who is a good custom wheel builder (other than CO Cycle and wheelbuilder.com)? Anyone use prowheelbuilder.com? how are they? who else would you recommend?
thanks
BTW the prowheelbuilder site is pretty cool
I think wheelbuilder is your best bet. Rich probably has more wheels and parts in stock at any given time than prowheelbuilder goes through in a year. That said, they are still small enough that you get good personal service and can get any questions you need answered very quickly. Rich was an engineer prior to starting the company and the attention to detail is obvious in his product.
I have never used either wheelbuilder.com or prowheelbuilder.com, but i purchased my tri bike from the shop that runs prowheelbuilder.com and i know they are a great group of people. Its a local company here in Las Vegas and they are kind of in the early stages of getting the wheel building business going…that is my understanding. They have had a local bike shop here for about 13 years.
i am an expert wheelbuilder, what do you want built?
The “prowheelbuilder” site is a total rip-off of www.wheelbuilder.com The guy couldn’t even come up with an original name, so he decided to piggyback on Rich Sawiris’ proven track record (pun intended). Rich is a professional engineer and has the equipment you’d expect a PE to be using in their designated field of expertise. Give them a call, you’ll be well taken care of.
I’m glad that someone has had a good experience there because neither I, or anyone I know has had much luck with the shop that runs prowheelbuilder.com.
I finally stopped going there. I had a wheel in for truing, (it was only slightly out) and they needed 5 days to get to it. I politely said “no thanks, I’m going to have to take it elsewhere as I need it sooner than that.” The reply I got from the girl working there was “either they have no business because they suck or you don’t care about your bike!”
Business must be earned with service, product, and pricing. I won’t go somewhere just because they put “Pro” in their name.
high marks to Rich at wheelbuilders.com, also.
Rich Sawiris here from www.wheelbuilder.com.
Yes it’s unfortunate that ProWb selected a name so close to ours, but that’s the way it goes on the Net. What we offer at wheelbuilder.com is a proven track record with the highest performing, most reliable handbuilt wheels available anywhere. Our wheels won the Tour of California, Tour of Georgia, and Tour de France under Floyd Landis; they have been under Kristin Armstrong for National and World TT titles; are currently ridden by World Champion Sarah Hammer; are the choice of many track superstars from six Olympic teams including Jamie Staff of the UK and Travis Smith of Canada. We do not build or repair bicycles at wheelbuilder, instead we choose to focus only on building bicycle wheels. Very few shops can stock 80-100 PowerTap hubs, 400 Zipp rims, over 70,000 spokes, etc. at all times.
In addition to building wheels, we design hub and axle components as well as test carbon composite rims for wheel manufacturers. As mentioned earlier in this thread I am a Professional Engineer with an extensive background in Mechanical Engineering. I spent 11 years in Automotive R&D learning best engineering practices for design and testing. I apply this expertise in mechanical structures to a unique process that selects the most appropriate components and yields higher performing, more uniform, and the most reliable wheels.
If you’re in the market for wheels, contact us and we’ll work with you to help you achieve whatever your goals are for the New Year. Happy Holidays!
-Rich Sawiris
www.wheelbuilder.com
(626) 442-4444
I would start by going to you lbs. Tell them what you are looking for and accept any feedback that they offer. Most likely they will have a wheelbuilder in house that is very capable and can offer a ton of advice and options. We build many custom wheels with unlimited options on rims, hubs, spokes, nipples, lacing etc. Plus you can always bring them back in and they will probably work on them for free.
Why do you specifically *not *want wheelbuilder.com? It’s your prerogative, sure - but Rich has a solid reputation for building top quality wheels and working with triathletes for various oddities like disc covers and the like (he built the cover that Jonnyo rode @ IMC last year).
Dave Thomas (no, not the Wendy’s guy) of Speed Dream also has a top notch reputation.
I’d say you can’t go wrong with either.
