Found: NOX Hand built Carbon Wheels Straight from Tennessee

Rider weight restrictions?
XC or AM?
Warrantee and replacement plans?

“Handbuilt” is not a word. Sorry.

Rims have a weight limit of 240lbs. The XCR-29 is tailored toward aggressive XC riding and/or racing, but for lighter riders they are plenty strong for full on AM riding. The AM-275 will be built beefier to handle AM at all weights, but it is still light enough for racing. If customers want it, we’ll make XC and AM versions of each. Just let us know!

Warranty is 2 years, fully transferrable. Lifetime crash replacement policy.

We also do custom builds with any spoke/hub combo you want, just shoot us an email, and of course we also sell rims separately.

Thanks!
Brad
Nox Composites

I hate being poor.

But I am glad to see hopefully high quality US made carbon rims showing up on the market at more affordable prices, they are half the price of the comparable Enve rims.

I guess I assumed they were based on the “Straight From Tennessee” in the title. Their website says “Wheels Handbuilt in Tennessee.”

Finally something worth looking at that is not way over priced. Thanks for going the route of 23mm inner width!

I thought these guys were engineers? Why does their diagram mention higher tensions = stiffer wheel? That’s bullshit. I’d buy more durable, because the equalized tension means the NDS spokes will never be detenionsed enough during unloading events to actually come loose, but the tension of the spoke has nothing to do with wheel stiffness and this has been proven both theoretically and experimentally. More spokes = stiffer. Thicker spokes = stiffer. Wider bracing angles = stiffer. Stiffer rim = stiffer. More spoke tension? No.

what nick and jasonk missed is that they equalize the tensions. you both should read more carefully. and as an engineer i would hope you could see why.

by equalizing the tensions you will have a net increase in absolute tensions. not necessary in the drive side but the non-drive side.

the wheel will be stiffer because the tension in the non-drive side increased.

@Egen: wheel stiffness is independent of spoke tension, and that includes equalized spoke tensions. Wheel stiffness is primarily a function of spoke stiffness, bracing angle, rim stiffness, and the number of spokes. The only time that tension is a factor is when it’s so low that a spoke completely loses tension as it passes over the contact patch.

By reducing the bracing angle on the non-drive side, aren’t they reducing the lateral stiffness of the wheel? They make the drive and non-drive sides have symmetrical bracing angles, but the way they do it is by matching the laterally strong, more horizontal non-drive spokes angle to the angle of the weaker, more vertical drive side spokes. Smells gimmicky to me, although I am glad they occupy a cheaper price point than Enve.
Ritchey did the same thing with their OCR (Off Center Rim) in the late 90’s.

I just saw Brad’s post. Brad seems to confuse lateral tension with lateral stiffness. More worrying, the link Brad included asserts the following:

“Most people assume that higher tension provides higher lateral stiffness. The basic physics behind this theory is sound – more spoke tension does increase lateral stiffness. […] Clearly, the real-world relationship of spoke tension and wheel stiffness is not well understood, and it’s safe to say the relationship is most likely non-linear. ”

In fact, this relationship is quite well understood; Jobst Brandt articulated it very well. The basic physics behind the higher-tension-equals-stiffer-wheel theory are profoundly un-sound; it requires that we throw out Hooke’s law. I think Brad and Nox are acting in good faith and most likely make a high-quality product, but their grasp of the structural mechanics involved isn’t what it might be.

Rinard’s test results show a close correlation between theory and the real world. In fact, Rinard’s data show the test wheels getting marginally *stiffer* as spoke tension is reduced (but before the spokes go fully slack). Even though Nox’s wheelbuilding page cites Rinard’s work, their understanding of that work seems to be a bit fuzzy.

To be fair to Brad and Nox, they are absolutely right when they assert that more tension does not increase the stiffness of the wheel. Our only disagreement is about why.

We actually did talk with Bill Mould during the design phase, very nice guy. His work showing how offset rims decrease lateral deflection with laterally applied loads at the hub was surprising and is one reason we wrote the website verbiage the way it is, namely that it seems to contradict Rinard’s results leading to some uncertainty about what’s really going on. Perhaps the difference was the placement of the load, which then begs the question which one is the one a rider feels as “flex”? We aren’t trying to deceive anyone, and we’re big boys, so we can admit a mistake. If the physics behind the wheel building info is wrong, we’ll change it. With that said, we have considered that Hooke’s law is a only a first order approximation and that possibly it is a simplistic view because the stiffness of our rims spreads the load over a larger region. We’ve been around this circle in our own internal debates and we always come back to requiring finite element analysis to get a real appreciation of the relationships. And then we ask ourselves why bother? No matter what the answer, we aren’t going to change the spoke tension we build to. And no matter what the answer, the fact remains that asymmetric rims improve the equality of spoke tension between NDS and DS and we all agree that’s a good thing. So it’s right about then we say screw it and go for a ride. 🙂

Brad

Erd of am275

This is an interesting discussion.
I’ve studied the subject for some years now.

