Well here's some heresy :
- 410 gram polished siver rims with ferrules, traditional profile.
I have some rims with ferrules that fit the bills, but they are dedicated to the raleighs in my garage that are being restored. MAVIC purchased AVA in the mid 70's, and I also have some rims I consider to be AVA sports (wash rims) with mavic square red labels on them.
If I could not find AVA rims with ferrules, I would buy today's MAVIC rim that weighs about 410 grams and, if need be, strip it with oven cleaner to get that polished look. I might even contact a list member who might have some AVA rims and ask him if he would make me some decals to dress up my son-of-AVA rims like originals. In this way, I would not have to worry about dwindling supplies of rims for my Raleigh Pro.
I will say that Fiamme rims have a 'squared off' extrusion that is quite a different profile than other tubular rims i have owned (weinmann, nisi, ava, mavic.)
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Happily, 2 sets of (4 total) NOS AVA rims 36H with ferrules were offered for $90 and $95 (shipped, usa) on ebay in the past 2-3 weeks, with no bidders. If you do a completed listings search on ebay and send email to the sellers, you might get yourself a set.
Now the bikes in the catalogue show a red label that goes around the valve hole that says something like "brevete ava --- made in france" (i don't remember for sure i'm too lazy to search my garage at the moment.) The Ebay rims did not have that decal (otherwise I'd probably have bought one set), but that decal would be very easy to produce on average label paper, with some packing tape or whatnot, if a list member would email a scan to you ... which would be a great favor because it would involve stripping the decal (possibly destructively) from a perfectly good set of rims ...
- Don "list member" Gillies
San Diego, cA, USA