Author Archives: jon

If you ever wondered what processes go into making rims this movie from H Plus Son should clear a few things up (except for a big black square where they seem to have censored something during the rim rolling section).

Sram XX1 is trickling out to a few lucky riders and we are regularly asked what hubs are compatible, or indeed which are upgradeable at a later date if you decide to splash out, or wait until Sram 11-speed trickles down to cheaper groupsets.

The good news is that as far as we know, pretty much every rear cassette hub will be upgradeable with a freehub body change and a drive-side spacer - so no need for new wheels, unless you want to of course. As of mid-December 2012 when I wrote this, XD-driver (the official name for the freehubs) conversion kits are available now or in the near future for these hubs:

American Classic Disk 225 (available now)
Hope Pro 2 Evo (available now)
DT Swiss 240 and 350 (available now)
Industry Nine (available now)
Stan's NoTubes ZTR 3.30 hubs (end of March 2013)

At the time of writing, the latest unofficial word from Chris King is that they may make one in future but are too busy at the moment.

We don't yet have them all listed on the website so if you need a wheel with an XD driver, or a conversion kit, please contact us and we'll get you one.

The light, bright, stiff wheels from North Carolina are due back BACK NOW! in stock at JRA soon after 2 or 3 years away (that's why all our photos show old rims), sometime in December we hope now. As before we're building on Stan's NoTubes rims, with others to order if the spoke lengths match up.

The first thing to notice about Industry Nine wheelsets is the bright colours and anodised aluminium spokes but there's a lot more to them than that. 120 engagement points in the hubs, unbelievable stiffness from the thick (but light) spokes, interchangeability between all the usual axle types...

The wheels come in a few formats; Mountain bike wheels come with XC or Enduro hub options (details below), and 3 different spoke thicknesses. They are available in 26", 650b and 29er sizes, and with Shimano/Sram 9/10 speed or Sram XD (for XX1 11-speed) freehubs. Front hubs to fit the Cannondale Lefty forks are also available. Then there's a singlespeed rear hub too...basically there's an I9 hub to fit virtually any bike. Expected prices for standard colours (red, black, silver) is around £780 per pair of wheels, custom colours are extra (probably £60 - £80 per pair).

I had a pair (the orange ones in the photos below) and loved riding them. The stiffness of the aluminium spokes and the Stan's Flow rims was like no other wheels I've ridden. They are strong too; I never broke a spoke or had the wheel go out of true even after a load of races and the Megavalanche.

Then there are the "classic" hubs; same internals as the wheelsets but with conventional flanges for normal J-bend steel spokes.

Finally the road hubs, these weren't available back when we first built Industry Nine wheels so we're still working out the options, but the hubs look every bit as good as the MTB hubs and come in at just 86g front, 240g rear with a 39(!) tooth drive ring and 3 pawls for low drag - road hubs just don't need the fast take-up of the MTB hubs.

Probably the strongest 29er wheels we've built so far, with a few custom touches we thought they were worth putting up on the blog with a few words.

The Enve AM 29er rim is one of the strongest around, and to complete the bombproof build they were specced with Chris King ISO disk hubs including a stainless steel drive shell (freehub body). Not that we've had any trouble with the aluminium ones.

Most of our Enve builds use Sapim CX-Ray or DT Revolution spokes. The 2.0mm internal spoke nipples mean that DT Supercomps with their 1.8mm thread can't be used, however we needed extra strength for this build so Sapim's new D-Light spoke (2.0-1.65mm double butted) came to the rescue. Weight for 32 spokes in 288mm length comes to 170g.

Wheel weights: Front 824g, rear 1009g

The customer sent us a quick email after trying them out....

"Just wanted to report back on my first ride on these wheels, they're amazing!  You were right, night and day [compared] with my previous wheels.

Spent a few hours riding around Surrey, Pitch, Winterfold and Holmbury. Initially had to re-learn to ride downhill again, turn-in is so much quicker, cornering is incredibly precise. Only did one little drop (Judges Seat), the wheels feel very solid upon landing :-)"

Hope Pro2 Evo laced to H Plus Son Archetype rim

I first wrote this article in autumn 2011 but things have moved on a lot since then with a greater choice of wheel components and some products being discontinued. It's a long one so for a whistle-stop tour of our best cross components  keep reading after the "more" link.

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While most of the torch relay and associated propaganda around the Olympics has passed us by we couldn't help but notice the way police deal with high level security risks such as small boys on BMX bikes. Luckily the attack was thwarted at the last moment as an SAS reject grabbed "the target" around the neck and threw him to the floor, before hauling him up by the belt and launching him and his bike along the pavement. Let's just hope that the "torch security detail" aren't allowed into the velodrome or Sir Chris might get more than he bargained for.

While we drown under yet another deluge of rain Dan's been playing with the GoPro mount options in Chamonix, enjoy as the rain hammers on the windows. For anyone else riding in Chamonix, I recommend using a tyre with actual tread left on it, don't follow Dan's example or you may die.

The proliferation of tubeless ready tyre and rim designs has resulted in some significant compatibility issues where certain tyre and rim combinations don't work well together, or in some cases are dangerous. Actually these problems have existed since people started using tubeless tyres but it's got worse recently as different manufacturers come up with their own ideas for the perfect tubeless setup. This article is a brief summary of tubeless tyre/rim dos and don'ts.

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