I’m with JasonK on this. The Nox add is false concerning stiffness. Close flange hubs reduce lateral stifness.
I talked with Bill Shook, and what i understood was that is design is better for strengh of the whell, because the torsion component on the rim is lower, pushing farther the moment when the whell becomes a taco chips.
I think this idea is useless with a carbon rim, wich is very rigid and strong in torsion. They do not fail this way.

I like the assymetrical design but i would go for a classical hub (Like Chris King) on theses rims.

By the way you got some competition from JPracing1, who will show in val d’isere a pretty similar rim, hookless, made in europe.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/JPRACINGBIKE1/131197296956951?hc_location=timeline

Hey, I rode a prototype set of these wheels for about a month. I rode them on my single speed in Knoxville and in Pisgah and I rode them on my full suspension bike in Knoxville and in Pisgah. I probably rode them about 500 miles in a month. I have to say they worked really well. I never burped a tire. They are much, much stiffer than the Arch EX wheels I have with identical hubs (Hope Pro2 Evos) and identical spokes (Sapim CX-Ray). They feel really great when you charge through a whole bunch of rocks and your wheels don’t bend all over the place.

I also build lots of wheels and in riding them took them off the bike and checked lateral and vertical true and never had to turn a spoke. Using just a Park spoke deflection tool all spokes remained balanced during my test period.

Also, using the asymmetrical rim seems to only make sense. I really can’t believe that disc mountain rims aren’t all asymmetrical. As for the bracing angle on the disc side being reduced, its being increased by the same amount on the drive side. In the end, I think that having a wheel with tension balanced between the two sides will increase the lifespan of the wheel.

More importantly than any of that is that they ride really well. Its very difficult to ride bike components on the internet. Your tires will look huge on these wide ass rims. If you come to Knoxville and demo a set you’ll be sad to give them up. I was sad to give them up and so was the other local ripper who tested a set for a month and he rode them more and harder than I did.

[deleted]. Look like some pretty cool wheels to me.

All

The rims are made in China using Toray Uni and 3K weave fiber. We tried to work with manufacturing partners in the US, but as many of you know there is a lot of labor (~6.5 hours) in each rim and unfortunately we learned we couldn’t make rims of this quality at this price point domestically. Sad but true.

Vincent, Jason, etc.. thanks for the input, you guys made us run the bracing angles and you are correct, the wheel on the right is less stiff by about 16%. Given this, we agree the ad is misleading – and we will update it to use the same hub on the left and the right. This was an oversight that we should have caught. What we were trying (apparently poorly!) to portray was that asymmetrical rims improve the bracing angles on dished wheels, thereby providing a net increase in lateral stiffness, and a net increase in spoke tension and DS/NDS equality – all good things. In hindsight, we should have just used the same hub left and right side and not unnecessarily changed hubs. We will update it to do just that.

I’ll also update the website to further explain how a net tension increase improves stiffness because net tensions goes up as bracing angles improve. This has obviously been a point of confusion and needs to be clarified. When we say physics shows that stiffness increases with tension, we of course are talking about net tension increases which come from using an asymmetrical rim and the corresponding improvement of bracing angles, NOT that you can just crank your spokes to 400 kgf and gain lateral stiffness.

In response to someone saying that spoke tension equalization isn’t needed with a carbon rim, we look at it the other way. Since the rim is by far the largest contributor to stiffness, and our rim is very stiff, then we have “stiffness to spare,” and trading a small amount of stiffness which comes from slightly lower bracing angles on a hub like the AC for the strength and reliability of DS and NDS spoke tension equality might not be a bad idea. Remember from a stiffness point of view, in order of importance it goes 1. Rim 2. Number of Spokes 3. Bracing Angles. An almost 31mm OD carbon rim and 32 spokes gives you some stiffness to play with. I personally can’t feel the “reduction” in stiffness from 0.8 deg loss of bracing angles with an AC hub. But we do know weight is important for a lot of people, and the AC hubs are incredibly light which is why we currently offer it as an option.

Thanks!
Brad
Nox Composites

The bottom line that I see with these wheels is that you can purchase a product that is supierior to other carbon offerings in terms of internal rim width and price. Buying one Enve rim alone is upwards of $900+ – One Rim! Comparing Carbon to Alloy is apples and oranges – for real. If you’ve never ridden a Carbon hoop thought single track you need to. The weight savings doensn’t matter nearly as much as the stiffness through corners – especially on 29ers. Plus the impact resistance of carbon is umatchable. If you hit the a carbon hoop hard enough to break it, you likely would have cracked the Alloy counter part also.

Your i9’s have far surperior engagement to Kings? bullsh*t. Have you even ridden a carbon rim? It’s worth it.