I’m going to use an extra set of black stainless spokes that are about to 6-8 mm too long, and just have my local bike shop cut them down and rethread them. Unless anyone has a link to where I can find 356mm black SS spokes precut, they’d have to be custom-made anyway.
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we declare a lower value at USD30 when we ship the rim out. You should not be charged high customs duty.
Well, what they’re doing is illegal, but at least I probably won’t be charged any duties on import.
Customs can sometimes be pretty on it here though and if they realise that it’s not being declared correctly they may open it up, see that the invoice doesn’t match, and decide to impose fines as well as charge the full and correct duties.
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That’s pretty alarming confessional wise!
Fingers crossed you’re ok 
It just arrived, and my lord is it light. I’ve never had a carbon rim on anything before so I wasn’t quite ready for how it actually feels in the hand.
Thanks to Nextie’s naughtiness (the included invoice also states it’s a $30 commercial sample) I didn’t get stuck with any charges on import.
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@mowcius For you (and all the others who got one or are getting one) I hope it works out. So far this thread would put me off even trying (not that I had actually planned to). I’m just losing faith in Nextie so far to be honest. I really hope in the long run I am proved to be wrong.
I also hope it works out.
I’m optimistic, but we’ll see how it goes when I get it built up, mount a tyre, and leave it for a few weeks.
Oh, and in trying to get the rim back into the box I realised that they also sent me a Nextie baseball cap. Now I don’t wear such things, especially not ones that are advertisements, but whatever I guess. It can be added to my pile of stuff for the flea market table at the BUC.
Mine hasn’t shown up yet, but I’m going to give them kudos for at least having produced an extremely niche product like this and then redesigning at our request and at a price much lower than the competition.
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Crazy that they would get away with this. When asked, they told me they could offer a “pre-paid tax” on shipping. Which meant higher cost. But I chose to do it since another french unicyclist went for the “free shipping deal” they offered then and got hammered with taxes. Glad he warned me. The extra cost I paid was way below what he paid, and also it was official and legal and all.
Maybe in their experience they know that shipping to Europe is more monitored than to the US. So it’s ok to take a gamble. But yes, it’s a bit flakey.
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I went with the pre-paid tax option on the first rim I bought from LightBicycle for my Hatchet. I thought it would speed things up, that turned out to be completely wrong! It ended up with a shipment company I had never heard of and basically got lost somewhere around Charles De-Gaulle airport at Paris during the strikes just before the pandemic.
It eventually turned up about 9-months late after it had been written off (I made a deal with LightBicycle and bought it from them cheap rather than send it back). All the other rims I have got from them have come by Fed-Ex now, they have always been really fast and seem to have a reasonably efficient way of dealing with customs charges.
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I have a feeling I read somewhere on their site that the pre-tax shipping option was only available to certain countries / jurisdictions… and it looked like the UK wasn’t amping there number.
So perhaps this tax declaration thing is simply due to wanting UK custom or they know that UK checks will be limited….
It’s clearly a risk - but not the customer’s one…
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I guess the scheme is only available to European countries. So since the UK left Europe…
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I was not offered, nor was I even aware of this shipping option. I have been monitoring the tracking of my rim and it hasn’t had an update since January 23rd which is a little troubling. But if it is already here in the United States it may not be trackable since USPS is doing the delivering.
I had to comment (sorry) 
I think geographically we’re still in Europe - just not in the EU 
…
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I guess there’s potentially a heck of a lot more land to travel across to get to you, often even if it does land at the closest airport.
Parcelforce were very efficient here. It arrived in the UK on the 1st and went straight through customs 
, then it got to the local delivery depot on the 2nd at 07:05, and was delivered at 10:47.
If our government could physically float us out of Europe they would. 
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Where would they float us¹ too though? 
¹ I say ‘us’ as a Brit. I actually live in “Europe” (Norway), though still not EU. So confusing… 
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As climate change progresses, the channel shall automatically wide itself due to the rising sea level. So it may at least float away optically 
I’d really like to see a poll, how many percent of the Brits still think that Brexit was a good idea.
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Right, back on topic after all you lot derailed this thread.
UDC UK were very speedy with my order of other parts as always, so after a ride today I got this all built up.
Truing took me ages. Not for lack of practise, I was just determined to get it the tension within the precision of what I could check on my tension tool (and the limits of my ability to differentiate pitch), as well as get it true to about a quarter mm. I don’t have a truing stand so doing it in the frame also makes things a little more hassle.
Getting the tyre on wasn’t all that bad. The well on the rim is plenty to get it on by hand. I initially pumped it up a tiny bit , ensuring the tube wasn’t caught, then went to 20PSI and left it for 10 minutes.
I then took it up to 45, checking to ensure the bead was seating nicely (it was).
3048g with a Michelin 28" tube, NR lite (not the latest lightest one), hooked rim, 14g spokes from UDC, and the KH Spirit hub (including bearings and bolts). Oh, and I did two wraps of electrical tape very well stuck down, as rim tape.
Oh, and if you can get this tube in a 60mm valve, I’d recommend that one. I can only get one of my three pumps to fit on the tiny end that’s poking out with the 40mm.
All assembled at 45psi ready for a test ride another day. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps Sunday.
My naff scales say this weighs 7.3kg. I guess I should have weighed it before as well!
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Well it was good for an hour and a half.
Just dropping off to sleep when it blew off. It sounded almost exactly like a firework went off downstairs.
That was at 45PSI, with a NR Lite that has never before been removed from my old rim, and is(/was) in perfect condition along the bead.
I’m not at all amused and currently am left wondering whether I’ve just got the latest iteration of a very expensive chocolate fireguard downstairs.
I’ll check tomorrow to ensure that there’s nothing that suggests an installation issue or failure of the inner tube for some other reason, and I guess I’ll order another tube too.
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I’ve got 36" tubes to try, I’ve had 5 (non-riding) blowouts with 29s
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