Hey all, I’m pretty new to adding individual components to a bike. But I’m looking to get a durable set of wheels for a gravel bike — more along the lines of wheels for regular training and riding with little regard to weight or aerodynamics and all that. Budget wheels. I don’t know what I don’t know. Does spoke count matter? Does the freehub need to be specific to a Shimano micro spline drivetrain?
Given what you have described about typical use, I’d aim for the same brand hubs to avoid any chance of hub spacing impacting the rotor/caliper interface.
Otherwise I feel wheels are hard to go wrong these days when you’re shopping for the training wheels.
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Pick a wheel marketed for gravel use from a brand you’ve heard of, and you’ll probably be ok. Lots of reviews and listicles on t’internet.
Spoke count: higher counts are stronger, but unless you’re a particularly heavy rider I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s also worth pointing out that there’s a lot of things that make a difference alongside spoke count (like spoke length and bracing angle) so I would just trust that the manufacturer has built a wheel that is suitable for gravel if they say it is.
If you want to use a micro spline cassette (i.e. a Shimano cassette with a 10t smallest sprocket) then yes you do need a micro spline specific free hub. This may limit your choice slightly, as microspline isn’t especially common on gravel wheels (more common on MTB wheels).
One thing to consider is the perception of speed of a lighter wheel (specifically rim). You have less mass to accelerate and that is noticeable and fun. That’s also why carbon wheels are often recommended as an upgrade. I bought a bike for 2000€ and then spend 1000€ on a wheelset. Probably the most stupid purchase I ever did but also the most fun one.
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Couple questions would help narrow it down for you.
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is this a disc brake bike?
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how much are you hoping to spend?
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are you willing to look second hand?
(3) is there as many people upgrade wheels so you may be able to find very fine used wheels that will suit you.
At the top of the list: hooks!
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Wheelset + hooked. Tick!
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As others have noted, more spokes == more strength. If you’re smaller/lighter, fewer spokes is ok. But if you’re smaller/lighter and plan to do bike packing (adding weight with bags, equipment, etc) - might be worth leaning towards more spokes to be safe.
I’ve not seen a downside to high spoke count besides weight + aero. Gravel racing, low spoke count. Bike packing with some bags in the middle of nowhere, high spoke count. Is how I make sense of the spectrum.
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For a road wheel, 100%, but this is a thread regarding gravel wheels, where hookless is completely fine, so long as using 35+ gravel tyres at gravel tyre pressure.
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Can I suggest that a couple of other members may be giving you wrong info by saying hooked only.
here are all my thoughts
- If the wheelset is for gravel riding (gravel tyres and gravel tyre pressures), hookless is absolutely fine. If you are talking wheelset for training on the road, with road tyre of 35c or narrower at 40 psi+, then only look at hooked wheels/rims. In all cases, use online pressure calculators like the Silca one.
- Are you in areas/countries that salt/grit roads? If yes, you might want to look for wheels with brass nipples as they will resist corrosion better (road salt destroys Alu spoke nipples). In this scenario, you may be best getting some built for you or find somewhere that builds wheels up rather factory built (in the UK JustRidingAlong are one example).
- Re the freehub, if your current wheels use a Shimano 10-51 or 10-45 cassette, you’ll need Shimano microspline freehub. If you currently have a SRAM cassette, you’ll need an XD or XDR freehub. If you have an 11-something cassette, HG freehub.
- Make sure the hub matches you rotor mounting (6 bolt or Center lock), or just get new rotors of same size and don’t bother switching them back and fore.
- 28 spokes should be fine, but if you go for very light Alu rim, consider going for 32 spokes as that will put some strength back in.
- It’s worth going for Sapin CX ray or similar bladed spokes - a little more aero but also stronger and more compliant (I know you said aero doesn’t matter, but for the small extra cost, it’s worth it with the spokes) .
I would disagree for a number of reasons:
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there’s no downside to hooked
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tires coming off your hookless wheel on gravel is not fun (it’s happened to me, and is why I immediately sold my Zipp 303s)
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even if you go by your advice—it removes the ability to then run road wheels on the same wheelset if you ever fancy doing so, which plenty people will want to do
- Agree. There is no downside to hooked, but it’s not essential for off road riding.
- I don’t know why you had a gravel tyre come off a hookless rim, but it’s extremely unlikely unless there is a faulty part or significant over or under inflation. Hooks give a slightly greater margin for error, but I’ve seen a tyre blow off a hooked rim too due to undersized rim and/or oversized tyre combined with too much pressure. Modern tubeless off road tyres are extremely unlikely to blow off modern hookless rims, and have reasonable and save margin for error around the max pressure to allow for pump gauge errors.
- Agree, which is why I mentioned the running of road tyres in my longer answer.
JC, given your answers above—why such a proponent of hookless? If the best answer is “it might be okay with lower pressures on off-road applications”…that’s really not bringing much of anything to the table, no? There have been multiple similar threads on Slowtwitch and the only people pushing hookless are affiliated with the industry…
Just for some further reading there’s a bunch of gravel wheel recommendations here:
There are advantages to hookless off road, not least as a result of the thicker and therefore stronger flange it allows on the rim, that also helps reduce pinch flats.
If you listen to the various Geek Warning podcasts where hook v hookless has been discussed, or I think Josh Poertner has said this too, among others, the issues with hookless are in road applications, and that off-road is fine.
Hookless began in the off-road space and is well established. It’s only when the tech was applied to road that problems started to appear.
To be clear, I am not saying go hookless. I was trying to counter the ‘hooked is a must’ or ‘hooked only’ responses here with ‘actually, hookless is ok for off-road’. If you, the OP or anyone else want to go/stay hooked, then great, loads of hooked options out there.