Help!- overweight wheels where do I save the weight?

So my friend has just bought a new bike running tubeless tyres and it has shown me just how ridiculously heavy my wheels are. I’m running MAvic D521 rims on Hope XC hubs front and back with maxxis minion tyres on front and back.

What would people recommend being the best way to shed some weight from this very overweight package? and what would you replace that part with?

Cheers

Yes, they may be heavy, but they’re very good at what they’re designed for.

You can always put rimstrips in and then get some nice light Bontrager tubeless ready tyres, like the XR4s.

What sort of riding do you do? That should be your starting point.

I shed a fair bit of weight off of mine by moving away from Minion tyres.

I think I saved over 400g (nearly 1lb) by doing so.

depends how/where you ride but 521’s are pretty heavy rims…

Sell the wheels to somebody with a jump bike and get some lighter ones.

Hope Pro 2s on Flows will be as tough and far lighter. Combine with some Nobby Nics tubless and you’ll save a ton. An actual metric ton, 1000kg of weight saving, and on your wheels, that’s a lot.

Depends if you’ve got £300 to spend though.

How much do you weigh?
what sort of riding are you doing on the bike they’re for?
How much have you got to spend?
do you want them adaptable to diff. hub standards?

The Superstar Crest and Flow wheelsets offer pretty good value at £230

http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=40&products_id=427

I tend to ride in the peaks on a regular basis but like to get up to the lakes and scotland whenever I can. I weight about 85kg fully geared. Have to admit I like the knowledge that I can hit a downhill as fast as I like and the wheels won’t suffer but I’ve reached a point where I think the weight in the wheels is affecting my rides.

Switching tyres seems like the most obvious way to shift some weight or new rims- does anyone actually know the weight of these D521 rims?

On the minions, what model/size are they? All minions are pretty heavy for the job they do but some are staggeringly heavy.

I’d suggest Pro2s on Flows myself, not sure they’re quite as tough as 521s but they are unreasonably strong for their weight and will stand up to anything most riders throw at them. Not many trail rims with DH world cup wins to their name these days. Also tubeless ready.

D521 are around 600 grms each IIRC. As above sell them on and get some stans.

Who won a world cup on flows? and at what track?

OP – personally I’d stick with your current hubs and just swap over to new rims using the existing spokes (if they’re double butted) building wheels is fairly easy but if you’re not confident just take them to your local wheelbuilder for a true after you’ve laced them.

D521s (EX721) are closer to 570g (about 100g more than a flow)

Yeah I’m not in a position to spend over 200 quid on a new wheelset simply to save weight espcially if GW is right and the rim weight difference is only 100g. Think I’ll look at new rims and tubeless tyres.

Who won a world cup on flows? and at what track?

Sabrina Jonnier ran them all last season, she won a fair bit too… 😀

Pro 2s on flow rims, and then run whatever tyres you fancy. Tyres are quite important and you don’t want some paper thin sidewalled tyres just to save a bit of weight. Obviously aim to choose some that are lighter than Minions, but don’t go mad.

EN521 rim is 540gms, so around there somewhere.
just to give you something else to consider, the American Classic hubs weigh 130gms and 225 gms, Hope pro2 185gms and 285gms, DT 240 146gms and 268gms (all in QR setup, 6 bolt disc).
I think you could get AC hubs built on Flow rims and strong spokes for about £500 @justridingalong.

I use D521/721s on most of my bikes and the rim weight I quoted is accurate, I almost always use 2.35 single ply 60a DHFs and cheap tubes on my hardtail but occasionally for local XC I’ll switch the rear tyre for a cheap 2.0 folding specialized XC tyre weighing about 250-300g less than the minion and the bike becomes noticably quicker to get up to speed and climb on.
also, minions roll a lot quicker for me up at around 40psi on the rear (this won’t help you too much on climbs tho).

women don’t really count 😳

Do you know what spokes are in them at the moment? Might be relevant, there’s a reasonable chance that a tough rim like that would be built up with beefier spokes too.

GW, Sabrina Jonnier runs ’em. As seen at Leogang on the way to a win.

