New Wheelset | Setup
We understand that when you receive your new wheels you will be itching to ride them. However there are a couple of important checks required before you do so for your own safety and to avoid damaging the wheels or your bike. As with any safety critical component of your bike; we highly recommend wheels are setup by a professional mechanic.
However, we know there are keen home mechanics out there who will inevitably fit themselves. For you, below are the vital points you must ensure you check before riding. If you are not confident on how to approach any of these safety checks – stop and seek a mechanics guidance.
Your cassette may be in a slightly different position to before, therefore you should check your stop screws and cable tension on your rear derailleur.
Your rims are likely to be wider than before so your tyres will likely sit wider too. You should check and ensure you have 4mm (Road / Gravel) or 6mm (MTB) clearance on all sides of the tyre to your frame and forks. You may choose to ride tighter tolerances than this, but be aware tyres will rub through any frame material very quickly and you do so at your own risk.
All our hooked road rims have a maximum rated tyre pressure of 130psi, however we never recommend running this high and most tyres are rated lower than this. We highly recommend using Silca’s Tyre Pressure Calculator for the best start to optimising your tyre pressures.
Our Gravel carbon hookless rims should never exceed 65psi even if the fitted tyre recommends higher pressure and must be run with tubeless tyres (not clincher). You can still put an inner tube in if you’re in a pinch provided it is with a tubeless ready tyre.
You should assemble and tighten your centerlock or 6 bolt rotors in accordance with the manufacturers instructions. We can guide you through these if needed. With some hubs, you may require a 15/20mm centerlock lockring in place of the previous QR/12mm lockring.
If you require a 6 bolt to centerlock adaptor, let us know prior to despatch of your wheels and we can provide.
For carbon rims, you should set your brake blocks to run at the lowest portion of the brake track (furthest from the tyre). This ensures good heat dissipation and avoidance of heat failure.
For both alloy and carbon rims, you should ensure your calliper is straight and contacting both sides of the brake track in unison when puling the brake lever. The brake blocks must not touch the tyre or anywhere outside of the brake track on the rim.
Truing & Servicing
Truing | We build our wheels to last and may never require truing. However, we know accidents happen and ride ending potholes aren’t going away. Thankfully you can rest assured; for peace of mind we offer *free truing for the life of your wheels. All you need to do is return them to us at any time and we’ll get them spinning as good as new for you.
Hub Servicing | Even the best hubs need some love in their life. We want our wheels to last and serve you well for years to come. As wheel specialists we also offer hub servicing, providing a range of different bearing options, only use premium selected greases and can source spares for our entire range of hubs if required.
Servicing Options | We would prefer you send your wheels back to us directly for servicing, but they can be serviced by any good professional mechanic. Whilst we only use components which are readily serviceable with standard tools and never give you proprietary component headaches, we do not recommend working on your wheels yourself. The wrong tools, uneven or excessive spoke tensions, or poor technique for turning spokes can very easily lead to premature spoke failures, or worse; hub or rim failure.
*While we offer free labour for truing, we do not cover the cost of any replacement spokes required or return postage and packaging costs.
Service Intervals
Hubs
Service | Annually or roughly every 5000km
Your hubs are one of the highest precision mechanical components of your entire bike. While many hubs can take a lot of abuse, for optimum performance, an annual service is recommended for most and will go a long way to extending the life of your wheels. While this can be attempted by competent home mechanics, especially a simple clean and re-grease, it is best, particularly with bearing replacements, to be undertaken by an experienced mechanic with the correct and high quality tools.
Spokes
Only if they fail or are damaged
Spokes only need replacement in the event of failure or damage.
We almost exclusively use spokes manufactured by Sapim. Should you require spares, get in touch and we’ll be happy to provide the lengths, spoke type, and nipple type you require and supply directly to you if you wish. If you give them to a local bike shop, watch out for them fitting from stock of the wrong gauge (diameter) spokes. The difference in stiffness will be detrimental to spoke life due to the imbalanced load distribution around the wheel.
