When do you need a custom wheelbuild? Well, every time you, your bike or your next riding adventure doesn’t fit the standard box. And when your bike is your canvas you like to throw colors on. All of our wheelsets allow customization like spoke count, color or axle standards and that covers a lot of demands, but sometimes that isn’t just enough. Going “full custom” with us will get you a great set wheels that perfectly suits you and your riding, and will cost you a fraction of an off-the-shelf solution from other brands.
Who You Are.
Starting with ourselves, we are small and tall, light and wide, and have different riding skills and fitness, and of course are somewhat extravagant.
Spoke count: No.1 option to tailor your new pair of wheels towards who you are is the spoke count. No other factor determines the durability and strength of your wheelset more.
If you are on a longterm “sprinter diet” and tough on your stuff, you really want to choose a spoke count of 28 or more depending on the intended use of your new wheels. Choose 32 or 36 spokes if your wheels are meant for Loaded Touring or sending it on your Enduro. Sounds overkill these days, but it is a piece of mind, especially if you plan to ride shallow aluminium rims.
And vice versa if you are a skinny chip paired with solid riding skills, why shouldn’t you save a few grams and watts and race a 24/24-spoke Cross-Country (XC) wheelset or climb on a 16/20-spoke Road (rim brake) wheelset.
Tire pressure: Analog to spoke count, tire pressure and tire diameter need to match your body type. Small volume Road tires ( ≤28 mm) need to be inflated to 100 psi or more for a stallion (who invented the clydesdale category anyway) rider. This will avoid pinch punctures and give you a responsive feel while still providing comfort and traction. Big volume Gravel/CX tires (≥35 mm) can be inflated as low as 25 psi if you are a lightweight and want to get the most traction from your tires on a muddy CX parkour. Choosing a tire pressure that works best for your weight, where you ride and the tires you are using will take some time to get nailed. To get you started you will find at the end of every nplus2 wheelset description a little guide for tire volume vs. max. pressure.
Where You Ride.
What your new set of wheels needs to endure also depends on where you life and ride. Carbon or aluminium for disc or rim brake, what should you pick? This is a fundamental decision.
The Colorado Descend: You live and ride in Colorado’s mountains and absolutely agree that reliable braking is quite an important and life saving thing. Carbon clincher wheels are an appealing upgrade for your rim brake road bike, but when you go down a steep grade and have to brake hard for an extended period of time you will likely melt them. It is not you, it is physics. The heat generated by your brake pads on the rim can’t go anywhere since carbon simply doesn’t conduct heat well. That is why we only build carbon clincher wheels for disc brake to get all the pros, but none of the cons of carbon. We extensively discuss this in our “Philosophy” and “Rim” section. Aluminium rims or carbon tubulars (the entire rim functions as a heat sink) can handle the generated heat much better and would be our only suggestion if you ride rim brakes in the mountains and are less slender than Egan Bernal.
The Florida Paceline: If you life in Florida you were just wondering about all that mountain and braking talk. The rotating paceline is your bread and butter and you only use your brakes to stop at your coffee shop at the end of the ride or to avoid an alligator of course. However, you are surrounded by the Atlantic and your climate makes you sweat a lot. It seems like a minor detail, but you should give it a good thought if your new pair of wheels should be built with brass or aluminium nipples. Salt is a conductor and accelerates electrolysis between two metals with different electrochemical potential causing galvanic corrosion. This is the case between a spoke (cathode: electron donor –> reduction) and a nipple (anode: electron acceptor –> oxidation). Since aluminium is more anodic than brass it will easier oxidize than brass and corrode to a point where an aluminium nipple could break. Modern anodized aluminium nipples however are much better protected from corrosion. Brass nipples corrode as well, but likely won’t break. This oxidation is even more pronounced in the environment of a carbon rim since graphite is most cathodic and simply “hands over” all electrons to the less cathodic neighbor – the nipple. Keep reading…
The Triathlete Witness: If you are a hard working triathlete or TT specialist you sweat a lot and your sweat is dripping down right where your front wheel is. Keen observers may have noticed that their front wheels showed nipple corrosion, but not their rear wheels. The rear wheels sees less sweat and more importantly gets a little bit of a chain lube coating just from riding. And this is how to avoid nipple corrosion – regular maintenance, including rinsing the salt off your precious bike and a dab of oil on the nipples every now and then. So if you have no time for maintenance since you have a busy work life, a full-fledged family life with two kids and a Golden Retriever, swim before and run after every bike ride, or all the above you should wave beautifully purple anodized aluminium nipples goodbye and choose for the peace of mind brass nipples.
