By building around 4,000 wheels per year, ProWheelBuilder has learned a few things about what makes for a good wheel. So far, their wheels have been custom built from a variety of rim types and sizes, various hubs based on the consumer’s needs and wants, and then they’re laced together with the right spoke count, type and tension to suit the rider and their riding style.
Now, they’re branching out a bit to offer their own complete wheels for road with two options. Both come tubeless ready with rim tape and valve stem preinstalled, and both use White Industries’ T11 hubs. The hubs were chosen for their low drag and high quality build, which includes a chromoly axle, titanium freehub body and side-adjustable preload.
The Ventus, above, is their aero offering with a 24mm wide x 31mm deep alloy rim, and the Aeris is their light weight do-it-all road wheel…
Both are 24mm wide on the outside with 19mm between the bead hooks. The Aeris is 22mm deep, and the Ventus stretches that to 31mm with a basic aero profile. Both have a bead locking design to help keep the tire in place with low pressures and a deeper, rounded center channel to aid tire installation.
Spokes on both are Sapim CX Ray with Sapim locking alloy nipples to prevent anything from wiggling loose under hard riding or rough roads. PWB only uses J-Bend spokes because they’re easier to source and can be built into very strong wheels thanks to their stress relief and tensioning procedure used on every wheel they build.
White’s titanium freehub body is tougher than aluminum ones, so it resists the cassettes efforts to dig into it and get stuck.
The Aeris uses a KinLin XR22T rim, which comes in at about 440g. It’s made of Niobium, which they say is lighter and stronger than traditional aluminum alloys used in rims. It’s laced 2x on the front with 24 spokes and 3x on the rear with 28 spokes. Claimed weight is 1,499g as is.
The Ventus uses a KinLin XR31T rim, also Niobium and also with a machined brake track. It’s laces with just 16 spokes in the front and 20 in the rear to reduce drag, which helps it match the Aeris’ weight of just 1,499g for the set.
Both have a choice of SRAM/Shimano, Campagnolo or SRAM XD freehub bodies, and both have multiple ceramic bearing upgrade options, plus a choice of hub and nipple anodization colors, too. Retail is currently $650 per set for both.
