SRAM Rail 40 Wheels Rolled Out

SRAM’s new Rail 40 wheels are apparently designed to be wheels ‘designed specifically for the modern mountain biker’, which is handy, as it’s to them they’ll be aimed. They’re built for aggressive All-Mountain descents with the ‘strength and stiffness you need’ alongside the critical ‘lightness to climb quickly back to the top’.

They’ve apparently got a WIDE ANGLE™ rim design to provide a ‘new benchmark in stiffness’, the profile mentioned is 23mm – we’ve approached SRAM to determine whether this is the internal or external width.

You can get them in 27.5 and 29er sizes, and in pretty much every common flavour of dropout design or axle width, from QR all the way to BOOST 148. It’s got a whole pile of technologies – XD driver tech (for SRAM cassettes), BOOST (new hub width, WIDE ANGLE (rim profile) and TAPER CORE (rim variable thickness design) as well as the usual 4 pawl ratchet (Double Time), matched bearings (speedball) and single spoke length (Solo Spoke) features.

The wheels will come in from £258 for a front one and from £299 for the rear.

More information is available from SRAM

Barney Marsh

Barney Marsh takes the word ‘career’ literally, veering wildly across the road of his life, as thoroughly in control as a goldfish on the dashboard of a motorhome. He’s been, with varying degrees of success, a scientist, teacher, shop assistant, binman and, for one memorable day, a hospital laundry worker. These days, he’s a dad, husband, guitarist, and writer, also with varying degrees of success. He sometimes takes photographs. Some of them are acceptable. Occasionally he rides bikes to cast the rest of his life into sharp relief. Or just to ride through puddles. Sometimes he writes about them. Bikes, not puddles. He is a writer of rongs, a stealer of souls and a polisher of turds. He isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as he thinks he is.

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