Running two sets of wheels

I now have a second set of wheels for my hardtail that i’d like to set up in a more “fast xc” way. I’d also like to regularly switch between these and the current “enduro” wheels I have on. Both wheelsets have discs so that bits easy but how do i avoid the inevitable drive chain roughness that often comes with swapping bits of a drive chain.

I know loads on here do this, so whats your hints and tips??

On my gravel bike I just swap the wheels between road and gravel and leave the chain. I’m keeping an eye on the chain ware and will replace it early. As both sets get used regularly I think the wear difference will not be an issue.

Sounds like it’s too late, but the best way to deal with this is run the same hubs / cassettes / discs for both wheel sets.  Any variance and it’s a lottery.

no issues swapping wheelsets, rarely have any drivetrain issues, granted i used to do it the most on 11 speed

Thanks. I imagine my usage is going to be around 80% enduro set (with additional mud grind wear) so keeping the wear on the cassette even is probably a bit too ambitions.

I’ve two sets of wheels for 3 bikes now, that see regular swaps.  The FS has a set of burlier tyres and wheels for trail centres and lighter tyres for ‘distance’ and XC. Fortunately the discs were spot on in alignment (used same SRAM discs as well) but the hub/cassette alignment was out by a fraction of a mm. This was solved by getting a pack of assorted cassette spacers off Amazon. Came in 0.83, 1mm, 1.25mm, 1,5mm, 2mm etc etc, so I was able to add o.25 or 0.5 mm to the cassette spacing so each wheelset was the same, and was just a quick swap then.

Different makes of hubs usually have a fraction of a difference on the cassette position. One way round it is to use the same hubs, but on all 3 bikes I’ve different make hubs, so use the varied spacers. Eg the CX bike uses a 2mm spacer on one freehub, but a 2.3mm spacer on another. That 0.3mm (tiny) is enough to ensure perfect indexing.

Thanks. I imagine my usage is going to be around 80% enduro set (with additional mud grind wear) so keeping the wear on the cassette even is probably a bit too ambitious.

If you’re not doing it often, you probably know in advance you’ll be doing a fast, light ride, so setting up with a bit of notice, rather than deciding on the way out the door? A cassette swap only adds a few mins to a wheel swap. Even less if you’ve got matching DT hubs so you can pull off/push on the freehub with cassette attached – doing that often is not ideal if you keep your bike dirty, though.

I have three MTBs and four rear wheels, which I regularly swap between them.

Uneven wear is a non-issue IME.

With identical hubs swapping is easy. Cassette wear can be evened out by sawpping them after say 3 months

A cassette swap only adds a few mins to a wheel swap.

Thanks. I’m thinking that maybe this is the way to go as i won’t be swapping that often and it will negate the inconsistent wear issue. Just need to swap the XD freehub on one wheel to HG.

Do MTB wheel swaps often involve tweaking the brake caliper alignment, just like my road bike?

Thinking about it, my Wazoo fatbike happily swapped between its fat wheels and 29er wheels.

Can’t remember if I had to tweak the rear caliper on my hybrid, when I got a replacement rear wheel.

My road bike’s front VEL 50 RL swaps in with a tiny tiny bit of brake rub, but the rear quickly comes to a stop.

I have 2 sets of wheels on my Diverge – 1 set up for gravel, one for road. dedicated chain and cassette on each set.

Edit: just to add, the only problem I had initially was the discs were rubbing on the pads on the road set of wheels, I think because they were newer/slightly thicker.

I just don’t think I notice things like that enough. I have a light, stiff XC(ish) wheel set and a burlier wheel set on my hardtail. It makes a massive difference to have a pair of 2.3 tyres on the bike compared to the 2.5 grippy tyres on the stronger wheels.

did it for 2-3 years on my gravel bike as was doing a series of pure road events and had got rid of my road bike

as suggested above chain wear is the key thing to watch…check regular and swop early rather than late never rotated the cassettes as were different but close enough for chain length not to be an issue

was lucky I guess disparate hubs but no problems with rub have heard that people resort to shimming disks pretty sure resetting the calipers would be easier

I did this with my gravel bike.

As others have said, best way is just to have an equally compatible cassette on both wheels so it is just plug and play. For example I had an 11-42 on my gravel wheels, and an 11-34 on my road wheels. Same size Rotors also fitted to both wheelsets.

I honestly never found much difference between wear rates on chains and cassettes between them…never paid paid much attention to it. As long as one cassette isn’t split new and the other nearly dead then I don’t think it will affect much. Just keep an eye on your chain periodically.

It is a bit of an outlay to get both wheels with all fittings attached, but it’s worth it compared to having to swap tires, cassette etc every time. Takes seconds rather than an hour or more if you lose your lockring tool for example.

The real answer is n+1.

+1 on swapping cassettes is more of a ballache than you might expect.

Especially if you’re also doing the freehub (e.g. the seal ring on Hope Pro 4s) can be tricky.

I’m in the process of building a second set of wheels for my Gravel bike so it can cover winter road duties better (this will go alongside a switch from 1x to 2x).

The very first thing I did was source the same rear Hub as that on the existing wheelset to give me a fighting chance of getting cassette/rotor alignment the same when swapping (I plan to have both wheelsets kitted out with their own rotors/Cassette/tyres so a swap is just a simple exercise that and doesn’t involve anything more like removing/fitting cassettes or rotors.

I could pull the Whole Cassette/FH off and put it on the other wheelset each time (because they’re identical hubs), but the plan is to have a slightly different range on either cassette to suit their respective uses.

If you’re already committed to a set of wheels with potentially different hubs then I would at least test fit the new wheels to the bike with discs/cassette now just to see if there’s any obvious alignment issues and/or if you can address that now with shimming/washers or just noting down what needs adjusting by how much each time you swap to save you bother down the line. The more faff a swap is, the less inclined you’ll be to do so, making the whole exercise a bit pointless.

I did this and stuck to same brand of hub and freehub. Have the same size and brand of disks on both sets and do a cassette swap when I swap the wheels. Don’t need to touch either calliper alignment or gear indexing. Takes 5-10 minutes to do the entire swap and pump up the tyres.

Do MTB wheel swaps often involve tweaking the brake caliper alignment, just like my road bike?

Neither require any realignment if you put spacers behind the rotors where necessary. I’ve got three wheelsets that are all fully interchangeable with zero bike adjustment required. Bit of faffing about getting the required number of spacers in each wheel initially but now I just swap them at will.

I do have the same cassette on each set albeit in different level (XX1/X01), rotors are all SRAM but different versions  and the hubs are all DT Swiss but again different models. Not needed any cassette spacers thankfully.

You can use shims to make sure rotors and cassettes are aligned. No caliper or gear adjustment necessary.

I just swap the cassette too. Takes 2 mins.

Also chose wheels with the same hubs so spacing is consistent.

I did this for a while, swapping wheels at least once a week. Matching hubs and cassettes. Occasionally needed to tweak a calliper but that takes no time. Costs of drivetrain wear would be less than of a new bike I guess.