New Affordable Tubeless Road Offerings from Hunt Wheels

“Wheels come fitted with … plus spare spokes and a Pillar spoke nipple tool.”
I must say: they have a lot of confidence in their wheels…

Cory Benson + 1.

Supplying spares is great service! Allways take’m with you when traveling. And remeber: Mavic would charge you ~5$ for just one spoke…

When I build wheels for people I always include 3 of each spoke length I use, the same number of nipples, and the specs on spoke tension. It’s just good form.

All the road tubeless haters are just jealous I did 5,000 miles on nasty potholey roads last year, and didn’t get a single flat.

Those wheels look great, reasonably priced and reasonably light, and I would imagine that [gasp] you can use them with clinchers and tubes as well.

‘If you don’t like it don’t ride it… ‘

Agreed. Now follow your own advice and stop calling the tube and tire folk ignorant.

thats fine tho. i have a pair pacentis with novatec hubs, ~500USD assembled by a LHS in the US, good service, has the rim tape and works perfect tubeless.
I don’t think there’s a big advantage not to use tape.

Same on my MTB (‘except its carbon and hookless because the roval’s are decently priced actually..)

Good to see they have a freehub spline protector to stop cassettes from digging in so hard and destroying the freehub body eventually.

@bikermark

No

Hi Everyone, thank you all for the comments. Just a couple of bits of extra info:

@Ryan good spot. We’re only a start-up so our quantities aren’t yet big enough to have our own design hubs yet but we are working with a project engineer at a university here in the UK and will have more info to release in the future. The Novatec hubs performed very well in our testing, offered some excellent specs and as you spotted they are proven and trusted by many big brands and product managers I know personally, so we decided to work with them.
Regards the tubeless rim profile; all our rims have horizontal tubeless shoulder steps which are different to a normal clincher rim which has a single curve from edge to edge. The shoulder steps help the tubeless tyre to seal easily and mount safely, especially when running lower pressures such as 80-90psi. If you’re referring to our rims having spoke holes with rim tape, this is a choice we made for a few reasons. It’s difficult to build wheels with no spoke holes so the retail price would be higher and of course replacing spokes can be a real faff for the customer. Plus leaving in the material for each spoke hole adds weight, our rim tape is actually lighter than the material removed (11g for two layers). The big brands who have sealed rims use their own rim extrusions which have a slightly thinner wall to reduce the weight and maximise on the extra strength from no spoke holes. We’ll listen to customer feedback and consider this once we’re at the volumes which would warrant it. Please do let me know any more views on this as listening to riders is the best way for us to make better products.

@Alex our front hub has been upgraded to EZO Japanese bearings from the standard NBK bearings. Obviously I can’t promise any particular performance or mileage as it is of course effected by weather, washing, road surface, rider weight etc. We have tried our best spec the best performance bearings and hubs we can without creating wheels that are too expensive for normal riders like ourselves.

@YoMamma – you should have seen some of our logo options, a wheel shaped “H” and “unt” could have caused a proper scandal 🙂

For a few of the road tubeless comments – We totally understand that road tubeless is harder work and is only for a few of us who don’t mind the faff. We have no plan to replace clincher tyres (as if we could we’re too small) and our wheels work with them well. We totally respect clincher users and still use them ourselves, mostly for racing on carbon rims, but testing tubeless too. Having been MTBers for a long time, as well as road riders, we have been through all the tubeless learnings and appreciate some of their positive aspects. One of the core benefits for us is puncture reduction. Our local roads have a lot of flint gravel which finds it’s way into our tread (even Gator Hardshells) and has driven us mad with punctures, tubeless just seals around the little blighters. As I say, tubeless is likely suited to a few riders in specific situations, but we’re not aiming massive so a few riders buying our wheels will keep us going. Tubulars are still here decades after clinchers took the forefront for most riders. I don’t see it as a battle between systems more a case of it’s good to have the right equipment options available on the market for certain types of riding or roads and totally understand if tubeless isn’t for you.

We really do appreciate reading all the comments as that’s how we learn. Anyone please do feel free to contact us if you have any questions or even just want a chat. All contact details are on our site.

Thanks again all,
Tom Marchment – HuntBikeWheels

Thanks Dave, enjoy your riding.