Another positive experience with LB AR46 here. I ordered my wheels during peak-pandemic in March/April, and they arrived from the North American warehouse under a week.
Having sold my road bike, these were ordered as my “road” wheels for my SuperX. I had them built with 24H/28H, Sapim CX-Ray, Industry 9 Torch/XDR and tubeless tape. Since I didn’t have any “road” tires, I’ve run them with 36mm Challenge Strada Bianca (and tubes) for now. Not exactly aero optimized, but rather supple.
Quality of the wheels and the build has been top-notch, as far as I can tell at this point. Zero issues.
My rides on pavement are so rare, that I am not sure if I’ll ever buy the 28mm Contis I had planned to run on these wheels. I may eventually look for a slightly narrower “category 1 gravel” tire that I can run tubeless, but happy with these for any “road rides” for now.
I have 50mm Farsports wheels that I use as everyday wheels. Where I used to live it did get windy and a few times I did wish I was riding shallower but I got used to them. Personally I don’t care for the looks of smaller in the front / larger in the rear.
One thing that I thought of after the fact was that it may have been handy to order an extra front wheel. One could order a 50mm wheelset and a spare, matching 38mm front wheel for windy days.
Ratchet - for road riding there is no performance disadvantage to more ratchet teeth. 18t is actually stronger. I think only with mountain bike gears can more teeth help with quicker engagement. For road, it’s definitely not worth the price premium IMO.
Finish - after a year of riding my wheels basically look exactly the same as they did new. I have UD/matte.
Pads - they were screechy at first when new and stopping when wet was scary. With some experimentation, I found that the pads on these carbon wheels need way less toe-in than my old aluminum wheels. Actually I found that almost zero toe was best. I used Campagnolo red pads and have had very little brake track wear. And once the pads bedded to the rim stopping in the wet improved. I also wouldn’t go out of my way to ride these wheels in the wet. My wet riding experience is only when having been caught out by a storm or on wet roads after a storm.
I’ve had a set of Farsport gravel wheels with dt 350 hubs and brass niples for about a year. I have kicked the crap out of them and they’re still going strong. Mine are scratched but they have been through some serious gravel/boulder fields. They have the 18t ratchet and I’m going to upgrade but for road I wouldn’t bother. they are 40mm deep and are fine in the wind with 32mm road tyres but catch a bit with 40mm gravel tyres on. Any new wheel set will be bought from Farsports, great wheels.
If you can make a wheelsystem that adheres to the 105% rule (rim width = 105% or more of the tyre width), you’re going to have a good time. You’ll be both ultra fast due to the lack of airflow separation and ultra stable in crosswinds due to the lack of tyre overhang (which is what the wind catches on).
I’ve been out in some fairly stiff crosswinds and it’s almost surreal how little it affects them. You can feel a dull, gentle side pressure but there’s none of the twitching or buffeting that’s standard in non-105% rule wheelsets.
The aversion to spokes is quite bemusing to me. Even if I didn’t weigh half a ton, I can’t see how anyone would, for example, think that the CLX50/64s are better off on-balance with a relatively flimsy 21 front spokes instead of the generally accepted disc brake minimum of 24. Much less the preposterous 18 front spokes on the new Alpinist/Rapide wheels…
I did, yes (I wouldn’t have the heart to foist a hole-less build upon my local wheel builder!). Unfortunately their website builder doesn’t list every available hub or spoke, but there’s a list of hubs here:
What tires are you running on those wheels and how’s the tire clearance? I have the same bike and currently run 30c tires on the stock wheels. There is still some extra room but I’d be interested to hear how an additional 6mm of internal width affects that.
Schwalbe Pro One TLEs (the new ones) in 28mm, which plump out to about 30.5mm on these wheels. I highly recommend these tyres. Fitted onto the rims by hand in about ten seconds each and seated with one blast of the tubeless pump. Without any rim tape to fiddle with (the rims have no holes), it’s possibly even less work than setting up a regular tubed tyre (without the obvious downsides of being a crappy tubed tyre).
There’s spades of clearance both front and rear. Even with the old Pro Ones, which plumped out to almost 33mm, I never had any issues. And I’m a fairly flex-inducing rider, to say the least
The difference between my current setup and the stockies with 30c rubber will be like night and day.
