700c/29er Wheels
The topic of wheels and wheel weight came up after one of the sprints on my regular Thursday evening road ride. This got me thinking about those new Fulcrum 29er wheels and how they would compare to the cyclocross wheels on my Gunnar. These wheelsets are different in that one has disc hubs and the other is rim brake, but beyond that they are functionally quite similar.
The wheelset on the Gunnar consists on Salsa Delgado Cross rims, XT hubs, butted DT Swiss spokes (alternating colors, of course) and Salsa stainless skewers. All of this (minus the skewers) weighs an impressive 2090g (4.6 lbs). This is the only wheelset I use on the Gunnar, so even though it was built for trail use it does see significant time on the road.
When compared to the Fulcrum Redmetal 29er SL wheelset, which weighs in at rather portly 2028g (4.5 lbs), you’ll notice that my road wheels do in fact weigh more than my 29er wheels. Out of curiosity I weighed the Gunnar’s wheelset with tires, tubes cassette and skewers and I was impressed to see that their combined 3080g (6.8 lbs) weight is (significantly) more than some complete bikes.
I suppose this is interesting, though only in that it means that I could buy some really cheap and heavy road wheels and still save a significant amount of weight. Dont worry, I’ll be back to the 29er build progress in the next post.
Tags: 29er, 700c, Cyclocross, Fulcrum Redmetal 29 SL, Salsa Delgado, XT
