- 25 minutes ago
Are hookless wheels safe? How much difference do carbon road bike wheels actually make? Is wider better and are non-captive hubs dangerous? We ask your questions to Hunt's Senior Development Engineer Paddy Brown to find out a bit more about carbon road bike wheels including the new Hunt 5am Limitless carbon wheelset.
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00:00Carbon bike wheels are very exciting and one of the biggest upgrades that you can make
00:04to your road bike and Paddy is joining us from Hunt he is the engineer that is responsible
00:11for these new wheels so Paddy we're going to get you to tell us all about these new wheels
00:15and then our audience have been sending in lots of questions that hopefully you can help us answer
00:21do my best the new wheels what are they yeah yeah so these are our new Hunt 5am limitless wheels
00:29so
00:29with the 5am standing for aero maximized and so these are our new top of the range aerodynamic
00:36lightweight latest and greatest so the flagship the flagship wheel so this is a bit yeah been a
00:42two-year development project for us and we've taken a big step forward in both the aerodynamic
00:47performance but also so the general system weight and overall just performance of the product so yeah
00:54so these replacing the sub 50 wheelset is that right so the uh yes so this we the sub 50
01:00is being
01:01replaced um this is a slightly deeper product actually so the front wheel is going to be 58
01:06mils deep and the rear is going to be 55 mil deep so controversial yeah yeah so we've got a
01:11mullet
01:11wheelset yeah aero maximize is how we're going for it where we've gone for a um yeah but the 5am
01:18like
01:18there's a subtle nod there but it's the m's for mullet isn't it yeah yeah i've been told it's very
01:25much not but we're gonna leave it there but um it's our new product and so basically it's taking
01:31the same philosophy that we took from sub 50 where the front wheel is both where it's wider and therefore
01:36a little bit heavier that does look wide so the wheel is lighter obviously because the front hub is
01:41like there's much less going on there you don't need to pedal through it you're spending more weight in
01:46the rim on that front wheel with a sort of wider rim and we've sort of just taken that to
01:50a sort of
01:50a natural next step sort of it's some of the data we'd like probably could have gone even further
01:55but fundamentally three mil actually on a bike it's a small enough difference that the eye can't really
02:01pick it up i must admit i'm not a fan of the aesthetics of a deeper front wheel but okay
02:06with
02:07just three mil i felt like on a bike you're not going to be able to notice from a distance
02:11yeah so we did play this game we sort of we did a lot of mock-ups we got our
02:15graphic designers in
02:16and we did play with a whole range of different depths and that definitely was a consideration
02:20right we're an aftermarket wheel brand we have to sell these bicycle wheels to people and so that
02:26there's yeah that going to 10 mil like you're going to really notice it three mil with a tire on
02:32it
02:32really is it's it's it's a marginal difference but then we are and it's a it's a small aero change
02:38right it's not night and day but we are talking about like bicycle wheels have got really good like
02:45there are very few like flagship products there that aren't performing exceptionally well and so
02:50this product really is a like a combination of lots of small little performance gains and so we've
02:55got instead of yeah as well you can see like only 15 spokes in the front wheel right which is
02:59something
03:00that was this just yeah five on this side yeah which was just yeah which was discovered through some
03:05experimentation early on in the process and again has had to be like transferred all the way through
03:10the like the way we've designed the rim the layup strategy and like a bunch of the technology in the
03:15rim has been driven by the fact that we have made this sort of aero change and it doesn't just
03:21work
03:21by just like oh we'll just like do that spoke cap pattern drill those holes in the rim like you
03:26know
03:26the whole rim has to be designed around this spoke layup and the way that it's going to work
03:31in that system so the less spokes does that mainly to reduce weight or is that to reduce the
03:37rotational drag first of all a wheel needs to be sort of strong enough durable enough and stiff enough
03:44to be like a high performance product so if you start to sacrifice any of those key metrics you're
03:49like the marginal gains but you've actually had some like maximal losses right like it's got a handle
03:55right and so all that stuff so we did test all those things and made sure that that was
04:00like up to our standard before we sort of start playing with these things but yeah so
04:04obviously taking a couple spokes out you reduce the weight from that system that these spokes
04:09are have titanium mandrels at either end so they are very light with these ones on the drive side
