I have seen em in real life. My bud got a set, sounds like the bearing in the rear hub is bad 3rd ride... Might be bad luck or something. They look like every other Chinese wheel I have seen... Still good deal though for the "latest" shape wheels.
Just info... Don't give a shit...

Jeff

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You can't fix stupid ..

Why would you say "we don't know this wheel builder" unless you were associated with Tokyowheel? "We" implies affiliation. Advertorial once shame on you... advertorial twice in the same thread scolding you for it....fuck you. This company will NEVER learn from their mistakes. They will continue to be disingenuous, blow smoke, and make a mediocre product at best. You want our trust, be honest from the get go. As for me, I will NEVER buy your product, I don't have the time to deal with this bullshit company mentality. The smoke and mirrors crap might fly elsewhere, but here no way. You've been called out by this crowd.. chalk up the loss and move on. The more you open your mouth the more you insert your foot Personally I like my crow served cold, you are asking for yours hot... a flaming carcass of crow you will eat, on a platter made of shame. ... sorry I'm watching the Bruins/Habs playoffs and I'm a little fired up. Cheers, good luck with your bankruptcy.

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"4 wheels move the body, 2 wheels move the soul"

Let me guess, the wheel builder referenced in the other forum works for Tokyowheel and will only have glowing reviews? You will never believe me but I want to know that I have not been duped. Can I trust any of the "wheel builder's" impressions or data? I hope that I can but I will never know with 100 % certainty. How foolish will I feel if this wheel builder surmises these to be re-branded crap? Immensely but you won't believe me.. By posting my very first reply I was actually trying to help Tokyowheel gain traction in the market but seems I may be contributing to damaging the brand. Visit the other forum or visit my youtube channel and look at the data. I see variations and the graphs demonstrate this but I just didn't know if this was significant or seen in other manufacturers. I tried to measure my ZIPP 202 Firecrest but the Firecrest shape was difficult to measure with my micrometer. The replicates had a tremendous amount of variation so I did not post the data. I know what you are thinking. This bloke works for them. No I don't, I am just pack fodder who is budget conscience. You guys may be right but my iphone is from China and I bet my Samsung tablet is too. Oh no, my computer is a DELL and I live 15 miles south of the corporate headquarters. What do you bet it is from China? Not everything from China is crap......well the iphone is up for debate. I am 2 pints in and find this entertaining so flame away.

Bruins up 3 to 1, nice. Not much of a hockey fan growing up in TX until the Stars relocated. I am just north of San Antone so hoping the Spurs are legit this time around, Duncan is almost done but sure liked his game over the years. Enjoyyour game.

Oh and when I said "we don't know this wheel builder" I do apologize for my lack of command for the English language; I am Texan after all and 50% redneck and 50% hillbilly. I was trying to convey "we" as those who care to know or those who have bought Tokyowheels or those who don't give a flying crap. OK, game 3 for the Spurs -vs- Portland is 9:30 Central and now I'm 3 pints in; better stop now I reckon if I want to see the entire game and stop messing around on this forum.

Most of your post doesn't make a whole lot of sense except for the last sentence.

The thread that you reference has a few things in common with this thread:

a) new poster to the forum uses their first post to talk about how great Tokyowheels are
b) all sorts of people accuse them of shilling
c) James Ferrer chimes in with the exact same posts (more or less, didn't compare them word for word) that are in this thread
d) people ask him very specific questions about how his wheels are different from, say, Farsports wheels which are half the cost and he talks about no customs fees, money back guarantee, crash replacement, etc.

I honestly believe that:

a) this post and the original post in the thread you reference: http://forums.roadbikereview.com/...rchase-316433-3.html are shill posts / guerrilla marketing by Tokyowheels
b) these wheels are made in China and retail from the factory for half the cost. They are re-badged and then sold for twice the price.

