I've been toying with the idea of some new wheels at some point (although I probably can't afford them) & Hunt have 33% off some of their carbon gravel wheels at present; they seem well reviewed.
These though have hookless rims and this is new to me (beyond a vague awareness that they exist). I've read Hunt's hooked vs hookless bumpf and get that slightly lighter/cheaper etc. is good but can't get beyond the fact that the tyres won't be hooked onto the rim.
The wheels have a max. pressure level of around 72ish psi which is way beyond what I need, but again rather suggest thats the tyres could pop off.
Hunt's H-Lock system still talks about locking & seating the tyres & that most rims are now hookless (the suggestion seems to be that only tubed tyres need hooks).
Since there doesn't seem to be a spate of folk loosing their tyres, am I just [still] behind the times? I do like the nice 'crack' of new tyres seating.
The rims should still have a tubeless bed, so they still seat. Just less of a crack!
The wheels have a max. pressure level of around 72ish psi which is way beyond what I need, but again rather suggest thats the tyres could pop off.
This is specific to a limited range of tyre sizes, up to 29mm wide. After that the max pressure drops http://www.schwalbe.com/en/tubeless-racing-bike-requirement/
I fail to see the benefit of hookless for the average rider and you'll possibly limit tyre choice. Scroll down for the compatible Conti range http://www.continental-tyres.co.uk/tyre-knowledge/hookless-vs-hooked-rims/
If it's exclusively for gravel and associated lower pressures, your probably fine. After nearly a decade of the industry trying to move to hookless, there may be a trend towards manufacturers putting hooks back onto rims because the tyre and rim people never got their ducks in a row to settle on a standard. That and people tending to over pressure tyres because that's the pressure they'd always run.
My 10p worth on hookless is that it falls into the same camp as pressfit BBs. A cost saving in manufacture was found and a technical benefit was contrived to fit.
TLDR: go for it. Hunt wheels are inexpensive and the warranty is solid should they go wrong.
After nearly a decade of the industry trying to move to hookless, there may be a trend towards manufacturers putting hooks back onto rims because the tyre and rim people never got their ducks in a row to settle on a standard. That and people tending to over pressure tyres because that's the pressure they'd always run.
My 10p worth on hookless is that it falls into the same camp as pressfit BBs. A cost saving in manufacture was found and a technical benefit was contrived to fit.
Still upset they could never all agree on how to make UST work - sealantless tubeless.
I have a hookless set of 303s that seat tyres with a mighty crack - very satisfying.
If there is a heightened risk it's that a defective bead could fail catastrophically, whereas a trad hooked rim might mitigate that (although a defective bead is bad news regardless istm). What is the QA like for tyre beads in the industry? Probably pretty good, but not perfect - hence hookless angst.
An insert on a carbon gravel wheel is a good idea if you're seeing rocky terrain. That welds the tyre on once it's packed down, hookless or hooked.
I have some hookless Hunt carbon gravel wheels that are a few years old and so far no problems.
I've had non-tubeless tyres blow off Stans Arch rims (i.e. old hooked alloy ones) above the max recommended pressure (IIRC it was something really low like 32psi?). Not something I'd want to repeat. The bead was actually fine afterwards for the life of the tyre.
It's probably fine with the right tyres and pressures, but my understanding was the benefit only really exists if the tyre is designed around it? The whole concept of a smooth sidewall could work just as well with hooked rims if the tyres were molded to the right shape, didn't Mavic release a TT tyre and rim combo with a piece of flashing that covered the gap (which the UCI promptly banned).
If there is a heightened risk it's that a defective bead could fail catastrophically, whereas a trad hooked rim might mitigate that (although a defective bead is bad news regardless istm). What is the QA like for tyre beads in the industry? Probably pretty good, but not perfect - hence hookless angst.
I had a fat bike tyre explode on me, complete with abut 300ml of fresh sealant atomized across the garage. It was at the max pressure to make sure it was seated when the bead just snapped.
Still upset they could never all agree on how to make UST work - sealantless tubeless.
Superficially they do conform to the same 'standard', just omitting the air-tight from the factory requirements because people realized it was both easier and lighter to have the tyre and rim the right shape then add tape and sealant rather than mess around with proprietary nipples and 100g+ weigh penalties for non-porous tyres. I've generally found Maxxis and Vittoria tyres hold air without sealant anyway.
I’ve had hookless rims for years and used many different tyres - never checked any compatibility requirements and never had an issues.
I think there is a concern about hookless but i don’t think it applies in it use case.
