Astute social media followers will have recently seen the mugshot below and known that we've been testing out a new rim to include as an option in both Nimbus Ti and custom alloy builds. We've put a couple of hundred miles on them, tortured them at New England Crit Week, and we like what we've seen.
Kid tested, mother approvedThese rims kill a few different birds that we've been hunting, so we think they're a great complement to the other rims in the portfolio.
First, while they're tubeless ready, they aren't aggressively so, meaning that normal tires install fairly easily with no tools. Tubeless is gaining popularity, but it's far from ubiquitous and we don't see it becoming so soon.
Second, while they're certainly wide enough at 18mm inside width (23 outer), they're a good choice if you either don't want to go to the 20mm inner width of the current Pacenti SL23, or if your frame clearance is a bit tight. Tire inflated widths on these are very similar to Rails (also 18mm inside width), so a 23mm Conti GP4000s II will be roughly 25.25mm wide. Far from narrow, but not beach cruiser width, either.
They are somewhat lower profile at 23mm tall, which actually looks great. They are exceptionally good looking rims, with a very round shape. I'm not normally so taken with what various rims look like, but these are quite attractive looking.
Last, and this is a good one, they're very reasonably priced. This allows us to put the baseline price of a set built with Nimbus Ti hubs and Laser spokes at $555. It's almost hard to spend less than twice that much on wheels less than half this good.
Weights are very competitive, with the rims averaging about 465g. A 24/28 set will be right around 1530g. Drilling is limited to 24, 28, and 32 holes, so they will be offered in 24/28 and 28/32 only.