What You Ride.
Divorce machine: We don’t want to sound bitter here at all, but if you are still not divorced after you bought that tandem – congratulations! If it didn’t even harm your marriage, but actually made you race together on it at the Sunday morning time trial into the sunrise than you are a pair of unicorns. Rare, but you definitely exist. And now since you got really good at time-trialing you are in for a new pair of fast, deep and aerodynamic wheels. Finding an aerodynamic wheelset with a high spoke count (e.g. 32) that supports the weight of a tandem is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. The obvious shortcut is a custom wheelbuild. On the other side of the TT spectrum you find the TT specialist. The front wheel of your TT bike is the first thing to hit the wind and it’s top half rotates into the wind with twice the speed. While “the deeper the better” is a valid rule of thumb for the rim, it is also important to keep the rotational drag low by choosing a low spoke count (e.g. 16). Pair this custom front wheel with the disc you are running in the back and your next PR is all about you and not the bike.
Track & Fixie: Disc rims are track rims. The rims of our AERO56 pair excellent with track hubs. The rim will measure wider than the mounted 23 mm tire creating a perfect leading edge minimizing aerodynamic drag. Tune your new track wheels with a spoke count that suits your discipline and can handle your inner quadzilla. You may not be looking for the last watts riding a Fixie, but you for sure care about style. With our AERO56 rims you can give your minimalistic approach to riding a bicycle a deep, dark and dangerous character.
The Lone Ranger: Endless Bikepacking and Touring adventures into the unknown is your most favorite riding. Despite enjoying your alone time you would like to call your better half (okay let’s be honest your 60 %) once in a while, catch up on world politics, post your daily suffering on social media, analyze your power data and see in the dark. All these things require batteries and you may run out of charge after a few days of riding and camping in the woods. The perfect solution to your problem is an adventure-ready wheelset with a dynamo hub. We anticipated your desire for a custom dynamo wheelset and already created the GRVL38EL (“think ELectric“) and also wrote a blog about it’s usefulness.
The No.2 option…
… to tailor your new pair of wheels towards who you are is color. Since we are passionate about anything anodized in purple, we would never argue with you if that is your No.1. And the best thing, custom wheebuilding makes combining our No.1, spoke count, and your No.1, color, a no-brainer.
All Things Considered.
There is an infinite number of rim-hub-spoke-nipplecolor combinations when you plan a wheelset from scratch. Have a look at the list below. Alternatively, if you already have a pair of hubs and would like to find them a new home, you can send them to us and we will build them into a new pair of rims. No matter if your new project is for Road, Gravel, CX, TT, triathlon, XC, AM, Enduro or DH we will be able to help you out with a variety of rims from our carbon rim supplier, HED, A-Force, H Plus Son, etc., and hubs from Hope, Industry 9 and others.
Rims
- carbon or aluminium
- disc brake or rim brake
- clincher or tubular
- internal or external nipples
Hubs
- disc brake or rim brake
- centerlock or 6-bolt rotor
- 12×100 (f), 15×100 (f), 12×142 (r), 12×135 (r), 10×135 (r), QR (f/r) or Boost (f/r) axle standards
- J-bend or straightpull spokes
- 16, 18, 20, 24, 28, 32 or 36 holes
- black or colors
Spokes
- J-bend or straightpull
- bladed, butted or straight gauge
- black, silver, white or rainbow
Nipples:
- brass or aluminium
- standard, hexagonal or squared
- black, silver or colors
How to get started.
Give us a call at 858-692-8395 or send us an email using the contact form to get your custom build started.
