Good wheels aren't cheap and cheap wheels aren't good

“Strong, Light, Cheap, pick two”

Keith Bontrager’s well-known mantra still rings true when it comes to bicycle wheel components. It’s a very simple but incredibly effective adage to any bike parts, or engineered components in general. If something is strong & light it’s not going to be cheap, i.e. a top end carbon wheelset. If it’s light & cheap it’s not going to be strong, we’ve all probably broken something that seemed a bargain at the time. There is a very important distinction between cheap and value for money.

At PT Cycles we aim to provide value for money to our customers. All of our wheel builds are completed on quality components manufactured by quality, trusted and respected brands that we trust.

We do not buy in cheap unbranded components, put our name on them and package them as a top quality product. Yes they may have 2 of the above attributes i.e. light and cheap but it will only be a matter of time before something gives. Ask yourself, can you really buy a decent set of carbon wheels for significantly less than £1000 and trust your life to them? Not in our experience. This is why we have avoided the temptation of offering builds on cheap carbon rims and shonky hubs, despite being regularly wooed by manufacturers in the Far East offering ‘quality components’ at very low prices, with all manner of reassurances.

Over the years PT Cycles has earned an enviable reputation for top quality wheel builds, giving years and 1000’s of miles of trouble free riding to many discerning customers and would not put our reputation on the line to make a ‘fast buck’. More importantly we put rider safety first and whilst the cheap carbon rims may have passed various tests we are not so sure. Having had a few of these poorer quality wheels on our bench for repair (normally spoke breakage and bearing failure) we have experienced first-hand how shoddily made they can be.

Greater than the sum of their parts

Marketing people have been using this strap line for years, however when it comes to bike wheels it is extremely important to understand what influence the person building the wheels can have on the finished product. At PT Cycles we take as much time as it needs to ensure our wheels are built to the highest possible standards, meaning we take great care to ensure the spokes are bedded in, continually de-stressed and finally tensioned to the correct absolute (spoke tension meter reading) and the tensions are balanced (consistency of spoke tension on the same side of the wheel). To put it more succinctly, we follow a fastidious process to ensure we consistently offer the highest quality builds that stand the test of time. A hastily built wheel using identical components is more likely to fail and less likely to offer the same levels of performance.  
This is why if you purchase wheels from us you can be assured that you will be riding on the best components for your budget and they will be hand built by us with a great deal of care and attention regardless of the price. It is the only way we know.