Farrina wrote:I am intending to reuse my existing hubs 7900 DA and being a traditionalist (as well as 13 stone) I need a 36 hole rear 32 hole front rim. Spokes will be DT DB stainless. My riding used to be described as fast audax i.e. no additional loading apart from me ! Tyre size used is currently 23c (but would like the option to go to 25c).
I am not interested in anything carbon and I value reliability over ultimate lightness. I wonder if anyone could recommend a pair of rims.
You sound like a candidate for the
Exal XR2, available for a mere
£18 from Spa Cycles despite being made in good old Belgium. This is a straightforward pinned rim with double eyelets, as they’re called, and a machined brake surface. It’s available in silver or black and 32 or 36 holes, and Exal recommends its use with 18–28 mm tyres. Besides, I think it looks pretty wonderful, with its shallow and squared-off profile. It certainly suits my steel frame.
I recently got a silver, 32-hole XR2. I measured it as follows:
- Weight: 500.7 g on a calibrated balance (only 1% more than Exal’s claim of 495 g; Spa claims 485 g)
- Outer width, small variations but average of 20.0 mm
- Inner width, fractionally over 13.4 mm everywhere I measured
- Wall thickness just below the bead hook, with little variation around the rim and between left and right walls: 1.6 mm. There is a wear-indicating groove just over 0.5 mm tall that reduces the thickness along its track, of course. Wall thickness is a bit more than this 1.6 mm at the root
- Height of machined portion of brake track: 8 mm. That’s plenty if you position your pads carefully and perhaps adjust the height of the short-arm pad halfway through the pad life, if using short-reach, dual-pivot callipers. But if the brake pad creeps beyond the machined part, whether above or below, no great harm is done.
These measurements have an old-fashioned ring to them but they work very well in my experience.
The difficulty of mounting tyres on this rim has been exaggerated. It is harder than other rims I’ve tried, but I’ve always managed in a couple of minutes even by the roadside, when using fast, lightweight tyres. I think a tyre that is harder to mount on a rim is also harder to blow off, since it won’t readily become non-concentric with the rim and thereby allow the bead to pop over the hook at the looser side. I think Brucey doubted this when I mentioned it once, but I can’t remember why.
There is a new Mavic Open Pro coming down the pipe, but it will probably only be available after the summer. Besides, it’s a very different rim from the old Open Pro, and expensive too.