<edit- OK maybe women don’t count but she’d have taken points in the men’s race that day, 30th-ish, which is still not bad for a trailbike rim 😉 >

The Hope factory built Pro2 EVO/Stan’s Flow are 1886gms according to my price list.

The EN521’s are 540gm and the Flows are 470gm according to the respective websites. How much difference is 70gm per wheel going to make vs the cost of changing? £66 per rim for the Flows plus build cost.

Minion’s aren’t the lightest, but I know from bitter experience that lighter tyres are more prone to pinch flats if you are doing big stuff with rocks and/or jumps

Mavic’s weights are often “optimistic” so take that with a pinch of salt, I’d take GW’s word over them on this tbh. Remember the Flows are also tubeless so it opens up other savings.

Tyres are by far the cheapest and easiest way to move to lighter rotating mass. Furthest out and heaviest part of your wheel.

Remember the Flows are also tubeless so it opens up other savings.

I’m still a bit confused about how you make these ‘savings’ with tubeless. Although I haven’t attempted to fully understand tubeless anyway. Tubeless tyres tend to be heavier than their equiv. and then you stick an extra 100gms+ of sealant in.

The EN521 isn’t the same as the EX721 which isn’t the same as the EN321.

The EN321 has won world championships, Fabien Barrel uses/used them.

B.A.Nana – Member

I’m still a bit confused about how you make these ‘savings’ with tubeless. Although I haven’t attempted to fully understand tubeless anyway. Tubeless tyres tend to be heavier than their equiv. and then you stick an extra 100gms+ of sealant in.

Very simple, you don’t use a heavier tyre. Plenty of tubeless ready tyres out there with no weight penalty now, frinstance Specialized 2bliss, this year’s Schwalbe Evos… Or, just use your regular tyre, many (most?) work fine.

(I’ve got 3 sets of tubeless rims on the go, with I think 5 non-tubeless tyres and 1 light tubeless ready tyre, no UST tyres) My own take on it is that the heavy UST tyres are pretty much the tubeless equivalent of dualplies.

thisisnotaspoon – Member

The EN321 has won world championships, Fabien Barrel uses/used them.

Though not recently I think, kind of suggests better stuff has come along.

Stans rims are not tubeless surely as you have to buy the rim strip etc? So it is a bit like calling any rim tubeless as you could fit a rim strip or getto tubeless to most rims.

Have to admit I like the knowledge that I can hit a downhill as fast as I like and the wheels won’t suffer

Lighter rims won’t change that.

Heavy rims like you have are for jumping off buildings or mega downhill racing etc. Not normal riding or downhills on normal rides, unless you are very large and/or a clumsy oaf 🙂

Although I haven’t attempted to fully understand tubeless anyway.

UST tyres have a chunky rubber seal in the rim, extra rubber on the bead to seal and effectively a tube’s worth of extra rubber on the inside of the tyre to keep it airtight. Afaik you don’t need sealant with them although it’s handy.

The Stans system and similar uses a thin rim strip to seal the spoke holes (or even just a piece of tape) in a normal rim, and a normal tyre, and it relies on the sealant to seal up the tyre and the bead. You might only need 50g of sealant so you are saving the weight of a tube minus 50g if you use the tape. With the rim strip and plenty of sealant it is not much of a weight advantage.

However they roll a lot better and you don’t get punctures (hardly). So it’s a no brainer for me.

The Stan’s system works on any rim although their own rims seem to be much easier to seal – I can do mine with a track pump, which is utterly impossible with my Mavic (non UST) rims.

Their rims are however excellent as rims.

“GEDA – Member

Stans rims are not tubeless surely as you have to buy the rim strip etc?”

No… The Stans rims are designed for tubeless use and only need their yellow sealing tape and a valve, not the fat rim strip. They also have a proper retaining bead to keep the tyre in place and prevent it rolling off. Not the same as putting a Stans/Joes tubeless kit rim strip on a regular rim which is really a bit of a bodge.

Once taped up they work the same as a UST rim, only disadvantage is that very occsaionally the tape can get damaged when you change a tyre but otherwise they function the same as my 819s (except for being wider, stronger and lighter)

He was certainly using them at mondraker, thinking about it I think he used sun rims at Kona, so the EN321 probably hasn’t won a WChamps, but is ridden by arguably one of the best WChamp riders ever.

