Tag Archives: Hope

Surly Clown Shoe rims on Hope Fatsno hubs

It's hard to look at these wheels without smiling, they are so utterly crazy but they are going to be used in a very serious race where I don't think grinning and clowning around get you anywhere. Aidan Harding contacted us for sponsorship for some wheels for his new Singular fatbike, the Puffin, to be used in the 2014 Iditarod Invitational. Note the 1 year testing period. None of the usual "can you get me the wheels for the race this Sunday" business.

It's hard to get a sense of scale for these wheels from the photos so here are a few factoids:
Rims are 26" diameter (559mm), although with the 4.7" Big Fat Larry or the 4.8" Bud and Lou tyres they measure up at 2 inches bigger diameter than a normal 29er tyre. (782mm against a 29er at 736mm). They are 100mm wide, that's 4 times the width of a normal mountain bike rim. The rims weigh in at 960g each, which sounds a lot but they are so big they actually feel quite light when you pick them up. Recommended tyre pressures are something like 6-10psi (1/2 to 3/4 bar). When you inflate the tyres, the rim tapes bulge through the holes and look cool. You can get different coloured rim tapes for this reason. Lacing the wheels was straightforward enough and the rims are nice and round out of the box. Truing them pushed our wheel stands to the limits, both for the hub width and rim width.

If you're not familiar with the Iditarod, the full distance is 1100 miles across Alaska in February and March - there is a "short" 300 mile race too - but Aidan holds the singlespeed record for the 1100 miles of 17 days, 9 hours, 15 minutes for the southern route. That's only 3 hours behind the geared bike record. I don't think gears count for much in that kind of snow. Aiden also holds another record, the only article I've read from start to finish in Privateer (about the Grenzsteintrophy).

Keep up with Aidan on his own website http://www.aidanharding.com/

buy Surly Clown shoe rims or contact us for custom wheel builds (Snow bike parts are not in our online builders yet ! )

This is one of our more custom-custom wheelsets, some wheels for a customer building a cargo bike frameset from scratch.

They are smaller than our average wheel build with twenty inch Velocity Aeroheat rims laced to Sturmey Archer rear 3 speed internal hubs which feature a 9 speed cassette body giving the customer 27 gears, and it's a Hope Pro II Evo front hub in red.

We didn't weigh them before they went out but the Sturmey Archer F30 hub (which, confusingly, also seems to go by the name of "CS-RK3") weighs in at 1155g, quite a chunky beast but not bad considering the number of gears.

Left to right: Hope pro II, Chris King R45, DT Swiss aluminium nipples, NoTubes Crest older "Cherry red" and new red anodised (rear).

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We've assembled a small team for 2012 of riders who are all co-sponsered - as you can't get far on just a pair of wheels, its our first year to do something more formal so something we hope can grow. We have 5 mtb riders from a mixture of categories.

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Tom  Bell
Category - Elite men, ranked 9th in 2011.
Tom is riding for MSC bikes and Just Riding Along.
Wheels : Tom has gone for the instock racers favorite of American Classic Hubs on NoTubes Podium rims.

Tom was ranked 9th in Elite Men last year and riding full time in 2012.  With plans to race in the UK National Points series and in Europe this season as well as regional UK races.

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Melanie Alexander
Category - Elite women
Melanie is riding for Cyclopedia and Just Riding Along
Wheels:  Mel is riding a 29er this year and we've built up the American Classic hubs on NoTubes Crest rims with Sapim CX-Ray spokes and purple nipples.

Mel finished 3rd overall Elite in British Mountain Bike Series 2011 and is racing in 2012 as well as writing her blog on XC Racer website.

Mels first ride on her new wheels:
"I had a great weekend of mtbing trying out the new wheels. Could not resist a ride to Cawncarn and back on Saturday encluding a fast timed lap of Cawncarn to test out the new wheels and bike and was dead chuffed when I rode my quickest lap ever. "

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Jason Hucklesby
Category - Expert men
Jason is riding for BNFS and Just Riding Along
Wheels: Jason gone for the American Classic hubs in white and the polished ZTR Podium rims for the favourite combination but looks a bit different.

Jason has had a year out and returning to expert,  planning to do most of the national series, national champs, southern xc, rampage series and select other events such as the Brighton Big Dog. Hoping to build up to top 5 and podium places at a national level

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Gregg Booker
Category - Youth Men (under 16)
Gregg is riding for Matlock CC and Just Riding Along
Wheels: Gregg has the NoTubes ZTR hubs with the NoTubes ZTR Podium rims making a light race ready set.

