Gravel wheelset advice - R 20 - 30k budget

[Ant in the NL]

On 7/9/2024 at 4:09 PM, nick_the_wheelbuilder said:

There are plenty of options, both off-the-shelf and custom.

22-26mm inner width rims are fine for most gravel bikes.

There are a few options you can look through on my website:

Very premium: https://wheelbuilder.co.za/product/south-industries-gx-hope-pro5/

Very light: https://wheelbuilder.co.za/product/nextie-crx-disc-road/ (same price but with with the Nextie GX gravel rims)

Shout if you'd like to explore these or other options.

Some pics for inspiration.

 

Sjoe 😅 

[michaelbiker]

I went cheap and bought a set of Lun (Winspace) Grapid wheels from China (all in paid R16k). They are 38mm deep and 24mm wide. For the equivalent Zipps I could have gotten 2x Luns. I couldn’t be happier. I run 44mm 180tpi tires on them and they are not only light (1400g) but seem really, really sturdy.  Comfort wise, I can’t really tell but I think tire size plays more of a factor here than the rim profile. 

The hubs seem well made and use larger steel bearings as opposed to smaller stainless steel ones that the competition often specs their wheels with but you can upgrade to ceramic if you wish on the lun site. I don’t see the point of ceramic though. Their shipping is $100 a set with FedEx. Hell even if the hubs died, it would be cheaper overall to rebuild them onto a set of DTs. 

I have done approx 2000km so far on some pretty terrible roads / singletrack and they are still looking and feeling brand new. Oh and my wife has a set too, so that’s double the anecdote. 

[Shebeen]

11 hours ago, michaelbiker said:

I went cheap ...... (all in paid R16k).

it's all relative!!!