Interbike 2012: Mad Fiber Sees Red w/ Kevlar, Could See Blue, Yellow…

Eh, the luminescence of Kevlar doesn’t justify the presence of color and slightly less weight imo. Of course price hike sucks, but in an engineering sense props to MadFiber.

Less depth please, a 32mm depth would be awesome.

The last photo of the rear hub kinda looks like some kids paper mache project…. really unfinished…. especially where the non-drive side “spokes” meet the hub. Neat that they push the envelope as they do though.

Kevlar/aramids are super cool but a major pain to work with. Instead of sanding nicely they fray out like a PITA. They also wick moisture (used as flame retardant wicks) and this can often lead to delamination problems. We often will add a kevlar layer to our carbon repair jobs but sandwich it near the center of the layup so we don’t have to do any finishing work in it.

@Gillis. I most certainly did miss that line, I was too busy looking at the pretty pictures (:

Looks like the first Mad Fibre stuff that was shown on here. It looked like it was made in someones garage as a side project. Since I thought they had improved on the finishing…I guess not? The red looks terrible and I can’t believe they would leave something looking like that at Interbike.

Mad Fibre has been an excellent company to work with and as shown here they are about making break throughs in wheel technology. I am sure that many of the people commenting here have neither ridden MF wheels, or spoken with the gentlemen behind the design. In both these instances you will be rewarded with top-of-the-game performance. If you ever have the chance to ride these wheels you will see that perhaps for some, those whose bikes spend more time moving, the looks can be pardoned. -TR

Props to Mad Fiber for pushing the envelope with these Kevlar wheels. Other wheels at Interbike, Zipp, Enve, fill in the blank, all look the same – model t technology with fancy graphics. MF wheels represents the future – carbon utilized as designed for great all purpose wheels with fabulous strength to weight ratio. As TheRhys mentions – for bikes that spend more time moving there is no better performing wheel.

this is a prototype right?!.. im sure the finish work would be significantly improved upon if it goes into production. MF is extremely careful about visual defects however these composite materials are notorious for visual blemishes.. there is only so much finish work you can do on a bare carbon surface. would you prefer a painted wheel?!.. think about what your frame would look like if it were unpainted (it aint pretty). to those of you who are actuallyMF riders and understand that the important part is ride quality, right on!