Gregg was ranked 7th in 2011 and moving up to Youth in 2012 so will be racing his first year as a Youth rider. He hopes to stay top 10 in the Midlands XC series and to be ranked nationally in the top 15 for Mountainbike XC.

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Matt Wiggley
Matt is riding the Gravity Enduro series and testing our new Pacenti rims.

Wheels: We've built Matt a pair of Hope ProII Evos for the easy conversion onto the new Pacenti TL-28 rims to see how they suit the Gravity Enduro racing.

Inital impressions were good:
"Just a quick note to say my Pacenti wheels turned up yesterday and what can I say, They look almost like full on downhill rims but soo soo light!!!   I fitted my minion single ply 2.35 folding tyres and they blew up tubeless very easy first time too."

We've had some nice feedback recently so we thought we'd add some to our blog, normally we're the modest type but here are some recent happy customers.

This post was posted in new articles, wheelsets, Just Riding Along and was tagged with customer, gold, Hope, NoTubes

Q: I'm after a set of light weight road wheels for summer use I'm 65Kg and have been looking at stans alpha 340 rims but not sure on spoke count or type i.e. sapim or DT's for my weight. Also not exactly sure on hub type I have looked at hope pro 3 & american classic appear light. I'm hoping for  around 1300g for the set. My budget is £600 Can you advise from the details provided and help point me in the right direction, I ride about 4/5 sportive's a year and ride in europe. I only need wheels for summer better weather.

A: To get the weight under 1300g and keep the price to £600, it would definitely need to be the Alpha 340 rims. Hope Pro 3 hubs are not particularly light; you would not get the wheels under 1300, more like 1350g with 28h front and rear (the lowest drilling the Pro 3 go to). American Classic road front hubs come in two flavours, the Micro 58 which is just about the lightest hub you can get at 58g, or the 105g "105" (a large flange hub similar to the mountain bike ones). At 65kg and using the wheels in good conditions during the summer, you would probably find 24h front, 28h rear adequate (and could go less if you really wanted to save the grams). A 24h/28h micro 58 / Road 205 set would come in at 1217g, or with the larger hub, 1264g. From your description of intended use, I would say the American Classic set with a Micro 58 front hub would be the best bet. It's easily the lightest, and the price is pretty good too. Regarding the spokes, the DT Revolution and Sapim CX-Ray are the equal lightest spokes we use, but the bladed CX-Ray will give a small aerodynamic advantage; I recently saw a test report from Zipp which reckons on 10W per wheel, which is a huge saving, I can't imagine it being quite that big in reality but it all helps. Unfortunately it adds quite a bit to the cost.

Q: Do you have any problems with American classic ? easy enough to get spares for/reliable etc ?

A: We carry every spare possible for American Classic, actually having said that we don't have Micro 58 parts but I will ensure that we do get some in. We've never been asked for any which is a good sign. Generally, we have no problems at all with AC hubs. They are some of the most reliable around these days.

24/28h should be fine. You could go for 28h both ends if you were concerned but 24/28 is the most common combination we build and there have been no complaints. I would be happy riding them in the Alps and am around your weight.

We took some of our newest and latest wheels to the Bespoked hand made bicycle show in Bristol. The Enve carbon wheelsets (both mountain bike and road) were predictably the main attraction for a lot of people, but the second most popular wheels were at the other end of the price scale - Miche road hubs on Ambrosio road rims for £244. Other MTB highlights were cherry red Crests, 650b's, triplet spoke lacing and Alfine 11spds. On the road side, Chris King R45 hubs built on Alpha 340 rims were looking good.

We have recreated the show in our own yard, some of the wheels are now for sale at a small discount, but all are available as custom builds to your own specification. There will be a part 2 coming soon with the rest.

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Pro 2 Evo wheel builds are now available here with selected rims at reduced prices, or you can spec a fully custom build in the custom wheelbuilder.

NEW INSTOCK BUILD
Our new instock Hope ProII hub on NoTubes ZTR Arch EX rim offers great value with the Super Comp spokes at the same price as our Competition spokes prices from £353 here > with the ZTR ArchEX 29er for just £356. All hub/ rim colour and axle combinations available for no extra charge.

Hope's Pro 2 hub hasn't changed a whole lot in many years so the new EVO (for Evolution) which replaced the standard Pro 2 last week has been generating a lot of interest. There's not a lot of definitive information out there about the changes, so we've been finding out about them.

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