What is the deal with these? Are they really bad? I see a ton of them on ebay for little to no money. Unless they are bad, they look like a viable, cheap option for a training set. Just curious because they are all over places like ebay, but I never see them here.
Thanks
From what I remember they are very flexy, heavy and not very aerodynamic. They had a history of deliminating (the spokes pulling apart) and are not repairable, so if they go out of true, to bad.
Junk. Leave 'em for the fixie kids.
Nothing against fixed gear…
Have a read :
http://pardo.net/bike/pic/fail-020/index.html
When you take into account how old most of them are, I’d leave them well alone !
Thanks for the link, amazing (and scary) data. I knew there was something about them, just didn’t know the history.
Despite what others(who may or may not have actually owned a set) say, I trained and raced on them for 3 years before I could shell out for some HED 3s. I don’t have any data to back this up, but when I got my H3s, they didn’t feel noticeably faster. They were not the stiffest wheel, but quite good.
As long as you get a set that is in good condition(no cracks, chips, etc) you should have complete confidence in them. They are robust.
Just my $0.02…
I had a set. They were actually quite fast wheels, but not terribly durable. Based on the likely age of them, I would highly suggest you look elsewhere. Mine also developed a crack where one of the blades met the rim (as many did).
Hey Twack26
I had a set of Rev-X wheels for years and they rocked. They were my first set of aero wheels and they did a fine job, I used them as a set and then as a front wheel with a Renn disk. but I tell you I turned my fastest 40K TT on a set of them so they are much faster then the data would tell us.
Now I was interested in all the reports of them failing and I did a lot of searching and asking around to find some one that had actually had one fail and they are very hard to find, I think they got a bad rap by some one that had one go (the guy in the report) and he had some weight to throw around and got that bad rap out on the net.
Kraig Willett who runs biketechreview worked for Spinergy and worked on testing the Rev-X for failures and they put them to the test and they came out fine. The thing that killed them is that the UCI band them on the grounds that you could get cut by the blades in a crash and no mater what they did to show that they were as safe as a spoked wheel the UCI said no way and band them, and if the UCI bans something it’s gone! Remember the bar extensions is mass start racing?
So that’s the story of Rev-X wheels from the research I did, but as one of the other posters said they are getting old and I would not buy a carbon wheel unless I could hold it in my hand. But if you do find a set only buy the ones that have the small rivets at the spoke rim junction or the ones with the red or blue band on the hub they will be the newest ones.
Have fun out there.
Dan…
i’ve had a set for a long time and use them in every race i do. they’ve been great for me, and particularly great in travel. i, too, read the reports when they came out, checked my own wheels, and found them to be free of problems. how long have i had them? not sure, but probably 10 years or so.
other opinions shared with me:
I still have a pair in the basement although have not used them in a couple of years. Both are > 12 years old. I’ve seen no sign of cracks. I did find them to be flexible or ‘jittery’ - especially the front wheel.
I still have a pair in the basement although have not used them in a couple of years. Both are > 12 years old. I’ve seen no sign of cracks. I did find them to be flexible or ‘jittery’ - especially the front wheel.
I raced on a pair last year and also noticed how flexible the wheels were and how difficult to turn with them. On the other hand for some reason they did feel fast and I didnt have any problems with cracking. None the less I sold them this year because of how flexible they were.