Finished & Riding! Edge Composites XC Series Wheels!

[eyes]

Two quick update photos below - carrying on from the my old thread when I was trying to work out what wheelset to go with: http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/sho...heels-feedback-discussion...&highlight=Carbon

Final build was:

• Rims: Edge Composites XC Series (26", clincher, 32h)
• Hubs: DT Swiss 240S (fr 20x110mm axle, rr 10x135mm RWS thru bolt, ISO 6 bolt, upgraded to 36 tooth star ratchet)
• Spokes: Sapim CX-Ray
• Nipples: Pillar internal
• 658g for front, 738g for rear, total 1,396g - as weighed on Alpine Digital scales - both hanging and bench mounted agreed within 2g.

I haven't put enough hours on them to review - however first impressions left me blown away. They are made tubeless with 1 layer of 25mm Stans Yellow Tape, Stans 44mm deep tubeless valves, Stans liquid.

Edge rims are 32mm deep - and use internal nipples - so these can only be laced 2 cross. The spoke tensions recommended by Edge are:

• Rear drive side & front disc side: 120 kgf
• Rear non-drive side & front non-disc side: 70-80 kgf (artifacts of tight side target tensions and hub geometry)
• Final spoke tensions acheived were 120.5 kgf average rear drive and 120.3 kgf average front disc; all spokes within 6% of average.

Big thanks to Tim McCullough at For The Riders made these babies happen just the way I wanted them to.

I'll update in a while with a bit of a review.

 

[eyes]

From the other thread - but more relevant here:

Nice work, eyes!

I rode the edge AM rims in whistler bike park the other week on a carbon V10. I'm always a skeptic and was so impressed that I would shell out for the DH rims as soon as they are available (my friend was riding the dh rims) - if i could afford them and not end up divorced! Most of the 10 prototype bikes had edge rims (setup with 2 ply minions and dh tubes) and there were plenty of big, nasty pinchflat style hits and all rims were in brand new condition afterwards. In fact the engineer from edge stated that the syndicate are yet to trash one and other sponsored riders have run a whole season without even having to true the wheel. Funny how they state on their website that the AM rim is not to be used for dh and yet have faith enough to run them on a 10inch bike in the bike park!

DT rims seem the goods too for anyone interested, I have a customer on a 2 year old set that still look mint despite his high km's on them and the fact that the north shore seems to kill everything. He also has a set of Edge AM's though!

Yeah as I said - first impressions blew me away! Stiffness is off the charts!

One of the reasons I went for Edge was tubeless compatability - DT Swiss do not warrant rims that have been converted to tubeless - whereas Edge encourage it! Edge are just about to release an Edge rim strip - but I won't run it as simple Stans tape does the conversion.

A little bird told me (also from the bike park) that when Edge do release a dedicated DH rim - that it will likely be closer to 600g. Now I honestly don't believe this rumour - as the AM's are 400g and as you said - the SC Syndicate have yet to destroy one. Those carbon V10's over there at the moment - a number are running AM and the rest are running DH proto's.

On the entire interweb - I only found one case of a failed Edge rim - and it was a spoke pull-through. The discussion gets quite heated on the Weight Weenies forum - and to be honest - I think the chap that had the failure wasn't spelling the whole truth. The Edge engineer actually jumped on and said that he suspected that the internal nipple had been inserted upside down (which if you have seen one wouldn't be too hard to do) - thus leaving the sharp edges of the nipple contacted the rim - rather than the rounded end which is supposed too.

Either way - Edge warranted the rim despite their suspicion.

Tim & I built the wheels up together, with Tim wheelsmithing while I was running the laptop! We used the Park Tool wheelbuilding spreadsheet - into which you enter your spoke tensions at a number of stages during the build and it helps with tension balancing. It actually does an incredible job - but you need the laptop right there and the spoke tension tool. The end result was incredibly uniform spoke tension and perfectly true wheels; lateral runout (wobble), vertical runout (hop), dish (central alignment)... all perfect.