The Rim Strip Tirade
The lowly rim strip is one of those bike parts that seemingly should have been perfected around the time Laurent Fignon won his first Tour de France. As bike parts go, it’s hard to make one very heavy; similarly, it’s hard to make one much lighter than any of the others. They are parts of such inconsequential impact that they really only affect performance when they fail.
My first brush with crappy rim strips came in 1996. I had just moved from temporary digs in Bel Air (long story involving Alan Alda, a crazy woman and entrapment, though not in that order) to the Santa Clarita Valley. I left three bikes in my car in a covered parking garage. The next morning, two out of three bikes had both front and rear flats. The rim strips melted while the bikes were in the garage (which was probably somewhere around 110 degrees) and the tubes flatted when confronted with the sharp edges of the aluminum rims.
The cheap bike of the bunch had thicker rim strips and for reasons I can’t explain, they were just thick enough that they didn’t reach their melting point. What, exactly, is the melting point of various rim strips I have no idea, but the fact remains, one melting point reached, but another not so much.
That incident and another one like it the following weekend confirmed my love of Velox rim strips. I’d loved them all along but had no idea just how much better they were than everything else. It’s a bit like being blind when you get married then getting your sight and realizing that your bride is the prettiest woman in the room. Or some such.
I wouldn’t be writing this post were it not for the damned mylar weave rim strips being marketed by any number of companies. I wouldn’t have a thing to say about them if they had an adhesive on the bottom to make sure they never move. But they don’t.
It’s that detail that has caused me a number of flats in rapid succession. That is, once I have one flat, I tend to have another. The mechanism at work is simple; without anything to hold the rim strip in place, it slides to the side, exposing the drill holes in the rim. Once the rim strip slides over it gets a crease in it and keeps sliding over, even if you re-position it with your fingers. To this I can attest.
Also, I have noticed that the tighter the fit of the tire on the rim, the sooner the rim strip gets pushed to the side and the sooner the flats start.
I’ve had a couple of companies tell me, ‘These rims strips aren’t like the crap ones. These will stay put and they’ll be lighter than the others.”
For the record: I don’t care if they weigh twice what every other rim strip on the market weighs. I just want them fool-freakin’-proof. Full stop. From here on out, I don’t care what I’m sent, I’m going to replace them with Velox rim strips.
So what brought this on? The realization that two of the three flats I suffered in the final 36 miles of the Son of the Death Ride were rim strip-related. While it felt like I lost fewer than 10 minutes to the two flats, if someone had timed it and informed me that I’d lost more like 20 or 30 minutes and it just seemed like less because I was so fatigued, I wouldn’t be surprised. Nor would I argue.
Some shit just needs to work. Bottle cages shouldn’t break. Seat binders should hold a seatpost securely. And rim strips shouldn’t permit the drill holes in a rim to cause a flat.
Ever.
Torelli Bormio Ceramic Ultra-Lite Wheels
The wheel market has exploded with the vengeance of the mosquito population at a stagnant pond in the Deep South during a drought-plagued summer. We’ve been overrun with wheels, much the way I just overran my good sense and your patience in that last sentence.
Doubt that? Nearly every company that used to offer wheel components—DT, Campagnolo, Mavic, Shimano, American Classic, Chris King and Ambrosio for starters—now offers complete wheels. There are some notable exceptions, such as Wheelsmith and Sapim, who have elected to stick with spokes and nipples, and Phil Wood (hubs), but the vast majority of companies that produced components that I used to build wheels from now offer complete wheelsets.
By a certain sort of math, you could make an argument that expansion brought about a tripling of the wheel market. The result has changed what it means to purchase a high-end wheelset. Given the incredible number of poorly built handmade wheels I saw over the years (How many racers did I see not finish a race because their wheels didn’t hold up?), this isn’t a bad thing … on one level. On another, it can be terrible at times.
Get the freehub right and the rest of the wheel can be a cinch.
Gone is the conversation between the budding racer and the sage mechanic. I’ve been on both sides of that conversation and the chance to learn about or to teach lacing patterns or the value of equal spoke tension is a chance for someone to become a more knowledgeable, more engaged cyclist. Those conversations and choices were substantive. Clydesdales need to be steered away from alloy nipples just as bantam weight climbers ought to be steered to butted spokes. On group rides these days, so often I hear guys discussing wheel choices based on color.
Recently overheard: “I went with the American Classics because the white matched my frame.”
Really?
I’ve tried a number of aftermarket wheelsets with Campy freehubs. In both 10- and 11-speed configurations a great many of them have a problem that I consider colossal, but I rarely hear anyone complain.
That problem? Rear derailleur spoke clearance.
If I hear the rear derailleur cage tick, tick, ticking against the spokes when I’m climbing, I’m concerned. It is the bicycle equivalent of driving to Dubuque with the idiot light on. And the people who do complain about this? They are the ones who had exactly this problem—undiagnosed by their shop mechanic—stood up and flexed the wheel enough to catch the cage, sheer the carbon fiber scissors through wrapping paper and destroy the rear derailleur, the wheel and the derailleur hanger, if not the frame along the way.
