FUBAR'd, they'll just need re-building with brass nips.

Did you know that Laptops, Games Consoles and Camera's are duty free? What is this madness.

Cameras aren't, if they were everyone would buy from abroad, so I dunno where you read that!

My Chinese wheels were brilliant until they started shearing nipples. Very annoying.

They're not FUBAR'd, they'll just need re-building with brass nips.

Oh shit!

I was going to ask you for a link to them - they looked pretty.

This is worth reading. Nothing wrong with the hubs or rims on most wheels, just the build quality and nipples seem to be an issue...

http://paolocoppo.drupalgardens.com/content/chinese-carbon-clinchers-report-rebuild

I have a set of Mavic Ksyrum wheels on my road bike at the moment but I'd like to upgrade to something carbon and a little deeper rimmed.

Are there any issues with rebuilding my Mavic hubs on to a set of 40-50mm clinchers rims from Alibaba?

is the effort of removing hubs from said wheels worth it would be my initial question - doesn't seem much more epensive to buy a set of novatechs / (inert mdcc_tester's choice here), and then you have a set of winter wheels as well

As in ones with hubs/spokes like these?

http://brimages.bikeboardmedia.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/2011-mavic-ksyrium-sl-4.jpg

I doubt rims will be an issue but you'll need the corresponding straight pull spokes in whatever new length you need. Are they proprietary or can you use any centre-pull spokes?

I'd guess the cost of getting spokes that fit would eat up any saving vs using novatecs / similar. Plus making them less future-proof if anything breaks.