Stans Crest Wheels

High quality wheels are one of the biggest bang for the buck bicycle upgrades. I recently purchased a wheelset built with Stans No Tubes new Crest 29er rims. Cahaba Cycles built the rims with an American Classic front hub and DT 240 Singlespeed rear hub. Check out my last post for why I’m using a singlespeed hub on a bike with gears.

Standard black rims were out of stock, so I got a set of the powder coated white version. Even with the powder coating they were 370 grams each out of the box on the shop scale. As a reference, typical high quality 29er cross country rims are ~100 grams each heavier. This is my first experience with No Tubes rims, but they have noticeably short sidewalls. In fact, the sidewalls are so short, I was skeptical that a tire would stay on securely. However, just the opposite is true. I tried several tubed and tubeless setups with various Bontrager tires and a Seguaro tire and had excellent results. Tires emit a secure popping noise when seated properly on the rims. The only setup issues that I had were when I omitted the soapy water step and blew a tire off. Apparently the soapy water does help seat the tire bead! Notubes has extremely detailed and helpful setup videos on their website.

So how do they work on the trail? Acceleration is noticeably quicker. I managed to pinch flat one day when I hit a large rock while riding with a tube. I’m ~190 lbs geared up and the rim survived without any damage. The short sidewalls provide less leverage so this makes sense. After about 12 hard rides, neither wheel has required truing. Best of all, my bike is a pound lighter over the stock wheels set up tubeless. The majority of savings are from lighter rims and the lack of rubber rim strips required with No Tubes rims. So far, the rims are living up to their hype.

Omar
www.ozonexterra.com