advice on wheels for newbie

a7blues said:

i need some advice. i have gotten fairly serious (for me)about riding about a year ago. I ride a blue competition carbon bike w ultegra components (rideblue.com). Wheels are gipiemme techno 024. I have no idea if these are good/bad. Info on this brand is rather hard to find. I have sort of gotten hooked on riding and am wanting to tinker with things. any advice or leave well enough alone?

To me, "good wheels" hold up for you for many miles without need to retrue them or replace the hub bearings. Bad wheels will start going out of true in the first few hundred miles, break spokes, or develop "sticky" or binding hub bearings.

At any rate, advise you ride your OEM wheels until the bad stuff starts happening with them. Wheels are kind of a maintenance item; if you ride long enough, you'll need to replace them sooner or later. Could be your OEM wheels last 5000 or 10000 miles, or even longer, but no reason to throw them away until you need to.

Of course, any LBS Mavic dealer worth his salt will have the $900 set of SSLs hanging on the wall at the front of his store. He'd be quick to tell you that you need to replace your Gipiemme wheels and buy the SSLs, using time-tested phrases like "climb like a mountain goat, ride like a Cadillac, bombproof....." 🙂