How come you have to buy the sealing tape separate then? The rims are part of a system that you can set up to run tubeless but the rims themselves are not tubeless.

Just like Specialised 2bliss tyres are not tubeless as they leak air and only work if you put a load of sealant in them.

It’s a better system than UST though, so WGAS about the semantics?

As I don’t see why I should by a load more stuff to make something into what it is marketed as?

njee20 – why do you think it’s a better system? I pranged my rear 819 rim (UST) and it’s not repairable so I’m thinking about either getting a new one or trying the stans system.

molgrips – Member

Lighter rims won’t change that.

Heavy rims like you have are for jumping off buildings or mega downhill racing etc. Not normal riding or downhills on normal rides, unless you are very large and/or a clumsy oaf

“Have to admit I like the knowledge that I can hit a downhill as fast as I like and the wheels won’t suffer”
other than having no clock, his description is pretty much all DH racing is.his rims are pretty much DH race rims. ie. as light as you’d want to go and still retain strength/stiffness/durability. (D5.1s and Flows fall into the same category)
personally I couldn’t ride light rims even on “normal” rides, Why sacrifice strength/stiffness to climb a hill a little quicker only to have to carefully mince back down avoiding all the fun bits?
I’m far from a clumsy rider but lightweight rims’d flex far too much for my liking in corners and I’d bend them pretty quickly even on local XC rides never mind riding a descent descent.

“GEDA – Member

How come you have to buy the sealing tape separate then? The rims are part of a system that you can set up to run tubeless but the rims themselves are not tubeless.

Just like Specialised 2bliss tyres are not tubeless as they leak air and only work if you put a load of sealant in them.”

Not everyone runs Flows tubeless so making everyone pay for the tape and valve if they’re not intending to use it would be daft. Pretty obvious I’d have thought. Once taped up (which takes 5 minutes) the rims are tubeless, and as a desisn is functionally identical to Mavic UST.

And 2bliss tyres are designed to be used tubeless with sealant, that’s why they’re not called UST. It’s a non-issue though for almost everyone, since very few people run tubeless without sealant.

I think you’re confusing tubeless with UST tbh, these products aren’t UST but they certainly are tubeless.

GW – Member

other than having no clock, his description is pretty much all DH racing

Mmm, I dunno about that, most people would say they like to hit the downhills as fast as they can, doesn’t mean we’re all downhill racers 😉

Have to admit I like the knowledge that I can hit a downhill as fast as I like and the wheels won’t suffer

Chances are the OP’s ‘fast as he likes’ isn’t fast enough to require heavy duty rims, at least according to his description.

I’m 90kg and I ride very light rims quite fast down hills, and I have never broken or bent a rim on a trail in 20 years. But then I’m not attacking the likes of Ft Bill balls-out.

Why sacrifice strength/stiffness to climb a hill a little quicker only to have to carefully mince back down avoiding all the fun bits?

You don’t, if you aren’t clumsy. As above – I’m fairly quick and have never bent a lightweight rim. My Mavic 321s (or whatever they are, dont’ quite rememeber but they were Mavic’s lightest) with Sapim Laser super light spokes do flex a bit. I’d replace them with normal spokes and a Stan’s Arch, they’d still come under the light XC category.

Mmm, I dunno about that, most people would say they like to hit the downhills as fast as they can, doesn’t mean we’re all downhill racers

Yes, and our local trails are not all Ft Bill.

How are 2bliss tyres designed to run tubeless then?

“GEDA – Member

How are 2bliss tyres designed to run tubeless then?”

They have a UST-style bead to lock them onto the rim, and the carcass while not airtight is designed for tubeless use with sealant- same as Bonty TLR and WTB’s TCS, and 2011 Evo.

Easier to demonstrate than to explain, 2bliss and similiar tyres seal up faster and easier (also are guaranteed to work). So you could say they’re a halfway house between a standard tyre and a UST tyre.

How much does a set of Hope Pro/Flows weigh?