There's nothing wrong with rebadging wheels and selling them, there are tons of companies doing just that. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with these wheels (or Farsport wheels) it's the disingenuous marketing that turns me off.

X's- million. Thank ou for typing all that so I wouldn't have to on my tablet. What a joke. A terrible, obvious and not very funny joke.

Hi Guys,

This is my first post on this forum - so I guess I am open to be flamed. The reason I have joined is a couple of the posts mention a thread I have participated in on the road bike review forum.

The threads are located here:

http://forums.roadbikereview.com/wheels-tires/tokyo-wheel-epic-60-carbon-clincher-wheelset-recent-purchase-316433.html


and here


http://forums.roadbikereview.com/wheels-tires/tokyowheel-experience-323173.html


I am one of the original skeptics who along with Bob Dopolina identified the similarities between the Tokyo wheels and the Farsports ones and openly confronted him about those similarities. I was also the one who challenged him to send me a set of rims for my wheel builder to build up and test.


I can assure you that I have no association whatsoever with James Ferrer or Tokyowheels and neither does my wheel builder. I am now also working on a bicycle-related project with a very well known and highly regarded industry expert that could become very high profile and would not risk sullying that project with anything untoward for what is basically just a small and currently little known brand of wheels.


Whilst I am new here, I had been a member of the RBR forum for some time and only found the TW threads as I was looking to purchase two pairs of wheels for a custom Sarto frame that I am having made. I have been researching multiple brands amongst which TW was just one.


I have since had contact with James Ferrer who I believe to be genuinely passionate about his product, however the quality of it has yet to be proven to most of us.


I have purchased the rims for testing and have committed to purchasing a set of wheels if my wheel builder ok's them. I understand that once my wheel builder has finished testing them, those wheels may be made available to other wheel builders/testers elsewhere for evaluation. I have suggested to James Ferrer that if this is the case, in the interests of transparency and peace of mind he should find a willing wheel builder who is known and respected on the forums to contrast the results of my own wheel builder or failing that one of the known internet blogs that test and evaluate product.


Whilst because of the nature of forums it is difficult to convince people of ones honesty, lack of association or personal agenda's when you say anything positive or negative about a company, brand or product, those who have taken the trouble to read these threads will realise that to date I have said nothing positive about Tokyowheels and until such a time as they are tested by the wheel builder I trust, will have nothing to say. I remain for now a skeptical possible purchaser.


The only positives I can say are that a) James Ferrer stepped up to the plate when challenged by me on the RBR forum and b) on the face of it provides some pretty solid guarantees if you don't like or have a problem with the product.


I'd like to know if there is anybody who has taken up the 110% money back guarantee because they didn't like the wheels. If so why they were returned and if they received the 110% back.

Just to update you Mark 'the wheel whisperer'™ Stemmy (lol) has now received the wheels and rims. He is a bit busy with work at the moment but will get around to checking, testing and reviewing over the coming days.


He will also post how he is going to carry out his evaluation.

I like your effort here. I'll point out a design flaw in this review as an experiment though. It is highly unlikely that your inspector will be receiving a random sample of product. Likely it will have obtained additional QC. This would mean that this sample set represents the best quality offered by Tokyo wheel. I see it often with our component suppliers. First articles are often higher quality than production run samples. We always have higher tier inspection of first purchase quantities after part approval for this reason.

This is of course a possibility. But there is only so much you can do to a product to make it better than it is. If the rims are of poor quality, good quality well-tensioned spokes will only go so far. Hubs are hubs etc. I haven't checked, but as I understand it, these are his standard level clinchers that represent the bulk of his sales.

These have been sent in the normal amount of time it takes to send his wheels for normal orders. The other option would have been for me to purchase the wheels and then get them tested, but if they turned out to be poor I would be sitting on a $1000 mistake!

For now, this is the best I can do and it will at least answer some questions.