Rims
Following any visible damage or brake track wear
Rims are very resilient things, but rim brake in particular do eventually wear out from simple material loss. Keep an eye on the amount of rim wear or any signs of damage. If ever in doubt or you would simply like a second opinion, just get in touch for more advice.
Truing & Tensioning
Only if any spokes lose tension or the wheel goes visibly out of true
Whilst we can confidently say our wheels will stay true for longer than any factory wheelset, we also recognise that accidents do happen. So whether you’ve come up short bunny hopping onto a kerb or you’ve had a prang, get in touch to make use of our free truing for the life of your wheels.
Tubeless
All our rims (2020 onwards) are tubeless tyre compatible, but all other than our hookless gravel carbon option are equally suitable for clincher tyres. We inevitably have plenty of riders therefore asking whether they should be shifting to tubeless?
Well we’re not a marketing company trying to sell you tyres, so we will try to give you some open, honest advice:
- First and foremost, if you can’t confidently decipher the difference between clincher, tubeless, and tubular, or have a team mechanic on hand, we really do recommend sticking to clincher.
- If your wheels are for off-road use and / or you plan to fit tyres over 32mm, we absolutely recommend tubeless. This system requires much lower pressures and the main drawback of potentially not sealing punctures and ending up in a mess at the side of the road is greatly diminished.
- If you wheels are for pure road use and going to have a tyre width of less than 30mm; it really depends on your own priorities. If you are willing to accept some compromise and additional maintenance in the interest of optimising performance, give tubeless a go and you can always go back to clincher if you don’t get on with it. However, if you’re seeking fit and forgot, steer clear and stick to clincher.
- Most tubeless tyres are very tight; to the point that if you struggle to remove a normal clincher tyre, it’s really important to work on your technique to avoid damaging your rims when removing a tubeless tyre. Always push the entirety of your tyre bead into the centre channel of the rim by hand before getting your tyre levers out.
- With a higher volume of air within your tyre, there is also more pressure acting on your rim; to the point of lowering spoke tensions once fitted. If you do decide to give tubeless a go, we highly recommend buying your tyres through us when we build your wheels so we can check and re-tension if required once fitted.
If you are still unsure, we’re happy to talk you through the pros and cons and the technical details. To help inform your decision though, the main pros and cons of tubeless vs clincher are listed below:
- Lower rolling resistance
- Lower impedance losses
- Improved comfort
- More grip
- Punctures may self-heal
- Setup can be very challenging
- Sealant levels need upkeep
- Bad punctures = a big mess
- Some tyre brands do not meet the tolerances needed for safe use
Rider Weight Limits
Rider weight less than 85kg? No problem.
Otherwise, just get in touch before or when you purchase.
With all our wheels being custom and hand built, we can adjust specifications and component choices to suit almost any rider weight. However, if your intended system weight (rider + bike + any luggage) will exceed 110kg, please make sure to contact us first so we can advise on suitability of components accordingly.
Dynamic Balancing
When a wheel spins, any imbalance in weight creates a centrifugal force. This can be easily seen when you put a bike in a stand or lift the rear wheel off the ground and spin it at high revolutions: the bike will begin to visibly shake. The worse the imbalance, the worse the shaking.
The Cause | Irrelevant of how evenly distributed the weight of the wheelset itself is, a tubeless or inner tube valve inevitably creates an imbalanced weight. The deeper your rim, the higher this imbalance will likely be.
Why it matters | At maximum speeds, either descending or sprinting, a slight 7g imbalance (about the weight of a valve) can result in the equivalent of a 1kg force trying to hop each wheel up and down beneath you. Although this will not effect your safety due to rider weight keeping the wheels planted, it does lead to significant vibrations through your bike. This in turns creates a feeling of instability, reducing handling confidence when you need it most.
Our dynamic balancing | by purchasing your tyres through us, as an optional part of the setup we can counter-balance the wheel to attain an even weight distribution around the axle. While this increases the weight of your wheelset by 10-25g, it is highly worthwhile; increasing the life of your bearings and improving the stability of your bike. Although our method of balancing is one of our little secrets. However, rest assured the aesthetics of your wheels will remain unaffected and can be removed or re-balanced at a later date if the valve / tyre system is changed.