Educate me on road / gravel wheels

New to road bikes (and gravel bikes) but am I right in thinking that all road wheel axles are 100mm at the front 142 at the rear and then all I need to do is make sure that the rear hub is correct ?

I want a new set of wheels for my gravel bike and I think I just need 15mm axel, 100 front, 142 rear and a Shimano free hub on 700c?

Are there other factors I need to consider ?

It may depend on the bike you are putting them on. If it’s fairly modern and has disc brakes then yes it’s likely to be 100mm front and 142mm rear but 12mm axles not 15mm.

If it’s older and has quick release axles and rim brakes then 100mm front and 130mm rear was the usual standard.

Some early disc road/gravel bikes were 100/135 QR and post mount, are you looking at new or used?

99% of modern road and gravel bikes will be
12mm 100/142 and flat mount today…

I am fairly sure mine is a 15mm axel (it’s an orange rx9 – on my phone so can’t check at the moment)  but in terms of spacers I have a 10 speed hub on the back so any recent /new Shimano rear hub should have work ?

Re new /used not sure – I suppose if I see a good deal used else the hunt ones seem nice and are about £500 for the pair which works

Have a look at Sigma too. Their own brand, Vel+, are often available at a good price. I think they currently have a deal on Ultegra too.

Orange RX9 uses 12mm axles.. here’s what it says on the orange website

Rear Hub 142 x 12
Rear Axle Length-160mm, Thread-20mm, Pitch-M12X1.5

Front Hub 100 x 12
Front Axle Length-152mm, Thread-20mm, Pitch-M12X1.5

There are a few running 148mm rear and some even running 15×110 front.

Thank you for correcting me on that, I presume that’s a fairly standard size so I should be okay to order from wherever?

Recommendations as to a good gravel wheel set? I presume the hunt ones are good?

 I presume the hunt ones are good

You’ll get conflicting opinions on the hunt ones. Some people love them, others think the quality isn’t great.

I’d look for a pair of DT swiss wheels. Their ER1600 or GR1600 range come with their 350 hubs which are well regarded and have end caps which will swap to fit most road axle combos.

You should be able to get a pair within your £500 budget.

Eg, these from Merlin:

https://www.merlincycles.com/dt-swiss-er-1600-spline-32-disc-road-wheelset-700c-112361.html

Awesome slackboy ! That might be the ticket ! Thank you

what you wanting to change from. Those ER1600 wheels are not exactly light

The wtb oem wheels that came on the bike

Originally I was looking at a set of hope gravel wheels as I like hope goodies but I am not sure which hub I need for the 10 speed Shimano cassette? (I know I can email hope and they are super helpful)

Being in a similar boat just recently, I had narrowed it down to Hope, DT Swiss and Hunt x Mason

my own thoughts on the wheels / brands you mentioned which led me to what I ended up buying

Hope: for me personally, the internal width of the rim, at 19mm was too narrow, I was looking to run circa 45mm tyres and there are some that have run such a wide tyre on 19mm rims without issue, the manufacturers recommendations of 20-40mm bothered me more than it probably should have

Hunt / HuntxMason: I found good reviews and I found bad reviews which you’d expect with anything but the bad reviews consistently mentioned the same issues with the wheels, more so to do with spoke nipples failing and / or rims cracking around the spokes, although I’m sure a vast majority of Hunt wheels will be / are just fine, the thought of potentially spending more on wheel rebuilds when budget was already tight didn’t appeal so much

DT Swiss: I personally couldn’t find any arguments against these wheels, solid, relatively easy to service, nice internal rim width to allow bigger tyres if that’s something you want, easily upgraded free hubs (again, if that’s something you’d look at) readily available hub adaptors to suit your needs, I scoured eBay and picked up a mint condition set of g1800 spline wheels with some new gravel king SK tyres for well under your £500 budget. I’m really happy with them so far

I looked  at so many other wheels over a solid month and a half or so including Halo, Superstar components, Stans and nukeproof but skipped a lot for various reasons but predominantly because budget…

100×142 on a 12mm axle does seem to be the most common or standard(?!) for MOST relative modern bikes and as pointed out above, your RX9 included

as I understand it (not being the most educated in this sort of thing) you be very unlucky or trying super hard to buy a hub that didn’t take a 10 speed cassette (pending spacer installation) please do feel free to point and laugh if I do have that bit wrong though

personally I wasn’t / am not overly concerned about weight (many reasons) so that didn’t really factor in my own decision making

apologies if this has gone off topic somewhat but hopefully even a little might be of some help

I’ve a set of DT Swiss 481 rims running on Hope Pro 5 rear and dynamo SON front that are bearing up well and take tubeless continental tyres easily. The rims aren’t wide internally but suffice for the 38mm and 40mm tyres that I use with them.

I bought a CX that takes 100/130 QR hubs as I had spare wheels. Standard road wheels with either 28c road tyres or 38c gravel (narrow rims). Talking to a chap yesterday with a new gravel bike and he can’t fit bigger that 35c on the front due to clearance with the fork crown. Bit of a design error there with a modern bike.

