Whether it was rims or hubs, for road or mountain, American Classic’s offerings just keep getting wider and adding tubeless ready options, which should make just about everyone happy.
For the pavement, the Sprint 350 rims get a complete redesign to bring it up to modern standards. Inside width jumps from 16mm to 19mm (external is now 22mm), and it’s tubeless ready. The weight of the rim is spot on at 350g (claimed), and it’s built into a traditional road wheelset with 28/32 spokes (F/R) with double butted spokes and comes in at just 1,396g for the set. Retail is $899 USD. Their sponsored Pro Tour team, Bretagne, has been training on them and say they’re better than the race wheels they had last year.
A healthy bead seat and lip makes the Sprint 350 rims tubeless compatible once tape and sealant are added.
The RS-1 and fat bike hubs are in production now. The RS-1 front hub has a 25mm axle that’s based on their 20mm thru axle hub with different end caps. It has bigger bearings and axle than SRAM’s own RS-1 hubs.
“When I looked at the way their hub and fork was designed, it’s obvious that it needs to be a very stiff system for everything to work properly,” Shook said. “So I wanted to make mine even stiffer than what SRAM was offering.”
Another thing that’s different is that the ends aren’t knurled. Shook says that could be detrimental since there are no rotational loads where the hub meets the fork. But there are lateral forces that want to rock the hub back and forth, and any knurls could dig into the fork legs and eventually exacerbate wear. The flatter face of these provides a bigger total contact patch and won’t prematurely wear down the insides of the dropouts.
Everyone needs a 27.5+ wheelset these days, but Shook says the market isn’t big enough for them to start rolling their own rims at in those widths. Fortunately, Fatlabs had approached them about buying hubs to offer complete wheels, so they formed a Collaboration with Fatlab to build plus-sized wheels.
They’re creatively called “the AC hubs with Fatlab rims” wheels, and they’re built with 14/15 Sandvik stainless steel spokes.
The rims are available in 55mm and 80mm, with the wider size only being offered in 26″ diameters. The 55mm wide rim is available in all three wheel sizes. Hubs are up to the consumer, and AC already makes virtually every fat bike and regular hub standard out there, so you can get what you need.
Right now, it’s available to OE customers only, but they’re going to start bringing them in the U.S. very soon, which should time nicely with the introduction of some bikes that will be built around such wheels and tires.
They’ll have a Boost 148 rear and 15×110 hubs ready by Eurobike. They’ll also have a 43mm wide alloy rim. It’s based on the Wide Lightning, but stretched another 10mm and beefed up a bit. That’ll give them a full width range on top of the Fatlabs builds.
The last sure thing to look forward to at Eurobike is a 12mm thru axle ready CenterLock hub. Most of their CenterLock hubs are OE now, but they think that rotor mount format will dominate road so it’ll start seeing more aftermarket availability.
A couple other random things from their booth: Hand cycle and tiny little folding bike hubs, both of which we never knew they made.
And did you know American Classic made a seatpost? They do, and it’s a rather unique design in that there’s a single bolt clamp on a candy cane shaft. The clamp doesn’t need to be overtightened to hold properly since fore or aft loads on the saddle have the effect of trying to split the rail clamps, which only makes them grab tighter onto the post.
