Stan’s NoTubes Fat Bike Rims and Carbon Valors

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Lurking in the back of the memory card from this year’s PressCamp was this story about Stan’s new fatbike, gravel and racer-boy rims.

Here’s DeeJay looking bearded and tubeless in the desert

 

Back in September last year, we brought you a spy shot of an unfinished fat bike (or ‘Plus Size Bike’ to be fair) tubeless-compatible rim from Stan’s NoTubes. The unfinished rim had ‘487g’ Magic Markered onto it, which got the fat bike community very excited. The production ‘Hugo’ rim isn’t quite that light, but it’s still impressive. Interestingly, the Stan’s website quotes weights for 26, 27.5 and 29in rims. Fatbike 27.5ers anyone? Weights are listed as 560g-622g . It also quotes the price as being $695, so who knows?

 

Just call him Hugo.

 

52mm wide!
Hugo section
Wide, yet track-pumpable?

 The clever bit about the Hugo, at least when it comes to running it tubeless, is that the tyre bead lives in a channel near the sidewall of the rim, rather than in a central channel. This means that the bead doesn’t have far to travel to seal into place – and Stan’s is confident that you’ll be able to inflate it with a track pump.

Wide pair.

 

Offset spoke holes.

Of interest to those chunky road bike fans is the new Grail rim. This is a rim that GT asked for for its new gravel-style road bike, though we reckon that it’ll find fans elsewhere too.

The Grail will also run higher pressures than the Iron Cross.
Grail section

 

Grail

 

Here’s a Stan’s Hugo with a Maxxis Chronicle 29+ tyre.

 

Fast and smooth.

 

Stan’s Valor carbon rims are now in production, having been launched last year – offering lighter wheels, but for a $1900 cost. Hopefully we’ll get some in for a try soon.

 

Comes with an extra ‘U’ sticker for British spelling.

 

 

Looks very Valor-y. Geddit?

 

 

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Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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Comments (4)

    40mpg40mpg July 29, 2014 at 4:41 pm

    So whats the minimum pressure you can run tyres at on the Hugo’s? Given I run 7-9psi depending on terrain will the tyres retain pressure this low?

    ChippsChipps July 29, 2014 at 4:56 pm

    I shall find out for you.

    PacemanPaceman July 29, 2014 at 5:05 pm

    Like the look of those Maxxis Chronicle tyres too. Hope they’re out before winter.

    ChippsChipps July 30, 2014 at 4:35 pm

    Stan’s says: “We’ve tested down to 2psi with a 4in tire which is essentially unrideable but the tire bead remains in position and air tight. Since most will use the Hugo 52 rims for the “Plus” bikes with a 3in or so tire, I would suspect the average user to be in the 10-18psi range. In our somewhat limited experience on a 29+ bike, the sweet spot for most of us was 12-16psi.”

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