04:14so all of our favorite materials carbon fiber and titanium and titanium and 7075 aluminium you
04:20know like we've got we've got all the aerospace grade games if you're riding at 45k an hour
04:24this sort of um over an hour like you're gonna you reduce three spokes that's almost like
04:29i think it's a hundred thousand spokes like times you're reducing a spoke going through the wind
04:35right every time top at the top of the wheel as it comes through the fork that's going twice bike
04:39speed and so if you can just take a handful of spokes out like these are very small gains for
04:45each
04:45revolution but it does start to slowly add up and that's um it's a small energy saving and um yes
04:52so
04:52there's some some gains from just spinning the air some from weight loss and then actually there's
04:57sort of some form drag just having less spokes sort of in the wind all the time is it's a
05:01positive
05:01right there's a reason we don't ride 36 spoke wheels as a bike racer but um yeah and are carbon
05:07fiber
05:07spokes slower aerodynamically than than steel ones it's not as simple as they're faster or slower so
05:14historically with the sub 50s um and the previous generations we tested back back and forth between
05:21the um 20 hole pillar wing 20 spoke and the vanoah like ud spoke that we used and they were
05:33identical with 18 spokes in the front and versus 20 steel spokes so if you use carbon
05:37spokes you can reduce a few spokes yeah which we do to keep the stiffness the same yeah but as
05:42a result
05:43like the sort of arrow is about the same here we've started we've used a sort of a new spoke
05:49technology for us it's very similar you'll see like other wheels on the market use something similar
05:53but with a integrated nipple and so um the you have to use a class-related tool to true them
05:59but
05:59apart from that they work exactly the same with a nut on the inside of the rim um again we've
06:04seen like
06:04a significant step forward but we are also using two different spoke uh spokes on this wheel so if you
06:10look at the oh i'm gonna have to look a bit closer then so yeah so we these spokes have
06:13seven toes
06:14of carbon in them on the drive side and then uh the non-drive side or disc side and it
06:19has four
06:19toes of carbon in it and so they're slightly different materials that these obviously are
06:23operating at high tension and so we've sort of built that side of the room with the wheel up a
06:28little
06:28bit and so that's um and it's reversed on the rear now mixed depth wheels aren't exactly a new idea
06:35and typically you see a lot of deeper wheel on the rear rather than on the front is there a
06:40downside to
06:42going deeper at the front with crosswind stability historically that has been sort of how we've done
06:46it and i think yeah and some of that is like an aesthetic trend right you see some some mad
06:51mad ideas
06:52with like hill uk hill climb scene you see people going really deep on the front right so we have
06:56a
06:56limitless foam in these wheels and so that lets us build out the side walls um much wider this front
07:03wheel is 34.5 mil wide um which allows sort of a really nice tire like tire to rim transition
07:12and then
07:12also we have a 12 mil radius on the nose here so it's quite a blunted nose profile and so
07:18actually
07:18you've got quite a sort of oval shape to that overall section which means that you have a
07:25like a nice smooth airflow around the wheel so it's not sort of these old-school v-shaped profiles that
07:30are sort of really twitchy and really like sensitive aerofoils it's a bit more of a stable performance
07:36now there is one other rather big design choice that i can see has been made and is a big
07:43change from
07:43the sub 50s and that is that these rims have hooks yeah yeah they do yeah so we've now all
07:50of hunt's
07:50road range is now hooked fundamentally we are a consumer brand who has to sell products to people
07:57and there's a very large like section probably in the comments that we're probably going to enjoy that
08:05they're hooked and again so we we believe that hunt rims with a correct tire are safe lots of us
08:11ride
08:11them and are happy with the performance of them but again there's a real consumer desire that we've
08:18listened to and so we've transferred that across onto all of our products so is there a performance
08:23disadvantage to going hooked it's very hard we've not been able to measure a difference we have worked
08:29with tire manufacturers who claim that there is a slight performance benefit to having freedom that
08:36hookless room provides but it is on the order of like 0.01 of watts and so again it's not
08:45something
08:45that i we've done a lot of outdoor testing for this product as well and so it's not something we've
08:50been
08:50able to measure so some people say there is some people say there is we haven't we haven't managed to
08:54find it and then one final question what do they cost and are they more expensive because they're hooked and
09:00apparently that makes them far more expensive to produce so again that yeah that's another myth and maybe it