I just looked at the wheelbuilder website. My only complaint would be with the selection of hubs. Maybe they have other choices, but none of the hubs listed is low cost. Sure the ones available are great, but surely DA or even Ultegra is a reasonable hub to have available.
Styrrell
My guess would be that most people wanting a custom wheel built are looking for something at least a little bit exotic - but I bet if you contact Rich he can hook you up with whatever you want.
I figured he could. I was mostly curious because I build my own wheels and have for years. When I started you pretty much had to go to a bike shop and have them build wheels. No prebuilt wheels existed.
Then Mavic (primarily) popularized prebuilt wheels and, imho, the prices got out of line. I just built a pair of all purpose clincher wheels. Medium depth rims, WS aero spokes, ultegra hubs. Cheapest net prices on new parts I could find. Approx $200. I don’t think I could find anything prebuilt for the style, weight, performance for less than twice that.
Styrrell
www.ergottwheels.com has a very good reputation.
I don’t think I could find anything prebuilt for the style, weight, performance for less than twice that.
The truth!
Record or DA hubs laced to Niobium rims with 17g spokes weighs about 1500g and costs around $400.
Similar Mavic prebuilts are about twice that, and they don’t ride as nicely.
Shop around, build them yourself and you can cut a chunk off of the $400.
Styrrell
For whatever it is worth I had a great experience with prowheelbuilder. They were the tech support for Silverman. Pre-riding the course, I had a bearing go on an older Zipp hub. I took it to their shop and they dropped everything to fix it. They were knowledgeable, friendly and had some pretty cool custom tools they’d fabricated.
On race day I came out of the water and had a tubular blow after hitting something sharp on the concrete boat-ramp out of Lake Mead. While I was tearing my over-glued (my fault) wheel off, one of their guys ran up with a spare wheel. I took it rather than riding the entire course on an unglued spare. He helped me hand place the wheel in the horizontal drop outs so the wheel wouldn’t rub against the cut-out (P2C- it still pulled loose twice on some steep hills they have at the end of that course-but that had nothing to do with them), he also had the good sense to keep me at the side of the road long enough to throw my shifter into friction mode and adjust my set screws so I didn’t shift into the spokes or dropouts as the wheel had a hub that didn’t match what I was running. I was probably more than a little inpatient at that point evern though the guy did everything as fast as it could be done.
The wheel looked like someones well-worn training wheel but it rolled great, was super comfortable, performed wonderfully. They saved my day I and ended up taking fifth overall and second amateur. Plus, I now have race photos with reflectors on one wheel. When I went to get my bike in transition they’d already swapped my wheel back for me. In fact, I never got a chance to properly thank them.
My experience with them was wholly positive.
I’ve used both Mike Garcia at oddsandendos.com and Dave Thomas at SpeedDream. Great wheels and service from both.
I actually don’t recommend custom built wheels that much anymore. The paradigm for wheel construction has changed significantly over the past two decades predominantly with the introduction of integrated wheel sets such as the earliest attempts by Roval, then HED Cycling and then Mavic.
It used to be that one company mmade the hubs, another made the rim and another still made the spokes. You found a person with experience and skill in wheel buildig to piece it all together and you hoped for the correct spoke tension, etc. Each of the wheel components were designed independently and not necessarily to function in optimal harmony with the other.
Integrated wheel systems, where one manufactuer designs and build a hub, spoke and rim component specifically for use with each other for a given purpose, are a more unified approach to wheels manufacture and design that often results in better durability, performance and lower cost. Even the least expensive versions of the Easton, FSA and Mavic wheels have nicer features and benefits that expensive, custom built wheel configurations from a decade or more ago.
There are exceptions though. What if you want a Powertap hub built up in a given rim? There will always be an application for the custom wheel builder but I think the integrated systems offer more wheel for less buck to most consumers.
I assume that people looking for custom wheels are usually after something a bit more exotic. But, I know he stocks some others as well. He built up a replacement wheel for one of my old bikes with a velocity rim and an ultegra hub.