HED’s booth was chock full o’ new wheels, but you’d have to look closely to find them all. The graphics and overall black on black with more black color theme meant everything maintained their stealthy look. Fortunately, they guided us through it all, and there was a lot to see.
Starting with the more affordable items, the new Ardennes GP disc and rim brake wheels let you get into a HED wheelset for as little as $700 retail by using the same rims as the rest of the line paired with round spokes and their original Sonic hubs rather than the new 545 hubs.
The new hubs, shown below, are available in both disc and rim brake versions for road and cyclocross. They use a new five pawl design to maximize bite and have a chiseled straight pull flange that helps create stiffer wheels. Not shown, the Stingers and Jet Black wheels will be reworked with the new hubs, which makes them stiffer, and other models get the same new internals but with J-bend spoke flanges.
Where things start getting lighter is with their all-new carbon fat bike hubs and complete wheels…
The new HED 545 hubs slot the straight pull spokes into the flanges. Standard models for rim brakes come in 100/130mm QR only. Disc brake versions, which are Centerlock compatible, add 100mm thru-axle (TA) front and 135mm QR/12×142 TA rear.
For triathletes and TTers, the new H3+ spreads the rim outward to a wider 25.5mm width to better fit modern tire sizes. It follows the tubular GT3 in getting wider, but in a standard alloy clincher rim bed and braking surface with HED’s trademark ti-spoke carbon body. They’re available with standard 9/10/11 freehub bodies or an XD driver.
The cross section also gets a bit deeper, going to 60mm.
The new Brick House fat bike hubset weighs in at a very light 475g. The carbon tube in the middle lets them build it to any width, so it’s ready to go for 135mm QR / 135mm TA /150mm TA fronts, and 170mm QR/177mm TA / 190mm QR / 197mm TA rears. They’re available with standard freehub bodies or an XD driver.
HED’s 85mm Big Deal rims now come in a wider, 100mm BFD size, and both are available as complete wheelsets for 2016 built with the Brick House hubs.
85mm versus 100mm. If memory serves, the 80mm Big Deal wheelset came in under 1,600g.
The alloy Big Deal rims/wheels are 80mm wide and come in 24″ (which were built into a great youth fat bike at NAHBS this year) and 26″ sizes and offer a more budget friendly option. All Big Deal rims in any material are tubeless ready.
