Take a look at Nextie. They have a huge selection of rims and reasonable pricing. I build a ton of wheels with their products and have been consistently impressed. I’ve had one or two warranty issues over five years and they always replaced the rim promptly with zero hassles.
I considered some carbon bars, but got put off with all the stories you see.
Ended up getting some discounted 3T carbon bars for £70, so only about £40 more than the chinese ones.
I am curious as to this portion of your post. I just warrantied my Light Bicycle RRU65C02 rim from 2.5 years ago with no issues. I had my rear rim warp where somehow the brake track was now concave in a portion of it. After submitting the initial warranty claim they asked for a few more pictures, once those were sent they were approved.
Granted the warranty isn’t phenomenal, they are giving me a $160 rim for free but I have to $85 in shipping from China. Since they now have an improved brake track I decided to just buy a new set of RRU65C02 complete wheels from them and they cut the $160 off of the price of the new build. (this was my decision, they didn’t even suggest it, as I didn’t want to un-build then build a wheel on my own or pay US labor for the build).
Overall I was happy with my original wheels and I am looking forward to the replacement. I wouldn’t ever decent a real mountain on them (aka Palomar Mountain) but any of the local SD climbs I have no reservations using these rims. The super steep stuff in the area isn’t overly technical.
On the other hand and on the main topic of Chinese Carbon Handlebars, I own 3 bars, 2 Aero Road and 1 TT Base Bar.
1 Aero Road bar I purchased from Amazon, labeled RXL SL
1 Aero Road bar I purchased from Aliexpress, labeled RXL SL from the shop RXL SL Officialflagship Store
1 TT Base Bar I purchased from Aliexpress, labeled RXL SL from the shop Dave Carbon Bike Part Store
Both of the Aero Road bars have been working well, one I have owned for a year (Amazon) and one I have owned for about 4 months (Aliexpress). Both have worked well and no issues so far with putting on fiber grip and using a torque wrench matted to an aluminum stem.
However, the TT Base Bar is a slightly different tale… In my stupidity I decided to do some aero testing with stems a week before my A race out of the country. While swapping stems I cracked my basebar at the mount point while using a torque wrench. To the bars credit it did not catastrophically fail (I rode it not knowing it was cracked until I went to setup my final position). But this did lead me to a mad scramble to find a reasonably priced bar before my flight.
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What bike did you get? What mfg ?
