Pi Rope’s unique 2.2g Vectran fiber spokes add tons of new options, with many new wheel build in carbon or alloy rims, their first in-house-developed hubs, and of course, rainbow colors for their spokes and nipples. If you are looking to build a unique road, gravel, or mountain bike wheelset, it’s hard to argue that an ultralight fiber-spoked wheel wouldn’t already stand out from the crowd. But now Pi Rope laces up tons more opportunities for customization.
Pi Rope ultralight Vectran fiber spoke wheels go rainbow
Pi Rope first debuted their superlight textile spoke wheels back in 2018 with their unique braided Vectran polyester fiber in its natural off-white. Then, just half a year later they got a stealthy black update, in the complete Squirrel Black edition wheels, developed with superlight Newmen carbon rims.
Now that Pi Rope has dialed in the process that dyes the polyester fiber, they are dramatically expanding their color options…
Now Pi Rope officially lists eleven spoke colors available – natural ‘Golden Shine’, Bright Yellow, Bright Orange, pale Dusky or Bright Pink, Red, Light/Medium/Dark Blues, Dark Green, or Black.
Each Pi Rope wheel is built to order, so you can add a small color accent with one or two spokes, use all of one color of spokes, or go crazy with rainbows. Adding colors adds a bit to the total wheel set price – Pi Rope says it starts at about an extra 20€ per color, although it depends on the complete build. They even offer customized anodized nipple colors as well.
New Cannondale Lefty ready MTB wheelsets
Of course, when you build XC mountain bike wheelsets as light as 1000g, somebody is going to what to put them on a cross-country bike with a Cannondale Lefty fork. But remembering back to when we first looked at Pi Rope, their unique tension-only braided fiber spokes require a special oversized hub connection, so there wasn’t a readily available hub that would work.
So Pi Rope developed their own Lefty front hub.
Building a Lefty-ready hub isn’t especially ground-breaking. But it is a big step for Pi Rope, who had already been thinking about creating a full line-up of their own hubs, developed and optimized for their threaded-in connection at the hub.
Serving as a proof-of-concept of sorts, the new Lefty hub likely signals more on & off-road hubs built by Pi Rope, so then all they need is to have rim makers supply the custom rims for lightweight wheel builds.
More & more Pi Rope custom wheel building options
While rainbow & Lefty additions are more flashy, probably the most important bit of news is simply that Pi Rope has added many more new custom rim options, more rims always in stock, and in both alloy & carbon variants.
From the start Pi Rope worked with German rim maker Newmen to build alloy & carbon wheels. Their most popular Newmen alloy 29er wheels start as light as 1255g for 1300€ XC wheels or 1525g 1150€ all-mountain wheels. But Pi Rope has also added BikeAhead’s THErim SL24 to build a 2900€, 1005g cross-country wheelset. And now they have partnered with French wheel maker Duke to add the possibility to build up almost any Duke rim – carbon or alloy, road or MTB – with Pi Rope spokes on special order starting around 2100€.
The custom wheel options just keep growing!