Mark Stemmy who will be carrying out the test on these wheels has just posted this on the RBR forum:

Hi RBR Forum,

This is Mark Stemmy from Optimized Cycling Solutions. For those that have not already been following this thread, I am a wheel builder, custom bike dealer and industry consultant located in Northern California. I’ve been asked by James Ferrer at Tokyo Wheels to evaluate and review a set of their wheels. Brands I have built and/or collaborated with in the past are ENVE, HED, Stan’s, Mavic for rims and Alchemy, White Industries, Chris King, Stealth and Campagnolo for hubs, among others.
I am very particular about the products I support and having spent 15 years in the silicon manufacturing industry I am very data and process driven. This will be a multi phase review including an initial inspection and evaluation, testing a set myself in the field (I am 6’4” and 235lbs currently), more extensive evaluation including wind tunnel testing against other brands, and a final report with my recommendation.

The current process will be the initial evaluation which will include, but not be limited to:

• Spoke tension for each spoke
• Average spoke tension for each side, on both wheels, expressed in kgf (kilograms of force)
• Standard deviation (variations in total spoke tension, expressed in kgf)
• Lateral runout (true)
• Vertical runout (round)
• Rim and hub dimensions
• Wheel weight
• Photos of the wheels, hubs, packaging and included accessories
• Detailed photos of the inside of the rim at the spoke interface
• Measurement of relative hub rotational friction with the QR closed, using proprietary OCS methodology
• Final report rolling up both the hard data along with anecdotal observations

I am working on multiple projects right now so it will likely be a week before I am able to complete the report. I will share a link to the report once it is complete.

I will also be building a set of wheels for Mambo, the rims for which have arrived, so I will be able to do a separate assessment of that process, as well as getting actual rim weight, as opposed to complete wheel weight.

Regards,
Mark

I have replied as follows:

"Wind tunnel comparison against other brands? Where did that one come from? Took me by surprise!

Mark and James, I would recommend that for forum members to have peace of mind, an independent third party be involved in the test and comparison and collate the results. Some forum members suspect that there may be an underhand collaboration involved and this would go some way to allaying their fears. To date wind tunnel data I have seen, has been prepared by the wheel brand carrying out the testing on their own wheels - I always suspect that the results are skewed in favour of the brand.

I recently saw a post on one of the forums somewhere where somebody offered to do independent wind tunnel testing of Flo wheels if forum members stumped in to help with costs (this would actually be a good brand to compare against as they are a similar spec and price bracket. I considered Flo, but they didn't do tubular and I felt they were too heavy for the type of riding I do anyway). I don't know what others think but I would like to see a comparison with what I consider to be the benchmark - ENVE 3.4's. For me it would be interesting to see just how wide the performance gap is between a $3,000.00 wheel and a $1,000.00 'reliably' Chinese manufactured wheel.

I will post this on the other TW related threads.

Just my thoughts...."

Hi All,

Here is a review of my 2 sets of Tokyowheels, hope my insight might help others gain more info about the wheels.

https://vimeo.com/97573706

For full disclosure I am associated with Tokyowheels, but was not when I made purchase of my first pair.

Yawn. BORING! Sounds like every other wheel review on every other site on the internet. Sorry to take the piss but if it smells funny and sounds repetitive it's probably marketing.

I wish people would quit using the following in standard wheel reviews:
-Feels stiff
-Spins up really quick
-Rides smooth
-and last but not least... Aerodynamic

Hi Guys,

The promised review of the wheels is posted on Mark's website here:

REVIEW: Tokyowheel Epic 38/50 wheelset Optimitized Cycling Solutions - 530-363-2697

If you have any questions, post them here and I will pass them on to him for a reply.

Coming out of the woodworks after years of lurking, must be that good!

reminds me of (the now non existent?) Karbon Speed. Link below for comparison

http://karbonspeed.com/aero-wheel-store.html#!/~/category/id=5511024&offset=0&sort=normal

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Founder: BestBikeSplit
Amazonian

Please tell me you are joking.

