I was all ready to buy a set of the Hunt 4 Season Gravel X-Wide Disc wheels, when I stumbled upon these DT Swiss G 1800 SPLINE DB 25, which are £40 cheaper, even with postage. Are they similar, better, worse?

Also, if we need moar internal width for our bigger tyres, why are we not running trail rims, with 30mm internal width, on gravel bikes…?

Also, if we need moar internal width for our bigger tyres, why are we not running trail rims, with 30mm internal width, on gravel bikes…?

Because youre running 30-47mm gravel tyres, not 2.6 high rollers.

Other than that Ive no knowlege of those wheels, id probably rather have the dtswiss though. Ive got crests at the moment, and would say not those as getting the rear to stay true is a nightmare as even at 100% of the max soke tension on the drive side the disk side is still almost nothing.

Aside from being 100g heavier, there’s not much in it, both are decent wheelsets. The weight would sway me to the Hunt’s personally, the DT hubs are decent but pretty basic with low engagement, so again, the Hunt’s win it here for me.

The other ‘negative’ of XC wheels is counterintuitively, weight!

Road rims weigh ~450g or therrabouts. There are lighter and more fragile rims, and heavier touring rims. But on the whole the average rim is about 450g.

An average XC rim is 380-400g. Despite the pounding they take off road, thats offset by having 2.3″ of squish taking out all but the biggest of impacts.

For £330 or thereabouts though you could probably get either a set of hope factory built wheels, or have a go at building your own.

Hubs -£180
Dt r460 rims and dt comp spokes from rose/bike-discount.de depending whos cheapest at the moment £80.

Total = £260, leaving £70 for a jig and use the free how-to on the sheldon brown site (or just get someone else to do it).

30mm or wider – I’d have trouble squeezing the tyre into my frame (Tripster mk1).
Just bought a rear of these https://www.bike-components.de/en/Mavic/Allroad-Center-Lock-Disc-Wheelset-p66682/ and it’s tight with a 35c Schwalbe G-one

Road wheelsets have to be able to take high pressures, I’ve recently changed my rims to 23mm internal WTB MTB rims. Narrower MTB rims / wheels can be had pretty cheap nowadays.

DT hubs are far superior to the rebadged Novatec that Hunt use, if you step up to the CR1600(22mm internal) or PR1800 (18mm internal)disc then you get DT350 hubs and can change the star ratchet for almost as many engagement points as you want.

My money would go on the DT’s any day of the week.

@steve_b77 I could probably afford the DT Swiss GR 1600 SPLINE 25, but then something else in the build would have to give to allow for the extra £100 or so. I could wait until the new year for the fancy Spank Vibrocore drop bars and Ergon saddle, which would mean I could afford them. Decisions, decisions…

@thisisnotaspoon I did look at trying to getting Spank Flare Vibrocore rims, Hope hubs, and then getting them built locally, but the cost was ridiculous.

The dt r460 are <£30 a rim from ze germans.

I’ve had them on my sscx/gravel bike all summer with zero problems (kinda as you’d expect seeing as they’re built on symmetrical hubs).

For my gravel bike I’m giving the rear crest another few hundred miles to see if a bit of bedding in improves it, and if not will be swapping it for a WTB ASYM i19 on the rear which is the closest width/most asymmetric/cheapest alternative I could find (the front’s been bombproof).

N.b. if you want to race cross or ride in the mud, consider deep section carbon rims, not for the aero effect, they just don’t clag with anywhere near as much mud.

@thisisnotaspoon yeah, but they don’t have that fancy vibration damping thingie in them… 🤷‍♂️

I just wish @steve_b77 hadn’t mentioned DT Swiss wheels, as Bike Discount have the GR 1600 Spline® 25 wheels for four hundred notes. Looking at my spreadsheet and my bank account, I can afford those if I don’t buy a new saddle.

@k1100t
Get the wheels, you can always get a saddle later, or just ride a cheap one for now.

Also using DT R460 which I have ridden around 2,000 miles of gravel and off road running high pressure narrowish tyres and all is fine. A nice, low price rim.

yeah, but they don’t have that fancy vibration damping thingie in them

Neither do the factory DT or hunt……..

I’m sure it has some advantages, but top of my list when building wheels is usually “can I get the rims for <£30”, closely followed by “Is duvel a good choice of beverage when building wheels for cobbles” .

The R460 is only 18 mm internal so a bit narrow for gravel, the R 500 (22mm) and G 540 (24 mm) would be better bets, wider but same construction and similar price.

Lady who won the transcontinental was on R500s. Fiona?