I recon my CX will take 42/43c although the rims are a bit narrow.

A few things to note from my experience:

• Some if not all lightweight wheels have a weight limit, so be aware of this if you’re a heavier rider or intend to carry bags for bike packing etc.
• 20mm + internal width is plenty wide enough for a gravel rim, it wasn’t all that long ago (it seems) that it was standard to have 17mm wide rims for xc and 19mm for more hardcore mtb riding, and this was with 2.3″ tyres.
• 1800g is a nice weight to aim for, under this you often find that the wheels scrimp on spoke count and can be a bit fragile, also can cost significantly more. Plus can be a touch flexy, this is probably why the rims are now wider, to add sideways stiffness.
• Some hub widths can be adjusted with different adaptors, Hope are brilliant for this but you pay a premium for them, which I think is worth it. Although I bought a set of Prime wheels for my son’s bike that came with 3 sets of adaptors which will be handy if I want to swap them across bikes.
• Make sure you get the right freehub standard to match your drivetrain, although these can be swapped but can cost a fair few quid.
• Aero shaped rims can make a difference on the road or when riding fast off-road, but do sacrifice on comfort, IMO I’d rather stick with a lighter rim with a low profile design as I prefer a bit of comfort in the wheel.
• Consider wheels with standard replaceable parts, and don’t use proprietary bearings, spokes or rims. As these will wear out and need replacing.
• Hub bearings also need to be considered, there is many a thread on the comparison between loose bearings (Shimano, Fulcrum and Campagnolo from the top of my head as well as others use loose bearings) and cartridge bearings. In my opinion I’d go with cartridge type, ideally ones with decent sized ones, although these will be a touch heavier but well worth it in my opinion.

So, essentially, my choice would be either:

1. Buy a cheap set in the sale and ride them into the ground then replace after 12-24 months, lots to choose from that will be around £100, I bought a pair of Fulcrum 77 disc wheels when building up my bike in 2020, these were quite good but the spare parts cost nearly as much as a new wheelset.
2. Buy a pair of traditional built wheels with standard spokes and alloy rims built on a quality hub. Wheels like a pair of Hope / DT Swiss. Dead easy to find spares at a decent price and the hubs will probably outlive the bike.
3. Buy an aero set of carbon rimmed wheels, built as light as you can get away with for your budget, I’d only have these for racing / specific events though as they’d be pricey.

Thanks didnthurt – I think I might go for option number two…. I have hope wheels on my mountain bike. I won’t say I’ve noticed a massive performance improvement but they do look really good!

My Just Riding Along Monitor alloy wheels are pushing past 4500 miles (50/50 on/off road) on my gravel bike, 25mm internals and weigh 1600g – can be had for £400 from the JRA website.

Never had to touch them and still true plus bearings are good – Scotland-based so lots of ‘weather’.

My favourite road wheels are dura ace hubs, mavic cxp33 alloy rims and Sapim race spokes. Hand built by Harry Rowland. Old style rim width but perfectly fine running 30c GP5000’s with latex tubes. Very comfortable over what passes for roads in Surrey. They’ve done Paris Roubaix without incident. My second favourite are my Hed Jet6/9 combo on which I raced yesterday. Wider alloy rim with carbon fairings. Fabulously fast. As @fossy says, my rim braked cross bike will also take silly wide tyres for gravel as needed. I think we over think how wide rims NEED to be for benefits. For reference, I also have a set of wide rim Giant SLR carbon rims which make a 25c look like a 28, but the HED wheels are a nicer ride with better hubs and a stiffer build.

My recommendation is to commission a decent wheel builder to make you something suitable with hubs to choice. I’m currently having carbon rims built up with Royce flip-flop low flange track hub for my fixed wheel road bike. It’s a specific need case, but hand built wheels with conventional hubs and spokes are hard to beat. The rim choice is also much better now.

Or learn to build your own wheels..

I see that sport pursuit have

1800 SPLINE 700C Mountain Bike Wheels (Black)

Now the description is obviously wrong but they are definitely road/gravel wheels and they are £100 an end

Worth a punt?

Aluminium nipples.

Freehub is made of brie  Gruyer

Also, I find those DT Swiss rear hubs to be really slow to engage. You should be able to upgrade them with the ratchet mechanism if you don’t mind a bit of fettling.

I guess not then – may have to be the new hope wheels then ?

Aluminium nipples.

But DT Aluminium nipples… My Sapim aluminium nipples have done approx 5000km and outlasted one set of rims (rim brakes + winter gravel riding) and I’ve even had a Sapim spoke snap for no apparent reason in that time, but no nipple failures.

I got the impression a lot of factory wheelsets came with aluminium nipples now?

Well as a redux to this I bought a set of hope rx24’s in 28 hole straight pull

Should arrive next week ! Really looking forward to them