We’ve just seen a wholesale reworking of the DT Swiss mountain bike wheel catalog, and have heard rumors that a similar comprehensive road update may be in development for next year too. But in the meantime, while there is so much focus on gravel and all-road bikes, plus the back-and-forth on disc brakes, DT is going back to their Alpine road climbing roots with a new pair of wheels in their top end lightweight Mon Chasseral range. DT are offering tubular and tubeless-ready clincher wheels in their most popular 38mm depth, with updates to rims and resins that will bring improvements to the regular RC Spline wheelsets going forward as well…
DT Swiss calls the RC38 Mon Chasseral wheel their ultimate race wheelset. With a medium depth profile it offers light overall wheel weights to get up and over the climbs, and still a bit of aero performance to roll solo into the wind. Offered as a full carbon, tubeless-ready version it can pair with the latest crop of low rolling resistance tubeless clincher race tires, or you can stick with a classic tubular setup and shave even more weight off the rims.
Like the more shallow RC28 Mon Chasseral clinchers that DT introduced last spring at Sea Otter, the new wheels use the same ultimate lightweight Mon Chasseral hubs that take 18o hub tech and wrap it in even lighter carbon hub shells. The end result is a 38mm deep clincher that weighs just 1390g, and the same depth tubulars that weight only 1210g. That’s more than 10% weight reduction off of their already light RC38 wheels.
While a good bit of that weight comes out of the hubs, the rest is made up in the rims which use a new carbon layup, and in the case of the clinchers a new resin, both of which will gradually make their way into the standard RC rims too. The resin itself was a big step. In order to improve strength for the Mon Chasseral tubeless clinchers, and at the same time be able to drop some rim weight, DT Swiss developed a new resin that helped them maximize their stiffness needs and in the end delivers improve braking performance. The new resin was originally only to be in the two Mon Chasseral clinchers for now (28 & 38), but DT are already working on transitioning the standard RC38 clinchers over to it as well due to its improved performance, with the remaining clinchers to follow as a running update.
The wheels are built with a mix of double butted DT aerolite and aero comp straight-pull spokes and Pro Lock nipples, and the Swiss-made 180-based hubs spin on DT’s SINC ceramic bearings. The RC38 Mon Chasseral clinchers will retail for 2900€, and the RC38 Mon Chasseral tubulars for 2800€ when they become available in August 2016. (US$ pricing should be set by the end of June.)
