Mountain

I Need Some Special Trail Wheels

Custom Wheels – Why, How and What. Not necessarily in that order

Not everyone can find what they are looking for when building their mountain bike. Wheels are especially difficult for some people. A custom wheel means that each part is picked out for its quality, weight, price and specifications. We assemble it to be exactly what you want. To get there, you will need to pick the right parts. Here goes:



Bigger Pictures!

    RIMS

- Rims are the most important factor in strength and weight on a custom wheel build. There is no such thing as a great wheel with a crappy rim.
Rims we love:
1. Mavic – These are just plain old fun to build with because our customer loves them and forgets they are there. They can be built with extremely high tension which leads to a REJOICING CUSTOMER. The XC717 is absolutely amazing.
2. Salsa – Surprisingly, Salsa makes some of the best bang for the buck rims on the planet. If you don’t care about weight and want bomber wheels, go for the Salsa Gordo. If you do care about weight, almost all the other rims rival the most expensive rims out there.
3. Sun - The rims coming out of Sun are pretty damn nice. Arguably, the Sun Rhyno Lite Rim in 26″ and 29″ are the best rims you can get for the money. We built a set of 29ers for a guy that has well over 4000 miles and counting. Not bad for one of the least expensive rims you can buy!
4. Others worth noting – We have built very nice wheels with DT Swiss and Velocity Rims. They are easy to build with and are tough final works of art. The price is hard to deal with, however. Stan’s NoTubes also makes some very very light, coincidentally very very expensive rims. Pretty much these are for racing only, but fun to look at, nonetheless.

    SPOKES

We build with double butted spokes. The best we know of. The brand is Sapim. The model is the Race. We can easily get more expensive spokes if you need them. However, these are the strongest spokes we know of for the money. (Period!) Available in Black and Silver.

    HUBS

A quality front hub spins well and lasts a long time. It is ready for disc brakes when you are. And it definitely shouldn’t break under regular usage. It is very rare to break hubs, barring some sort of craziness.
And a rear hub that lasts needs to have a great ratcheting system and be compatible with the brakes that you are using. Otherwise, if it spins well, you should have it for quite some time.

We like:
1. Chris King – Sorry to be obvious, but they are very light. They do what they should and so what if you get harassed at the trailhead by lookers-on. They are expensive, but such an amazing value. What’s more, King’s manufacturing practices are some of the most sustainable and environmentally responsible in the industry. The hub are precisely made and very top notch. They’re rebuildable with a special set of tools (that we have), but they do not need much upkeep.
2. Shimano – Again, very obvious, but they make rock solid parts for not a great deal of money. The lineup that everyone is excited about this year is the SLX. It is a cross between crazy strong and not expensive. A very rare breed, indeed. Across the board, Shimano hubs are amongst the best deals going. We build them up with regularity for happy mountain bikers.
3. Surly - For single speeders, the Surly hubs are hard to beat. They come ready for a beating and stick around after abuse. They are ready for disc brakes if you need them. You could even run fixed if you are nutty.

    THE BUILD

This is the biggest factor to whether a wheel comes out strong, stays strong and performs as you want it to.

We build our wheels in a very exact way. It is 5 parts an art form and 10 parts science. The lacing and preparation are the art. The tensioning and preconditioning are the science. We have built a tool that systematically lets us know which spokes need attention and which ones are ready to go. After we have made sure that your wheel will not want to go anywhere, we take out an insurance policy: we have a special adhesive that holds the spokes in place, but allows for movement under truing stand conditions. So, we can replace a spoke if we need to, but not because it jiggled loose.




Leave a Comment

  1. Will Handsfield says:

    I have two wheelsets built by Salvagettis, one brand new, one which I’ve put about 2400 miles on. The wheels are made up of Phil Wood hubs and Mavic 719 rims, and are beautiful, low friction wheels.

    I have been in a couple of tangles with them: I crashed into a taxi cab door while slamming on the brakes going about 5 mph by the time I hit. The front wheel stayed true. Recently I was hit from behind by another cyclist when I had to make an emergency stop in the bike lane to avoid a right hook. I don’t know how fast the guy was going, but the rear wheel took most of the hit. I stayed upright, and the wheel stayed true.

    If you are in the market for wheels, Salvagetti’s wheelbuilding is impeccable. For those on older bikes that feel sluggish, I would also recommend they look into a new wheelset, no other investment will make the bike feel as good to ride.