Latest Custom Builds — Sapim

The latest in our "shittohit" series of projects, the XLR8 Wheels 2001 Trek 2300 is finally getting a complete rebuild. The bike came to us with a Shimano WH-6600 rear wheel. We are not a fan of the radial driveside lacing (makes no sense whatsoever) and the rusty old spokes (that were now well beyond their fatigue life). We found a nice old 20 hole Ritchey Zero hub in the used hubs drawer, and calculated the spoke bracing angles using our own developed spoke length, target tensions and bracing angle calculator. As the wheels were originally offered by Shimano with driveside radial lacing and...

A customer dropped by the workshop to see us in the middle of this Mavic Aksium Race wheel rebuild. He asked why we would spend all this time on an older mid level factory wheelset?Like much older Mavic, these wheels were 11s capable from before 11s was a thing. The hubs are very reliable (though not super light). This particular set of rims had seen very little use, but the spokes had become rusty (whilst sitting in storage) and started breaking.We replaced the basic rusty flat bladed spokes with lovely new Sapim Sprint straight pull spokes (a bit thicker Race on...

Matt loves his Commencal hardtail. He's riding it all the time, but what he does not like is the lower spec hubs in the OEM wheelset. Particularly the 30 degrees engagement of the freehub. That's a lot of "dead pedalling" when he really wants to get the power down. We rebuilt his rear wheel with a Hope Pro4 Boost rear hub. He now only needs to rotate the freehub by 8.2 degrees to pick up the power. A significant improvement, with added hub reliability and quality from Hope as well. We used Sapim leader plain gauge spokes on the rear driveside, and...

Luke got in contact, and claimed that he'd been "breaking wheels for ten years now". His most recent purchase had been an Italian mid level factory wheelset, and he came to us after these had broken quite quickly. He's a bigger guy, and uses his wheels for both commuting and weekend rides. He needed 100% reliability, but was on a bit of a budget. We worked with him to come to a spec based on a Bitex lightweight front hub, and a Shimano 105 11s rear hub. We love Shimano hubs. The cup and cone system works really well and...

Neil had a 24h DT Swiss 350 hub lurking in a drawer, and a new Specialized Axis alloy rim, also 24h. He got in contact thinking these two should be mated for a spare rear wheel for his disc road bike. Being a bigger guy, we advised that a plain gauge spoke would be the best solution on this rear wheel, in order to control lateral felxure of the wheel under load (both pedalling and cornering). So Sapim Leader in black it was. He's a sucker for the all black aesthetic, so we used Sapim black 12mm brass nipples for...