Rims 16-24"
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.
