If you buy these wheels they'll come set up with tubeless valves and rim tape, ready for tubeless tyres. With a certain combination of frame/fork and short-drop calliper you may not be able to set the brakes on the brake track properly, so watch out for that. In fact, if I could I'd set them about a millimetre lower, but without taking a Dremel to the callipers that's not possible. The staggered brake track presents an issue, though, and it's that my brakes, especially the front, are right at their bottom limit in terms of pad adjustment. And it's not a temperature you're likely to be able to achieve outside of a lab, anyway. Prime says it has tested the rims up to 350☌ – you do get some deformation at those temperatures but the integrity of the bead wasn't compromised. I spent a few mornings dragging the front brake all the way down the descent from my house into town and managed to get a considerable amount of heat into the rim but it was never so hot that you couldn't touch it, and there are no signs of any deformation or delamination. Prime uses a staggered brake track, moving the braking surface down and away from the bead to increase heat dissipation between the brake surface and the bead, which is the most vulnerable part of the rim. In the wet there was some judder from the pads at first, but as they wore in it subsided the braking performance in the wet is decent rather than stellar, but they're predictable and I never had any issues stopping the bike. ![]() There's no change in brake feel as the wheel turns, so they've been built to a tight tolerance. Does it work? Well, they're not a match for a good alloy rim in terms of grab from the supplied Braco pads, but braking in the dry is good, and predictable. The surface of the brake track is textured 'for enhanced all-weather performance', we're told. The rims are T700 unidirectional carbon fibre, with a 3k weave used for the brake track. You get spare spokes and nipples included. Spoke count – 24 at the rear and 20 at the front – isn't high, but they're good quality spokes – Sapim CX-Ray – and evenly tensioned. Sub-1,400g is proper lightweight territory but these wheels don't feel flimsy, anything but. How light? Well, Prime claims a wheelset weight of 1,360g and when we stripped ours down to the bare wheels – no rim tape, skewers or tyres – that's exactly what they were: 620g for the front wheel and 740g for the rear. I mean, because they're lightweight and tubeless-ready. You're more likely to be fitting them because carbon wheels look cool. > Check out our buyer's guide to road bike wheels It's more of an all-round wheelset than something you'd buy for shaving seconds. ![]() Given the depth, I'd expect the gains to be fairly marginal. You might go a bit quicker on your evening 10 over your shallow alloys, you might not. ![]() It's a fairly wide and blunt shape as aero wheels go, not as bulbous as something like a Zipp 303 but still fairly chunky. As regards their aero properties, Prime isn't making any particular claims for them other than describing the rim profile as aero.
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