On the road riders are pushing the limits of narrowish tyres on wide rims. This is to form a more aerodynamic shape. This has caused problems. But gravel will be using wider tyres and less pressure
This podcast will cover it. I think josh porter did a video too
Thanks all, it would appear to be my usual unease around stuff I haven't tried before (I'm still a tad nervous about my carbon bars & forks!).
I'm not a skilled or technical rider & miles away from needing to worry about minor aerodynamic gains, I just want to be reasonably safe.
When the time comes for new wheels I shall certainly consider hookless 👍
My 10p worth on hookless is that it falls into the same camp as pressfit BBs. A cost saving in manufacture was found and a technical benefit was contrived to fit.
Very much agree with that^^...
I honestly think hookless is now a bit of a dead end (like some of the PF BB standards mentioned). That's prompted mostly by the assumption that hookless is primarily for high end wheels; the major cost saving would be in moulding composite rims, not extruded Aluminium profiles (does anyone do a hookless Aluminium rim yet?). My contention now would be that higher price point customers tend to be a bit more 'discerning' perhaps when lobbing money at fancy wheels, and if they are are still nervous/unsure about hookless are the likely lost sales actually worth the tooling/manufacturing cost savings?
What I would say to the OP is to look at what is available in the way of hookless tyres for the application you have in mind. you can get pretty much everything for hooks, but not everything has a hookless equivalent currently.
There's some odd things on the market and different tyre manufacturers seem to very different ideas about implementing hookless.
Weird example: I bought a tube type Rubino the other day, when blowing it up I noted that it has two sets of Max/Min pressures on the sidewall for hooks and hookless (about 10psi Lower for hookless IIRC). Prompting the question in my head, who is running Hookless with tubes?
Prompting the question in my head, who is running Hookless with tubes
Erm, I am. In fact, I even started a thread about it four years ago...
Four years later, after running various 2.4" tyres at 30psi on both those Mavic and also a hookless Stan's rim? It's a non-issue (at that pressure).
For mtb it's absolutely fine, for road the verdict still seems to be out?
There's a story and it might even be true, that Specialized (who were the first big company to go hookless) hired a new guy who had Lightbicycle hookless rims, and said "Let's do this too". Specialized said "But we need hooks", he said "why", they said "we don't know. Hmm", looked at the new guy's rims, pretty much copied them, found it worked great and invented hookless rims 😉
I mean probably they were most interested in the simpler manufacturing but it does benefit us too, every gram not invested in a hook we don't need goes into rim strength that we do (or weight savings that we don't). It also helps make rim sidewall height lower, which not every manufacturer has taken on board but again works better for us- fattens tyres fractionally (because tyres aren't round, they're lightbulb shaped) and reduces grams/adds strength, delete as applicable. Though admittedly while it makes dings less likely it can make a ding more severe.
Still upset they could never all agree on how to make UST work - sealantless tubeless.
IMO this thread shows up yet another way in which UST deserved to fail tbh. It made for a complicated, more expensive, weaker-for-the-same-weight or heavier-for-the-same-strength rim that was harder to build wheels with (which is why Mavic always flat out lied about the weights), reduced tyre choice and made them heavier and more expensive too, and mandated a hook bead which it turned out we don't actually need. And we all ran sealant anyway because of course we did. My own fully UST combo wasn't airtight anyway because someone had stuck a staple through the tyre in the packaging, but I didn't care because I'd have put sealant in regardless because I'm not daft.
In the end the only real benefit was not having to tape your rims. But in these days of wide, welded rims that's a minor benefit anyway because we can just tape the middle, and other solutions exist for that same thing.
Agree with Northwind about full UST.
You could still get a flat so sealant was still useful/necessary and weighty rims.
I have an old 819 rimmed wheel that's survived 22 years now with barely a tweak of the spoke key. The construction was sound as was the clever bead seating channel but a wide rim, sticky tape, sealant and an Air Shot is an altogether better answer. Even (ghetto) rim strips were probably a better answer when you look at the weight/hassle.
UST was great for a few years early 00s because it was miles more reliable than ghetto set-ups at the time, ime. Mavic needed to evolve it, though, and they didn't seem arsed - I guess the basic idea was always going to get overtaken by tlr tyres and a rim strip, but they were wedded to those 819s for years, tyre choice was reasonable but not inspiring iirc.
Adding weight to a bike wheel is like making them mildly radioactive, in marketing terms. Even if some UST technical innovation could be found, it would never have been viable in light of added weight. Even today when we've largely freed ourselves from MTB weight being a primary consideration, you can't pitch heavy wheels to the market.
