Canyon has just pulled the curtain back on their wide range of performance disc brake road bikes for 2017, offering carbon aero race, all-around race, and all-road endurance bikes with discs at many price points. But hidden in the announcement was a new bike build of the Ultimate CF SLX 9.0 Disc that featured an unreleased wheelset from DT Swiss that we hadn’t heard of yet. We recently previewed DT’s latest aero+ all-road endurance ERC 1100 wheels as part of their model year 2018 Road R:evolution, but the next wheelset looks lighter, shallower, and focused on road racing. Check out what we can speculate about the new wheels after the jump…
At 5500€, the top Ultimate CF SLX 9.0 Disc is spec’ed with the as-yet unannounced ‘DT Swiss PRC 1400 Dicut Disc’ wheelset, another glimpse of what DT has in store as part of their road R:evolution line update. DT Swiss has not released details on additional new wheels, but a lot of tech can be garnered from what Canyon has listed. (Although to be clear, we might need to take those details with a grain of salt, as the info Canyon lists for the ERC 1100 wheels on the Endurace isn’t entirely accurate.)
But going on what we have, a carbon rim profile of 40mm deep plants the PRC 1400 in the mid-depth range, likely making for an all-around wheelset that fits well with the Ultimate’s ethos. Its aero focus suggests another likely development in the DT partnership with aerodynamics experts Swiss Side, who have shown the ability to balance straight line drag reduction with real world stability in the wind that greatly improves rideability.
A 17mm inner width makes it slightly narrower than their recent ERC rim, which suggests it is probably designed for 23-28mm tires, still offering a bit of expanded volume. 1450g isn’t bad either for a disc brake wheelset (80g lighter than the ERC 1100), and since it is from DT it is of course ready to be set up tubeless like all of their other wheels.
Based on DT naming conventions, it will be a top-level performance carbon road rim for a race wheelset, and will be built up with their T-head straight pull spokes and next-to-top disc brake hubs. If we had to guess that could mean the same new aero 240s hubs we have just seen, but without the premium SINC ceramic bearings, in order to keep costs down a bit. Even having just been in DT’s HQ less than a month ago, this wasn’t something we were expecting any time soon, but we look forward to learning more once they become official.
