Latest Custom Builds — 27.5"

Dan has been riding his Zerode Taniwha (Māori pronunciation: "tanifa") on 26" wheels for some time now, and felt the need to move up to 27.5". The bike is quite special, utilising a centralised 12 spd pinion gearbox that offers a very large spread of gears beyond today's 1x systems. A special Singlespeed rear wheel is required (as there is no rear derailleur). Dan wanted a bombproof hub, that is Singlespeed specific, with instant engagement, and silent. It's not easy to find all those things in a hub, but Project321 offered everything he needed, just not in s Singlespeed version. Yet. We contacted Project321...

If you have been paying attention, you will remember Richard. He had us pull some Chris Kings hubs out of a 26" wheelset we built him a few years ago, and rebuild them into some new 27.5" Syntace rims. Generally we don't rebuild onto used rims - but there are some exceptions. In this case, Richard's old rims were originally built by us, and in good shape (apart from a few cosmetic dents). Of course, being disc brake rims, brake track wear is not an issue, so all being well the rims should do another round rather than sit unused...

Riding his new Canyon he smacked a rock and manage to put a pretty nasty fold in the wall of the rear rim. We priced up a replacement DT Swiss rim, and the cost was onerous. The Spank Oozy Trail 295 was suggested as an alternative - we know they can take the hits, and they are available in the 28h drilling we required for the replacement. And they are very reasonably priced.

Richard gave us a call after buying a new frame. He described the wheels we built him a couple of years ago as "flawless" and wanted more of the same for his new bike. So similar in fact, that he asked if we would transfer his used Chris King hubs onto new 27.5" W35 rims (from his original W35 26" hoops we had built previously).  Of course we could! He sent us up the old wheelset, and we were happy to see that the wheels had beautiful even tensions despite having been ridden really hard across Sydney's Northern Beaches rock gardens - a punishing place...