Most of us in South Africa use our mountain bikes for riding many different kinds of trails – from pretty tame neighbourhood trails to pretty hectic and technical trails at venues like Van Gaalens and Buffelsdrift.
Now, the purpose of this article isn’t to debate what is and what isn’t a tame or technical trail, but to provide some insight into a value-for-money, do-it-all, mountain bike wheel set.
Whether or not you’re a carbon rim convert, let’s assume this is the way forward – currently I’m building about 70% carbon and 30% alloy – a reversal of the trend I experienced about 2-3 years ago. Some of you may find this surprising, but the quality and durability of carbon rims is amazing nowadays, as the prices have come down to fit many more riders’ budgets.
Anyhow, on to the wheels.
Get a wheel set which ticks the boxes:
- Wide rims – a 25-30mm inner width, tubeless-ready rim, suits most modern MTB tyres between 2.2 and 2.5″ wide – perfect for most XC and trail/enduro bikes. I import rims from Nextie because they’re affordable, really nice quality and available in many different options
- Hubs which use sealed bearings, fit any axle standard and come with either Shimano or SRAM xD driver freehubs. I use Hope, DT Swiss, i9 or Novatec hubs which I source from the local agents, or directly import from Aivee in France. This allows me to supply the hubs which suit your taste, budget and specific technical requirements
- Double butted or bladed spokes for light weight and durability, and brass nipples which are immune to galvanic corrosion (unlike alloy nipples which I don’t recommend)
- Light (enough) at around 1400-1600g per set (one can go lighter but this adds $$$)
- Strong, which is a serious upside of wider carbon rims
- Custom. Yup, choose the colour of the hubs and graphics, matt or glossy carbon finish and either UD or carbon weave look
Although the above reasons are all pretty compelling, they’re also pretty logical and sensible. Exactly what a new set of wheels shouldn’t be – you should get them because you simply want them. (and because your stock wheels are just boring, heavy, weak and slow.)
