Well, I've been waiting a bit to replace a Velocity blunt that I over torqued a bit until I found something I'd like to try. Been looking at the gordo's but the weight kinda turned me off. Not that I'm a weight weenie but there are extremes to everything. Anyway, the word went out about the Velocity P-35's and I held my breath till I could get a hold of one, in
GREEN!! 
Out of the box impressionthe color is positively bazaar! the paint is a transparent day-glo anti freeze green. the aluminum shines right on through which gives it a weird metallic look. it's AWESOME!!!
about the only bad thing I can say is that I wish they ran some sand paper in a uniform direction around the thing before painting, there are a few areas where you can see sanding & scratches on the alum that go off unevenly in funny directions. though minor it does take away a bit from the total beauty of the paints finish. I hope in the future production they fix that.
the general look and size of the thing is just amazing, my older rims sit inside as well as the wider than normal Blunt's, with plenty of wobble room. these things are simply a very wide rim!! and for their size, extremely light, oh sure nothing like a Stan's Zr bla bla rim for weight, but, the width more than makes up for the little extra substance you'll have to push and can actually be traded off, which I'll explain a bit later...
Lacing was easy, no real issues till I went to true it. I did find that not only did the label get in the way ( as with most rims) but the actual seam has a side to side bubble and a slight flat spot in it's roundness. Now all pinned rims I have worked with/on have had this issue and most are much worse, except my blunts which I could get damn near prefect and I was hoping these would be the same with the P-35, not quite,
but still better than most others
tire mounting was EXTREMELY easy the rim is so wide you can push it around and never need a tire lever. They also let the tire seat very easy and I had zero trouble getting the bead to lock properly. and once on, a smaller tire looks MUCH bigger than they do on a regular 22mm width rim!! and here's the trade off I spoke of earlier.
You may increase you wheel weight by say 100 grams with the P-35's but by using a few sizes smaller tire (2.2 over a 2.4 say) you can recover a very large portion of the weight, while still keeping your ground contact about the same! Now I haven't gone so far as to get exact measurements (yet) but I will say I know the Mt Kings I'm using has a noticeable difference in weight between the 2.4 and 2.2 and when I first installed them on my bike the 2.2 looked WAY too small, like it was a road tire or something... but now, not so on the P-35's and in fact I think the contact area is now possibly as big or even larger. This is a good thing for people with bikes like my Voodoo Canzo where the rear triangle is kinda tight in space and only allows a limited width tire. Or for people who think they need a big ass tire like a 2.5 or something but find they are rather pricy or way heavy
, just get the wider rim!!
it might be the perfect compromise!
I have only taken the thing for one very short ride ( it's friggin cold out there!!
) but the thing feels great, it's hard to tell yet if I'm just going to
"like" the rim or actually
"love" it. Right now I love the whole wheel in general, but that's as much because of the weight lost and better performance of the Hope Hub and the whole wheel in general as it is the rim it's self.....
more to come......
(a picture of it mounted, it's hard to see but if you look close you can see the paint's finish difference from the solid color of the Blunt(front) and the colored, transparent paint of the P-35 (rear)
and it's first trip out...
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Topic: Velocity P-35 rims (Read 223 times)