I purchased a set of Limbr wheels from Sooding Sports last July.
At the time, I wanted to buy Marble wheels, but unfortunately they were out of stock domestically, so I couldn't get them in time for the national championship I had planned.
However, Sooding offered their remaining Limbr wave rim stock at a fairly affordable price, so I was able to use that model and complete the national championship without any issues.
I had been using them without any problems until the Josuryeong race, where I started experiencing vibration when braking with the front wheel. I checked the brake surface just in case, and sure enough,
one spot on the right side had bulged out ㅜㅜ
My previous Vuelta wheelset that came with my Cello Elliott complete bike build and my Giant SLR0 wheelset had accumulated quite a lot of mileage across many climbs
without any heat deformation at all, so I had even less concern about the newer Elite wheels — yet heat deformation still occurred.
Still, since it hadn't even been a year since I bought the wheels, I contacted Sooding and sent them photos. Fortunately, they told me it qualifies for warranty and they would replace it.
But here's where the next problem arose. The wheels I purchased had been discontinued, and since Limbr wheels don't sell in large volumes domestically, they didn't have any separate parts in stock either. So Sooding reached out to Elite's headquarters on my behalf, but headquarters also had no separate parts available — and since it was covered under warranty, I received word that they would swap it out for a different model. ^^
It's a little different from the Marble model that Sooding currently sells, but the replacement has slightly wider and taller rims than what I was using before, and weighs over 80 grams less, so it feels like an unintentional upgrade.(Just don't mention that the spokes changed from Sapim to Alpina)
Also, since the warranty is 3 years from the date of purchase, the replacement wheels still have over 2 years of coverage remaining.
For Chinese wheels like Elite, buying directly from AliExpress is cheaper than going through a domestic importer, but when you factor in warranty service like this, that price difference seems well worth it.
3-line summary
- Heat deformation occurred on the Limbr wheels within 1 year
- Covered under warranty and eligible for replacement
- Purchased model discontinued, so exchanged for a newer, higher-end model