09:05scales of the really big boys but for us there is yeah no difference in the manufacturing cost between
09:12a hooked and a hookless wheel these are going to be a little bit of a step up in price
09:18compared to our
09:18old ones they're again so all that technology this is a two-year development process that we've gone
09:23through on this product so the the carbon spoke with a tpi bearing so stainless steel bearing is going
09:30to be just under two thousand pounds so i think one nine four nine and then um we are going
09:38to offer
09:38a ceramic speed upgrade kit which is a new unreleased as yet unnamed uh ceramic speed bearing um that is
09:47going to be like a 500 pound up charge for that product i wouldn't mind betting it's alpha but that
09:53would
09:53be my guess probably but again we haven't been told what it is and so yeah so yeah and so
10:00those
10:00yeah those wheels will come with a yeah ceramic speed like printed on the hubs and uh yeah and
10:05actually i've been lucky enough to test the set and they are they do spin really nicely but it's um
10:09again that's a the real pinnacle product so yeah you hold that yeah fire this up yeah so we've been
10:18asking questions on our on our youtube channel so firstly why are pros gluing on hookless tires
10:25yeah i mean i saw this um i assume i get obviously once you lose the pressure out of a
10:32hookless tire
10:32and or damage the rim that there's there's nothing holding that that tire onto the rim so most of the
10:40pros i believe are now using uh like inserts and so basically if that tire is epoxied on and you've
10:48got
10:48an inset on there you've kind of got a run flat system i imagine it will be for quite specific
10:52races and specific riders so unless we want to ride really flat tires for miles and miles probably
10:59not worth us gluing our probably not if you want to buy a lot of wheels i feel like it's
11:04it's not
11:04something i think you do with a wheel that you've paid for noted yeah yeah okay on our next question
11:11non-captive spoke hubs so i guess this is like the side entry ones the question is can i trust
11:17them
11:17every single hunt hub is captive so we never use a sort of a side entry hub there are companies
11:26that
11:26have done it well and sort of mitigated that where the spoke is like not captive but then there's an
11:32end cap or something that does lock that in place so again it's the it's the failure mode chain that
11:37once you lose spokes now tension does start to the wheel starts to lose tension if you have don't have
11:43captive spokes that they can start to pop out and then you start to like have a that's when you
11:48get
11:48those images d-wheeled d-build itself and so again i'd look like it's something that we've chosen not
11:54to do it's a design it does make it sometimes it's easier to manufacture those hubs because again with
11:59like large carbon bladed spokes it can be difficult to sort of there's quite a lot of machine machine
12:04work that goes on these hubs to give you space to do that and so
12:07it's a choice it's a just it's a design choice um and one we personally don't choose to make um
12:13because of that like impossible like chain of events if you do sort of break some spokes but again
12:19that's i don't think it would be my place necessarily to that's why that's why you do it yeah cool
12:25yep um
12:27is there much difference between a good quality alloy slash steel rim to an average carbon fiber one
12:35so a lot of our a lot of our audience will be looking to purchase a new set of wheels
12:40they might
12:41and they might be able to afford quite a premium end alloy wheel set but only a budget mid-tier
12:47carbon
12:48wheel set what would you go for depends what you're looking for i think in terms of um sort
12:54of like aerodynamics we like do know that once you get to 40 or 50 mil deep like there is
12:59a reasonable
13:00gain there as long as you're not sacrificing going to round spokes and having an unreliable like wheel
13:07set right and so it's uh there's there's always a trade-off to be made there and the entry-level
13:12carbon is really good like our 50 cad when we sponsored krebeka our source back in 2021 like
13:18won a gyro stage right right i might need to re-grease my hub sometime how often should i do
13:24that and what type of grease p.s i have some hunt carbon 50 wheels on an endurance cfsl and
13:31lga 40 wheels
13:32on a grizzle cfsl love them thank you very much that's awesome to hear um and yeah um again it
13:39depends
13:39how much you ride depends what sort of conditions you ride in so we tend to recommend sort of like
13:44once every sort of three months or so just to like crack them open and have a look so when
13:49you're
13:50cleaning your bike you do have your wheels off the bike so just pull that off yeah so these just
13:54pull
13:54off and so again and then you have access to the bearing and again so the front hub does need
13:59less
13:59servicing again if that sort of axle feels nice and there's no contamination in that you should be okay
14:05and actually putting too much grease in and around that can just suck um all the problematics like
