At last they’re here – the NoTubes Alpha 340, Stan’s first foray into the world of road tubeless rims. The high pressures used on the road makes special high strength carbon beads essential to keep the tyres on the rim, but since Hutchinson solved that problem a Stan’s NoTubes road rim has been inevitable.

Despite all the work that’s gone in to the road rims it’s cyclocross riders who’ve been pestering us the most about these rims. The ability to reliably run normal CX tyres tyres as tubeless is something of a holy grail for ‘crossers and that’s where our test set of Alpha road rims will be heading – offroad.

We’ve built some onto some American Classic 105 and 205 hubs with Aerolite spokes and I’ll be fitting them with some Maxxis Raze CX tyres to start with. Price of wheelsets comes in at £637.20 with the American Classic Micro 58 front hub, or £677.70 with the 105 front hubs as shown here.

The samples we’ve weighed come in at just 357g each on average (4 weighed, 352g to 366g). The braking surfaces are machined flat for consistent braking and they’re tubeless compatible by running two layers of Stan’s 21mm yellow tape round and fitting the dedicated Alpha valve stem.