They see me rollin' - wide rims!

I read a thread the other day on a forum I frequent about wide rims and whether there was any justifiable reason for the poster getting them and I read a lot of mixed opinions and a lot of debate so thought it was about time I chipped in my opinion and wrote my long term review of my setup. A little bit of background, I've previously had mavic rims before the rise of tubeless and I then converted to stans rims and have ridden on arches, crest and flow setups. Just over a year ago I read another thread (what would we do without the internet right?!) about wide rims and the reason we should all have them and frankly the video and the writing made sense to me and I started to research the rise of these carbon rim setups. For me, ignoring the stiffness and every other carbon benefit, I looked at carbon rims purely because I wanted wider rims but I was not prepared to gain the weight for the extra width. Enve rims were out straight away, every biker with the internet has probably seen the enve/pink bike review where they blew a set apart and frankly even if those stories aren't true and the other stories we've heard, there's no way even with my budget and the bike I already ride that I can justify rims that are THAT expensive! So I read about some rims that had a good reputation, slightly better than light bike rims that were starting to crawl there way over to the UK, and decided to buy them and wait the few weeks they took to arrive from the states. Cue Derby rims! I get a fair few comments on the trail especially when stopped as people tend to look the bike over and then see the wheels and lets face it they do look a little shall we say 'brrrrrrrrrap'. They're 40mm externally which equates to around 35mm internal width so now even a year later they're at the top end of the width available. 

Now before I go on I should point out I'm by no means a professional rider nor am I the best and most gnarrrr of riders so what I'm about to explain and judge on can be felt by normal riders, none of this 'clearly only the pro's can notice'. I ride a lot and all over the place and I would say I'm an intermediate to advanced rider and think I can take care of myself on the trail but you wont see me whipping off 10ft drops! 

These wide rims are game changers. There it is plain and simple, I've said it and I'm not afraid of the debate that will follow. I got a dropper post early on and spent the next year telling people how much of a game changer they were and now finally people have listened and they've become more popular than hand luggage on an easy-jet flight! Imagine riding parallel with a root and actually the better line is on the other side of root so you want to switch sides. Due to the pinching of normal sized rim and the tyre shape this creates you would go to roll over the root and eventually the tyre would have to yield but its a flip flop motion more than a predictable and controlled motion. With wide rims and the boxed rectangular profile that is created with the tyre this motion is extremely predictable and controlled and as I tell people it creates a steam roller effect over all terrain. Cornering is better and general handling is fantastic with wide rims, I generally run around 22 psi and have never once burped or had any negative experiences with the hookless design. Most people worry about tyre clearance with wide rims and generally speaking they barely alter the outer profile of the tyre and as I've already said they create more of a rectangular boxed section than a circle.

With all that said I still think its very pertinent to decide whether carbon rims are for your riding and therefore whether its really worth gaining the weight of wide rims if carbon rims aren't for you.  I recently managed to puncture my rear carbon rim from a freak rock strike, the warranty for derby is fantastic, after a week my replacement rim had arrived and I now have a spare rim with a small hole in it that I can get laced up for emergency use. If you're an aggressive rider who continually rides in rocky terrain, the peaks for example, maybe carbon rims aren't for you. That having been said I've been running these for a year and am fairly aggressive and this is the first damage I've encountered so its all how to do how often, how aggressive and where you ride!