14:11all your grit and grime into the system and yeah just to periodically take that apart wipe it down
14:16and apply sort of that we tend to recommend sort of a light lithium grease or something would be a
14:21um
14:21we do have our hunt grease but again sort of whatever you've got to hand um don't slather it on
14:26there
14:26this one is quite niche i feel um how do we get old sealant out of the inner cavity if
14:32it were to ever
14:33enter i think probably if it's really old just hang in and take your rim tape off and sort of
14:38try and shake it out doing much beyond that i probably would say it's not worth it if i'm being
14:45honest um yeah like i wouldn't go jet washing the inside of your rims or something it's probably the
14:51only way i can think of getting that out of there um i think probably exposing all of the nipples
14:57to a
14:58lot of high pressure water and stuff like that is probably going to cause more problem problems
15:01yep then you're going to solve is truing really needed anymore i feel that carbon is so stiff
15:07that the way they may come out of the mold is the final shape and that maybe attempting to true
15:12an
15:13out of shape carbon wheel may result in cracking as opposed to old aluminium wheels which were more
15:18malleable they definitely are stiffer especially so that like something like this when you're using
15:23really high modulus carbon to sort of deal with them they can be more difficult to true very much
15:29truing is still required like a bicycle wheel is a pre-stress structure it's the technical term but
15:35again so they they hold their shape like you don't hang off the spokes the spokes give up tension at
15:41the bottom and they push you up from the bottom if that makes sense and so having that tension in
15:46the
15:46system is what allows sort of a lightweight bicycle wheel to function and so you will always have those
15:52spokes carrying the tension and then also as such yeah you do need to they can they they are pretty
16:00straight out the molds but they're never perfect on the front wheel do radially laced spokes on the
16:06non-brake side affect the lateral stiffness when cranking hard does it laterally flex more in one
16:12direction versus the other due to the two different lacing methods used for a wheel to stay centered there
16:18has to be an even amount of tension on both sides of the wheel and so again that means that
16:24on a
16:25setup like this where it's two to one you see that the uh the drive the drive side spokes here
16:30are like
16:31in the hub design slightly further out and so they're sort of closer to the frame or further from the
16:36seventh line as you think of it but then also have a little bit more tension in them and so
16:41that tension
16:41is balanced through if you think back to trigonometry your force triangles and stuff that lateral component
16:47has got to be equal on both sides of the rear wheel to keep it straight the the major things
16:51that
16:52still contribute to stiffness are things like spoke count and spoke gauge um and then yeah the lacing
16:57pattern is yeah so an outcome of like a lot of those things why are hunt free why are hunt
17:05free hubs
17:06so i can't say that word loud okay yeah this is a this is a fun one and so and
17:13i also think possibly a
17:15historical one that's that we have gone through so that we've gone to a full range of ratchet hubs
17:21now and so i think the the hunt loudness was our previous generation sprint hubs and again when we
17:27did also come out with a low noise option of those so if you do have your hunt wheels and
17:30you do think
17:30they're too loud like get in touch with customer service and they might well be able to get you on
17:35a solution that's a little bit quieter but sort of all of our ratchet hubs are like a step quieter
17:41than
17:42the previous generation ones basically a function of the resonance of just that hub shape and that
17:46there was it was a reasonably small diameter ratchet with a like a space behind where the ratchet ring
17:52went in before the bearing and it just vibrated around through that and so we went to a slightly
17:57rounder corner on the pools which again we found i think we sort of cut off like seven decibels or
18:04something when we tested it uh the final question is how much does hunt pay you to advertise their wheels
18:09um well we have done some paid promotions with hunt in the past as we have done with many of
18:15your
18:15competitors um realistically you live down the road um and we want to show people some latest bike tech so
18:24i hope that answers that one well paddy thank you very much for uh for your knowledge and uh letting
18:31us
18:31into some of the secrets of carbon bike wheels and uh yeah looking forward to giving these a go yeah
18:38i know
18:38awesome great to see how you get on with them yeah thank you for having me it's good fun cool
18:42if you
18:43enjoyed this sort of content then please give it a like subscribe to the cycling weekly channel for
18:47lots more bike tech and we'll see you next time
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