Kappius, a small brand known for their wild looking perforated carbon shelled hubs with integrated cassette, has spun off into carbon mountain bike rims, too.
Why get into rims? Company President Brady Kappius said “Most people don’t want to build up wheels piecemeal, so we thought it made sense to offer our hubs as complete wheels. And we thought we could introduce some significant innovations versus what’s out there.
“If you look at the cross section of a tire bead to a hookless rim, which seems to be getting more popular, it doesn’t mate up. With ours, we designed the all the radii in house for a very smooth transition, and it mates up well with a tire’s bead. The interior cavity’s center channel is fairly shallow so the tire’s beads will sit on it when mounting. That creates enough of a seal that you should be able to inflate and set them with a regular floor pump.”
See the cutaway and more below…
It’s tricky getting a deflated tire pressed into the bead, but you get the idea. It should be cozy once there’s a little pressure in there.
They’re using mostly UD carbon construction with woven carbon at the spoke bed and an outer protective layer. Spoke nipples sit externally for easy truing and building. The spoke holes are offset by 2.5mm, with the front and rear being flipped.
The first offering is the KR29, for Kappius Rim 29″, they’ll offer a 27.5″ later this summer. Weight is an impressive 355g with a healthy 225lb rider weight limit. Max spoke tension is 150kgf and 60psi max inflation. ERD is 602mm.
Retail is $599 for rims, which are available separately, and complete wheels top out at $2,200 with KH1 hubs and DT Aerolite spokes (without the cog).
For their hubs, they revised the top of the line KH1 -the one using their proprietary cassette interface that fuses the cassette with the freehub body- with a simpler system. You used to slide the cassette on and off over a separate piece. Now, when you slide it off, it reveals the drive system. The change saved about 30g, putting the rear hub weight at 265g for the KH1 mountain hub.
Last April, they introduced their all-alloy KH2 hubs with a standard freehub body interface but retained their 8-pawls and 60 teeth for 240 points of engagement (the pawls engage in pairs). Now, they’ve introduced the KH1.5, which uses those same regular cassette freehub body and internals but with a carbon hub shell. Weight on this is 315g for a mountain bike rear, 299g for road rear. The mountain bike hubs have an 11-speed freehub body standard, so if you want to run it as a road/cyclocross disc build, you’re all set. It only saves a few grams over the KH2, but you get the carbon cosmetics, too. XD-driver is also available.
Here’s all the options and pricing:
