Rim Brake

Searching for a new rim for your rim brake bike? You’ve come to the right place. We stock 29″ / 700C rims from Mach1, Alex Rims, Jetset & more.

Shopping for rims for your bike requires taking a few things into account. You will need to confirm the hole count you require to be compatible with your hub. And of course you will need to consider the style of riding you will be doing and the width of the rim you need. And of course these days the big question will be if you want a tubeless ready rim.

We stock a broad range of rims for mountain biking, commuting, road riding, gravel riding as well as ebike specific rims. Each of these types of rims will bring you certain benefits, whether its strength or speed or durability. You will need to think on how you will be riding your bike, and what kind of tyres you will be running on the wheel.

Which brand of Rim is the best?

If you want a general idea of which brands are good quality & which aren’t we can help with that. Because we know wheels at Abbotsford Cycles!

Alex Rims are especially popular as a bombproof solution for any commuter, hybrid or mountain bike. We love these rims, they are exceedingly reliable & well made.

Jetset are a very comparable brand to Alex Rims, though it is safe to say that Alex Rims are more known in the cycling world. Jetset rims are a great choice for their huge range – no matter the size you need.

Mach1 also make high quality rims which we have experience building wheels with and recommend. You will find fewer Mach1 rims on our webstore because we are opening up our range to include more options from them. The French brand is known for its high quality spokes and we would definitely trust them with rims.

If you want more information about our Rim Brake rims or just want help finding the right rim, get in touch with us! We are the friendly folks at Abbotsford Cycles and we build wheels in our workshop everyday. So we know wheels!

When it comes to building wheels you’re going to roll around to the rim choice quite a bit. Because your choice here determines the strength of your build, and the kind of tyres you’ll be able to run.

Another factor in your choice will be the join type, whether there are eyelets for distributing the weight & the hole count.

But let’s not make things too complicated too soon – let’s start with the basics of wheels here.

Choosing a rim – the width

When it comes to rim’s the internal width is a major factor. The internal width is where your tyre bead will sit, and the width determines the size of tyre you can run on it.

You will find rims from 17mm to 40mm width in our warehouse. This accounts for skinny road tyres (think 25c-32c) up to mountain bike & fat bike tyres (anything from 2.1″ to 4.0″).

So if you are running 35c tyres on your commuter bike, you will need something like a 17mm internal width rim. If you run 2.5″ tyres on your mountain bike then 32mm internal width rim is for you.

Choosing the rim – the height

But the width isn’t the only thing to think about with rims. It’s also the rim depth (or how ‘tall’ the rim is). Deeper, taller rims are more aerodynamic but they are also stiffer & stronger. Being a larger profile rim there is more material to resist the torsional forces enacted on the wheel.

So you will find a deeper rim (often called “deep dish”) is a more expensive rim, and a higher quality too. If you want to upgrade your road bike wheelset you would generally choose a deep dish rim.

Choosing a rim – the spoke count

Spoke counts on wheels have reached a pretty ‘standard’ number at 32. So it’s very likely you will be looking at a 32 spoke wheel on any modern bicycle.

But different numbers of spokes still exist – because they determine how strong the wheel is. More spokes makes for a stronger, stiffer wheel as there are more points of stability. Your 36h rim is stronger than a 32h.

For this reason if you have an electric bike wheel or a downhill bike wheel or a cargo bike wheel you are likely to have more spokes. These wheels are doing more work under load, and need to be stronger for this.

We would always recommend choosing a higher spoke count wheel if you are loading the wheel up with a lot of weight. Or are creating a lot of weight with a lot of downward or lateral forces like enduro or downhill riding.