Bladed spokes increase aerodynamic efficiency and decrease the chance of the derailleur rubbing spokes.
I’ve encountered this problem on more wheels than I ought. A healthy supply of 1mm spacers hasn’t corrected the problem for most of the wheels, either. One can ask the question of whether the problem is with the wheels or the derailleur, but because Campagnolo and Fulcrum wheels never have this problem—proving that it is possible to make wheels that don’t suffer this incompatibility—I lay the blame with the wheel makers.
A good review of a set of wheels really ought to be based on qualities of superior distinction, such as multiplying your power output or a freehub that dispenses cash when you hit 500 watts. Congratulating a set of wheels for competency is a bit like giving a kid AP credit for reading Harry Potter.
Regardless, the starting point for this review is the fact that the spokes of the Torelli Bormio Ceramic Ultra-Lites don’t rub on a Campy rear derailleur cage. This one feature makes them worth considering if you’re looking for a set of Campy-compatible wheels. Is that enough to warrant purchasing them? Not by a long shot.
In fact, my biggest single wheel pet peeve is trueness—actually lack thereof. I monitor wheels as I review them to see how they are holding up. Within the first 200 miles of riding these wheels I had to perform a slight truing of the rear wheel, tightening two spokes that had de-tensioned slightly. I’ve done nothing since.
This lightweight rim offers remarkable stiffness and industry-standard braking performance.
Last fall I rode Levi Leipheimer’s King Ridge Gran Fondo. For those of you who recall my ride report of the event, you may recall some grumbling about a record number of flats I experienced that day. These were the wheels I was using. The reason for the trouble was a rim strip issue.
When I returned from the ride I e-mailed Todd, the owner at Torelli, and told him about the trouble. He was on the phone to me within the minute I hit the ‘send’ button. When I saw the “Torelli” on the caller ID, I thought it was just a weird coincidence.
He asked me what color the rim strips were. When I told him they were yellow, he told me to throw them in the trash, that those were early production and had caused problems and had been since replaced with different rim strips that wouldn’t move. I’d have some new ones the next day. And I did.
Every dealer that received wheels with the yellow rim strips have been shipped the red rim strips I received.
Since receiving the new rim strips, I haven’t had a single flat and that’s even while running the paper-thin Specialized open tubulars (whose ride continues to grow on me). I remain deeply suspicious of mylar, plastic and all manner of rim strips that are anything other than Velox for one simple reason: Velox rim strips have adhesive on the bottom. Granted, it doesn’t have the sticky factor of Chinese rice, but it really doesn’t need much to just not move.
Okay, so lets move on to the bullet points featured in the marketing literature. The rims have a claimed weight of 380 grams. The front wheel has 20 spokes, the rear 24 spokes. The front is radially laced, the rear features radial lacing on the non-drive side and two-cross on the drive side. The stainless steel J-bend Sandvik spokes are bladed (0.9mm x 2.2mm) for increased aerodynamic efficiency and easy replacement.
This minimal hub keeps weight down, if at the expense of some flex due to especially long spokes.
Torelli claims they weigh 1380g for the pair—that’s with rim strips and a Shimano freehub. I have yet to review a set of wheels that weighs within 10g of the advertised weight, but these were pretty close; they came in at 1412g. I attribute the difference to the Campy freehub, but that’s just a wild assertion of the same general vicinity as most stories in the National Enquirer. I haven’t weighed the two freehub bodies. I really don’t know. At all.
The rear wheel contains six ceramic bearings and inside the freehub is a needle bearing to reduce freehub drag while descending, of which, it does an admirable job. Spin the rear wheel up with the bike in the stand and once you let go of the pedal it moves no further. It’s also remarkably quiet when freewheeling, which is a quality I associate with low drag and stealthy approaches, both of which I find handy.
Compared to many wheels in this weight range the Bormio Ceramic Ultra-Lites are surprisingly stiff laterally. Certainly there are stiffer wheels out there, but stiff isn’t really the selling point on these wheels. Their weight, incredibly low rolling resistance due to the ceramic bearings and machined aluminum braking surfaces, all for a suggested retail of $650 is why you buy these wheels.
Who doesn’t want raceable weight and low-drag bearings in an everyday wheelset?
Torelli does suggest a 180-lb. weight limit for users, but I suspect that at that weight (or more) you would be inclined to seek out a stiffer wheel regardless.
A great set of wheels really isn’t about the graphics (which on these aren’t exactly going to win any design awards—but can’t anyone get graphics right on a set of wheels anymore without sacrificing function?); it ought to be about bringing the various elements together to make a wheel set perfectly suited to its intended purpose.
In the last year I’ve tried six different aftermarket (non-Campy/Fulcrum) wheel sets meant to work with Campy. Considering functionality, weight and price, these are the best of the bunch.
