Wheel Woes

For well over a year now I've been talking about getting a carbon wheelset.  For longer than that, I've wanted a set of Enve's S.E.S. 3.4s with King R45 hubs because the 35mm deep, 26mm wide front and 45mm deep, 24mm wide rear wheels are aerodynamically on par with a V shaped rim at 50mm deep and 22mm or less wide.  And I love me some King hubs.  Well, here's where I am on that...


A lot of the wait was me convincing people at the shop that we should be an Enve dealer.  It was completely selfish, but it turns out that even though the shop sold a good amount of Zipps, they wanted to sell something else.  It's cheaper from me to EP directly from a dealer than it is to EP the same thing from a distributor, so this made me very happy.

Once that happened, the only thing I had left to decide was if I wanted to just buy the wheels built from Enve, and forced into having black hubs only, or if I wanted to EP the rims, and then EP hubs from Chris King in the colour I wanted (blue).  That way, I could also use Sapim CX-Ray spokes instead of DT Aerolites.

Then, For whatever reason, I thought about getting tubulars.  I've been really curious about turbulars for a few years now, and I love the way they ride, but they worry me.  I don't get a ton of flats, but every time I feel like pulling the trigger on some tubis, I see a guy walking his bike on the SRT and it just puts me off.  But I really like the weight of carbon tubulars vs carbon clinchers, because it's usually close to 200g less per wheel.

Challenged with wanting the weight of a tubular with the reliability of a clincher, I decided that if I couldn't have a 1,200g wheelset, that I wanted at least a 1,400g set of clinchers.  For this to happen, King hubs were out of the question.  I settled on getting the 3.4s with DT Swiss 180 hubs and was a few days away from ordering them from Enve when I decided to see if there was anything else out there.

Tune is a small, German parts builder that makes stupid light parts.  While not always the lightest parts, they are much lighter than what any of the big names make and they have pretty good reliability to boot.  They also make hubs in white, which really appeals to me.

The Mig70/Mag170 hub combo is competitively with other high end hubs, and can be used on a daily bases.  They need about as much maintenance as other brands do as well.  They just happen to be about 30g lighter than the DT 180s, and close to 70g lighter than the King R45s.  The only problem is that the North American distributer is another shop in Arizona and I wasn't sure if the shops owner was going to be okay with us becoming a dealer, just so I could EP some hubs.

I needn't have worried.  I can now EP the rims and hubs, and even the spokes that I want to build up a slightly aero carbon clincher wheelset that should be +/-5% of 1,400g.  BOOM!  Whoooohoooo!  Yahtzee!  Except the hubs in white are out of stock.   Mother Fucker...

So now I continue to wait.  As soon as the hubs are in stock, I will buy them and call Enve and get the rims (which come with brake pads and the nipples that you have to use with Enve's rims).  Then, once I have those, I will take measurements and figure out what spoke lengths I need and I'll order those.  I'll build the wheels and I can finally stop talking about getting them and actually have them.  Imagine that.

I also need to order some new tubes.  My rear tube has a slow leak in it that i'm too lazy to change, but the two tubes I have in there now are the last of the XXXlight tubes that I have.  I need longer valves for the new rear wheel anyways, so 4 new tubes will be ordered.  I already have new Michelin Pro 4 Service Course tires to replace the completely shot tires on the bike now.  I also have a 2012 Red 10sp cassette sitting next to me.  SRAM says an 11-23T cassette will weigh 153g.  They're wrong, because my 11-26T weighs 150g even.  Combined with the new wheels and I'm looking at 14lbs even for my bike.  I also have a new set of brakes which will bring the bike into the 13lb range.  And after that?  The bike is actually going to get heavier.  I'll explain why when we get there.