Frequency Team

Hi I spent like $130-140 on this rear hub tire and rim and never rode off road just street riding and took it in to it in to get looked at and the bike mechanic said he had some bad news he said I had a couple cracks right at spoke holes in rim and have to get a new one so I had to spend another $120 plus labor that I was now dipping into my new bike fund not happy at all specially if I would have ate pavement then car ran over me that's is truly unsafe and it looks like I'm not the only rider it seems like theres a lot of rims with same problems

I took the tire off my WTB STP i19 rims the other day, and noticed that every spoke was borderline about to get pulled, and then some not so borderline ( see attached picture). I then googled these rims/wheel builds and it seems that this is not an uncommon issue and is known as of 2018 ( https://www.reddit.com/r/bikewrench/comments/cibi0k/cracked_rim_at_the_spoke_nipple_wtb_stp_i19_rear/). There should have been a recall!! If I pulled >5 spokes on a wheel at once, I may have seriously injured myself. This is complete negligence on Kona's behalf. Whoever/whatever tensioned these spokes seriously over tensioned them.

These rims are spec'd on my wife's Cannondale Scalpel 29. She hardly ever rides and is the exact opposite if aggressive. The bike has been sitting for 2 years and the tires were low so I pumped them up to 40 psi and the nipples started ripping through the rim! All told 5 of them popped through and the rimmed cracked down the center from the valve past the next spoke eyelet! In 25 years of mountain biking I have never seen this type of failure. The rims are well beyond any warranty timeline, but they shouldn't fail in this fashion just airing them up.
I 10/10 times could not recommend these rims.

I rode these rims for a few days on some dirt roads. The rim buckled under normal riding conditions. There was no evidence of stratches or dents. WTB didn't warranty them.

Been using this rims for 2 years. Installed at my Hard tail. From my local DH bike park to XC trail. To all types of terrain the rims hold up. To my surprise, It already exceeded my expectations.