It may already be deep into autumn and midway through our cross racing season, but Nox Composites has three new disc brake wheelsets, each with a new carbon rim to target those out racing in the mud, as well as riders grinding away cold weather gravel, or just looking to log big base miles to prep for another season on the road.
The Zolder is their newest ultimate cyclocross weapon with a wide and superlight tubular rim just waiting to get glued up with the best tires you can muster for that mid-season boost or to prep for your season peak for upcoming local series or regional championships. The Citico clinchers are for those looking for a little more versatility and get a still wide and light tubeless profile that can double as a privateer cross wheel or thanks to the ability to run higher pressures will transfer well over to the gravel and road. Lastly the new asymmetric aero Falkor clinchers are the first of many aero road wheels to come out of Nox, who’ve been working in CFD designs and real world testing to develop a new range of aero wheels for the growing crop of disc brake road bikes…
Zolder CX Disc Tubular
The 27mm deep Zolder is meant to be the top cross wheel with a new 315g rim designed to dominate the race scene. It uses a patent-pending 26mm wide CXT contoured rim bed that was designed to deliver an unmatched gluing interface, and shaped to handle 30mm and wider tires. As throughout all of Nox’s disc-specific rims, it uses their standard 2.6mm asymmetrical offset to equalize spoke tension, and gets flipped side to side for both front & rear application. The Zolder rims are made in 24 & 28h drillings and sell for $480 a piece. Nox will also handbuild you up a custom wheelset, with prices starting from $1358 for the pair.
Citico CX Disc Clincher
If you aren’t really ready yet to make a commitment to the added performance benefits of tubulars for cross the Citico could still be an attractive option. Then again if you are looking for a light tubeless carbon option for gravel riding, this might be your target to start with. The 380g Citico rim measures 23mm wide internal to offer wide stable support to light and wide tires. Outside this asymmetric rim measures 31mm wide and 25mm deep, getting the same 2.6mm disc-specific offset. Inside it features a deep center well, a gently sloping tubeless shoulder and a small bead hook that is designed to be run with tire pressures up to 90psi. The 700c only Citico rims sell for the same $480 a pop as the tubulars, but will make it a much easier ordeal to swap your tires around. Regular complete wheelsets with the Citico rim build up in the neighborhood of 1500g and start at $1428 for the set.
Falkor 36D Disc Clincher
Lastly the new Falkor road clinchers are the culmination of a couple of years of aero development and the first in a line of more aero rims at different depths. Developed first through Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and then into “countless hours” of real-world modeling, on-the-bike testing and rider feedback, the new Falkor 36D rim is the first to take their asymmetric offset carbon rim and really focus on making it more slippery in the wind. The result of that is what Nox says is an “extremely fast asymmetrical disc rim that won’t get pushed around in cross winds.”
It uses a 36mm deep profile with a 21mm inner width (27.5mm outer) and gets a new reduced 2.0mm of offset said to produce lower torque around the axle in the wind. The mid-depth 415g rim is designed to balance the line between a race and everyday road wheel where all-around aerodynamics come into play. The Falkor is optimized to be run with 23-30mm tires, often adding a few mm of real world width. The rims on their own sell for $500 in 24, 28, or 32h drilling and can be built into complete wheelsets from $1398 and up.
All of the new rims are available now from Knoxville, TN based Nox. They run a custom wheel building shop right next to their rim facility and can build with either their standard range of top-shelf hubs, or even yours that you send in. They say they can build custom wheels in as little as 10 days, to get you riding soon.
