Hey guys, I’m in the market for a new wheelset and have been eyeing the Stans Flow or Crest for my hardtail but I don’t know of anyone that has ridden them. I’ve been seeing reviews on the flow, but not much on the crest hoping you guys can help me out? Also any suggestions on hubs to lace them to? Thanks!

Is this a serious post? Loads of people here ride them and love them. My choice is the flow as I like the extra width. Go for the crest if you want something light weight. Crest can be trickier to fit some tyres to though. My choice would be hope hubs. You could even look at hope hoops which is cheaper than having someone build them for you.

haha, yea it’s a serious post, I live in WV and all my friends ride bontrager or american classic for the most part. Not many people with hopes either, but I can tell on here that they’ve got to be good, this many people can’t be wrong…would the crest be tough enough for a 140mm travel hardtail? I’ve got a 456 and ride in really rocky/rooty stuff.

i run flows on pro 2’s, very impressed & very strong too, you will have no worries on your hardtail.

Just bought pro2s with crests. Very light compared to my stock bonty wheelset. Going on my fuel ex, should be plenty tough enough for the peak district. Great rims, and tyres aren’t difficult to fit if you pick wisely

Onzadog/M6TTF: what tires will/will not fit crests? Do you reckon it has to do with the type of bead? I know alot of companies are moving to the tubless beat type. Thank for all the input

Pro 2’s & Flows here. Been running them for just over a year and they’ve been very good. Still as true as the day they were built

Pro2s and Arches here. Bought second hand in June and they have been running perfect, tubeless, since then.

Flows are great, don’t see the point of Crests myself unless you’re going to run skinny tyres.

ooh, just wait til Poddy gets here 😕

hmmm…maybe I’ll go flows, I do run pretty big tires…

I run 355 which I think are the old equivalent to the crest. They’re great, super light yet strong enough for general riding on a 140mm full suss. I got them as hope hoops which is what I’d recommend from a price point of view. Cost me about £250 in 2009. They happily run 2.3″ tyres. Be wary though as 2.3 can vary a lot between manufacturers, I was running Specialized captains which came up reasonably large.

They’re both great rims. I run crests on my Prophet, they’re a lot lighter and narrower than flows. The effective internal width is only 1-2mm narrower than flows, though, so they give a good shape to big tyres. they’re not noticeably less stiff than my previous DT 5.1s or Mavic 321s and the tyre profile is pretty much identical. I think they’re also easier to run tubeless with just yellow tape than Flows, but I may be wrong. They were certainly easy enough with maxxis tyres.

I run tubeless tyres on them but I’ve heard that some people struggle with tubeless specific tyres on the crest. I think the justridingalong site has a table of what works and what doesn’t.

I’ve got Crest’s on Stans hubs,from JRA.Use 2.2 Mountain King Supersonics tubeless,with no problems,they’re on my XC bike,I weigh 14stand they’re round and true after 6 months.
Ian

I’ve run hope \ stan’s arch on a pitch and then on my hardtail. They are great. Builds up to about a 1700g wheelset but very strong (i’m 14 stone and not very gentle with the bike and they’ve lasted about 3 years so far). They fit a 2.3 really nicely.

I’ve just bought a set of hope \ flow for no other reason than the factory built hope hoops are much cheaper than a custom build and there is no factory option of the arch.

Ive never had any problem getting tyres to fit. I tend to use Bonty tubeless.

summary – go for it, you wont be disappointed

.would the crest be tough enough for a 140mm travel hardtail

I don’t think they would from my experience but it would depend on how heavy and how smooth a rider you are.

Really you should be thinking of either the Flow or the Arch, as the Arch is one down in terms of weight, strength and width from the Flow, whereas the Crest is quite a big jump down in those terms.

I’ve run both Flow and Arch on both a hard tail and an FS bike. I’m 100kg, fairly agro and more of ‘balls out regardless’ than a ‘smooth and refined’ rider.

The Flows are super tough and can be set up pretty light with the NoTubes tubeless kit but as someone has already pointed out, they are harder to set up without rim strips, whereas the Arch rims are easier to run tubeless with just yellow tape.

The weight saving for just using yellow tape rather than rim strips is 50g per wheel. So not insignificant considering it’s rotating weight.

I ran the Archs on my hard tail for three rides before I more or less destroyed the rear. I don’t think the rim is stiff enough to resist twisting and therefore puts a big strain on the spokes causing them to unscrew. My rear wheel more or less came apart after three rides over the very rocky trails of the Peak District.

The Flows on the other hand are utterly bomb proof and very stiff and I’ve never had any issues with them, despite running them on some pretty rough DH courses, including a three day stint in Chamonix last year.

For a well used hard tail, the Flows would more likely be the safer choice than the Arch and 100% the better choice than the Crest.

Hope hoops, Flows on Pro 2s, yellow tape, Maxxis tyres to suit your needs, Stans fluid… Job done.

Been running this for about a year without any issues.
Super tacky single ply has been fine on the front but I had to go for UST on the back after ripping sidewalls on single ply.

thanks for all of the help and advice everyone, I think I’m going to end up with the flows, if I can get them to 1600 grams (which I can) then they’ll be plenty light.

geetee1972: I’m not the smoothest rider, and I like to launch off stuff, so maybe I should go tough route so I don’t have to worry about my wheels holding up.

Now to choose between black or white….

The white ones are heavier as it’s a powder coat finish.

Flows are ace- light enough to XC, strong enough to batter. Lighter than an 819 as well as stronger and wider, and just as easy to set up tubeless. Really can’t see past them just now.

Not much love for the Alpine, any reason?