The "main players" produce wind tunnel data that you don't do. Yet you think that producing a plot of manufacturing tolerance (that is essentially what you have - with a massive sample size of 1), is more valuable than aero data.

James:

I think that having unbiased testing is a good step toward your marketing, but will not in and of itself improve your product's reputation. Chances are, it's not going to be at the top of list in any measurement, but right in the middle of the rest of the mid-market offerings. All that shows is that your product is as good as the rest. What is going to drive sales is 2 things: User Reviews and Price. If your product is as good as anything else, and priced well - it'll sell like hotcakes (hi, Flo), and if people on here are saying that they're pretty good - they'll sell.

Regarding demo days, as you said earlier in your post: "It would have been much more valuable to the community to have a review of the wheels after they had been ridden in a variety of conditions, for an extended period of time. The most significant evaluation of the wheels is, of course, do you enjoy riding them" No one is going to be able to come to that conclusion riding them around a parking lot or short loop at a demo day. You need to get some wheels in the hands of athletes, and I can't say this enough but they cannot be associated with Tokyowheel. Sure, it's a significant up front expense, but you'll get a far better return then popping around to various cities to see if someone shows up.

Sean

As an above average weekend amateur rider (who does the occasional tri / duathlon / fondo), I've been looking to go beyond a basic set of alloy rims but I can't really justify the spend on a pair of Zipp or Enve. I'm also skeptical about buying a set of rims off eBay because you can never really tell what you're getting. Hence TW has been an attractive option for me as it seems more legitimate.

This forum thread (and other Google searches for TW) have been helpful in some ways but has brought to light, two things:

1) I'm not looking for top performance. Getting 80-90% of the perf of a pair of Zipp for significant cost savings is well worth it to me (far better than what I have now!). However, what has never really been spoken of is how safe these wheels really are. Mark Stemmy's review is helpful in evaluating the build quality (the pull through seems a bit of a concern to me... anyone else?) but does not really go into what the rims will look like bombing down a hill at 70km/h. Nor does it tell me what the rim will look like going over a few potholes....

2) There's a lot of skeptics and flaming about TW and I can appreciate where and how it comes about. The concept of a TW is well placed especially as carbon tech becomes more and more of a commodity but the execution and messaging has caused a lot of doubt. For example: the 3 part vision, described as a "Master Plan" sounds sinister. I know it's not meant to be but this does have negative connotations. The vision is also a bit vague when it doesn't need to be. 1) Bring US-built carbon wheels into the Japanese market. 2) Build industry relationships and leverage the capital created to build branded wheels. 3) Invest further into R&D to become best of breed (or whatever step 3 is). Point being, the message is long-winded, cloudy and leaves a lot of questions over the firm's legitimacy. In the marketing space, random links to unqualified Youtube videos doesn't cut through the skepticism. To build the brand, you need to legitimise yourself... the OCS review was actually the first time this has happened but it needs to go further... i.e. go to cycling / tri events (in Europe and North America) to demo the product, send demo units to Bicycling mag, etc. If you can't fund such an effort, ship a few wheels over and partner with someone in that area who can sell the message for you.

Also, it might help deflect the naysayers by being clear on who your target customer is. Are you creating a viable option to Zipp? Unlikely especially without certification. So make that clear but if desired, make it a vision to become that viable competitor.

An internet-only business can be incredibly difficult to start if it relies on building a brand which this product category requires so I commend your efforts. But I'd hope for more "official" reviews and news about the product rather than hearing it form forums, Youtube, etc.

I hope you don't take any offense from my comments as I believe the business concept has real potential and could disrupt the pricey rims market (wish I had thought about it / had access to the manufacturers!). The product will continue to improve over time but what is really needed is more legitimacy of the brand, its safety, performance and quality... no it doesn't need to appear in the Tour but does need to be reviewed by recognised, impartial, qualified 3rd parties.

Unfortunately, I'm still on the fence.