Race Face’s new Turbine R trail riding wheels are built around an all-new oversized alloy Vault hubset, the first to be branded as a Race Face product, and a new all-mountain aluminum rim. The Vault hubs were developed in house from scratch to try to build a mountain hub that could deliver the performance and stand up to the extreme use that Race Face products are used to. The rim uses a new alloy to better handle the impacts an enduro wheel gets punished with and goes with a 30mm internal width for good wide tire support.
And apparently that R stands for Rally. Race Face will be fine with you racing the new wheels, but they are more expecting you to get loose and put the wheels through the wringer…
The Vault rear hub’s asymmetric design was all about improving drive side torsional stiffness (which is said to improve 20% over their previous Aeffect XC/Trail wheels) and lateral stiffness. The hubs get a 60 tooth drive ring with 2 sets of 3 pawls offset for 120 points of engagement and nearly instantaneous 3° of crank rotation to put power to the pedals.
The hubs spin on widely spaced, large ball 6902 standard bearings for long life, good load distribution, and low resistance. The Vault hubs then get low-drag labyrinth seals specially designed to keep the elements out and the bearings spinning smoothly for a long time.
The Turbine R wheels use a new light 6069 alloy that Race Face claims to be 40% stronger than the more commonly used 6061. That gives them more durability at the bead hook which is often the point of failure on trail and enduro wheels due to rock strikes, and it let them thin the extrusion overall to get the weight of the 27.5″ rim down to a claimed 460g.
The asymmetric rim profile has a 30mm internal width, and shifts its spoke bed 4.5mm for more even spoke tension side-to-side (a 50% improvement in tension balance out back). That works together with the oversized hubs that yield a single spoke length per wheel, and results in a wheel that is stronger, longer lasting, and more likely to stay true over time.
The Vault hubs of the Turbine R wheels are all about compatibility. They get tool free end caps to jump through the standard axles and even QRs. Boost and non-Boost hubs are available, of course with the Boost versions getting flatter spoke angles due to wider hub bodies, and therefore improved wheel stiffness.
The Devinci Global Racing team has been working with Race Face to ride and test the new wheels, and it was this athlete partnership that helped Race Face settle on the 30mm internal width. This seemed to be an ideal size to give the wheels a flexible character that can cover pretty much anything from all-mountain trail riding to proper enduro racing.
Out of the box, the Turbine R wheels come set up for tubeless with tape and valves already installed.
Both front and rear wheels comes in two hub options to suit Boost or not. The non-Boost front hubs can swap out the standard 15×100 end caps to fit 20x110mm thru-axles, 9×100 quick release, 15×100 Rock Shox torque caps (not RS1). The rear non-Boost hubs come set up for 12×142, but can swap for 12x135mm thru-axles or 10×135 quick release. Boost versions stick with 15×110 & 12×148, although the front can still add the oversized Rock Shox torque caps. All end cap swapping is tool free.
Rear hubs can use either SRAM XD or Shimano 10 speed cassette bodies. 27.5 wheels get a claimed total weight of 1730g, while 29ers bump that up to 1815g. Both sizes will sell independently for $480 for the front and $640 for the rear.
