World’s lightest (affordable) wheels?
- Thursday Jan 15,2009 04:33 PM
- By Nico
- In Everything
So “affordable” might be a bit of a stretch, but if memory serves me correctly the only lighter wheels I’ve seen were a set of Custom LEW Pro VT1 tubulars, and I think they cost upwards of $15k. These wheels, on the other hand, are more like the cost of some nice production Zipp wheels, so I’m taking the liberty of calling them “affordable”. But if I had told my mother that $2,500 for bicycle wheels was affordable, she would have slapped me.
Quick stats:
Front wheel
- Extralite SX UltraFront 20 hole hub
- Pilar 1422 bladed titanium spokes
- Pilar internal aluminum nipples
- EDGE Composites 1.24 all carbon tubular rim
- Weight: 338 grams
Rear wheel
- Extralite SX UltraRear 24 hole hub (Shimano compatible)
- Pilar 1422 bladed titanium spokes
- Pilar internal aluminum nipples
- EDGE Composites 1.24 all carbon tubular rim
- Weight: 438 grams
Here are some photos:
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- Front wheel on gram scale (338 grams)
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- Front wheel on gram scale detail (338 grams)
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- Extralite UltraFront SX 20-hole front hub
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- Rear wheel on grams scale (438 grams)
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- Rear wheel on gram scale detail (438 grams)
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- Extralite UltraRear SX 24-hole rear hub
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- Both wheels balanced on gram scale (776 grams!)
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- Finished wheels
These wheels are no longer for sale — someone snapped them up already from our online store. EDGE 1.24 rims are in short supply right now but we’ve got some more on order and we will build another set of these when we get more rims in stock.
3 Responses for "World’s lightest (affordable) wheels?"
Those are really, really cool! Nicely done!
How exactly do you build a wheel with internal nipples? What kind of tool so you use?
I think the answer is to use the Reynolds spoke wrench. Reynolds also uses an internal nipple design. The internal nipples allow for reduced-gauge spoke holds in the rim, increasing strength at a given rim mass.
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