If you have been paying attention to the plus-size carbon wheel market, you know that Kuroshiro has been rewriting the rules when it comes to fat bike wheels. The super light carbon hoops are designed to run tubeless without rim tape and owe much of their strength and stiffness to their unique SPline design with uses a continuous raised center carbon ridge.
Recently, the company introduced a slimmed down version of their fat bike rims to cater to the 29+ crowd. Using a similar technology but with a completely boxed center channel, the wheels are a simple 1 step weight loss program for your bike – as long as you have the cash. To illustrate the weight savings provided by their wheels, Kuroshiro swapped out the wheelsets on some common, mostly stock fat bike and 29+ models to show what is possible.
Light weight fatties ahead…
One of the first full suspension fat bikes to market, the Salsa BuckSaw wasn’t necessarily built to be super light. Slap on a set of Kuroshiro Enso 685 carbon wheels with Surly Nate 3.8 tires though and the 28.92 lbs (13.12 kg) weight for otherwise stock bike is pretty good. Note that 80mm rims will fit in the BuckSaw frame, at least with 3.8″ tires such as the Nate. These were all bigger bikes as well. We didn’t get the exact sizes, but they are definitely not small frames.
The Salsa BearGrease Carbon 1 drops down to just 24.40 lbs (11.06kg) with the Enso 685 treatment.
Take a Beargrease Carbon XX1 build and add Kuroshiro Enso 950 29+ wheels with Surly Knard 3.0 tires and you get a 29+ build that comes in at an impressive 22.07 lbs (10.01 kg).
Another bike that fun and affordability was a bigger priority than weight is the new Niner ROS9 Plus. Throw in a pair of the Enso 950s though and the weight quickly comes down to a very manageable 25.77 lbs (11.69 kg). Technically, this is still one of the preproduction models so the weight may change a bit for production.
Obviously a big part of the weight reduction for all of these bikes is the conversion to tubeless – which if you ride fat bikes and haven’t tried yet, you’re missing out. Any set of carbon wheels with tubeless tires will drop a lot of weight from a fat bike, but Kuroshiro’s featherweight rims will certainly take it to the extreme.
