Both the Electric Queen and Timberjack were fitted with the same Industry Nine Trail S Hydra 28H wheelset; a really nice value wheelset which mates the amazing Hydra hubs with aluminum rims. Despite slightly denting (and fixing) the rear rim, these have held up great and been wonderful to ride, but I still occasionally found myself missing the stiffness (and durability) of carbon rims.
As the bike sat over winter I figured it’d be a good time to upgrade to the carbon rims, so just before Thanksgiving when Light Bicycle was offering a bit of a sale I ordered a set of rims and got the process started. Between these value rims and (literally) slow-boat-from-China [1] shipping, eBay special spokes, and spare nipples from previous builds I was able to put together a nice, solid, carbon wheelset for about $550 less than if I’d bought a complete similar set from I9. And I’ll have some rims to sell (or reuse).
The Trail S Hydra rims come with straightpull hubs that I9 doesn’t sell separately, but they were nice enough to send me the specifications for them. With some forward/backward checking against the original rims and spokes (597mm ERD, 303mm spokes) I found the DT Swiss Spoke Calculator to work great for these hubs as well.
For rims I chose the Light Bicycle Recon Pro AM930 rim, which is their high end 30mm internal 29er rim with a nude unidirectional carbon finish. As options I chose 28h drilling, black logos, and black valve stems to match the hubs and any bike. (Silver logos would also have been fine to match the hub logos, but I really prefer plain looking rims.)
When shopping around for spokes a deal popped up on eBay offering a whole box of 298mm DT Swiss Competition straightpull spokes, which perfectly match Squorx nipples left over from previous wheel builds. I love working with nipples like these, because they are tightened with a T-handle tool from the back side, which makes building way more comfortable and faster than with a traditional spoke wrench. And it means no chance to mar the anodizing on the nipples.
The wheels were built up using Ultra Tef-Gel as thread prep, to a maximum tension of ~131kgf. Before starting the build I hadn’t realized that the inner and outer spokes on each side of the rim would be a different tension. As their flange offset is a bit different for each set of spokes on each side, necessary so the straight spokes don’t interfere with each other, the bracing angle is slightly different resulting in a different tension.
I did have a slight issue where, when bringing the front wheel to tension and trying to hit the Light Bicycle recommended tension of ~145kgf, the inner Squorx heads broke off three nipples. After this I detensioned the wheel and brought it back up to a lower, but still appropriate, spec. (In the process of figuring this out I ended up cutting two spokes as the nipples couldn’t easily be turned. After the third I detensioned the wheel and decided to build to a lower tension.)
Final tension for the wheels are as follows, with the small number the indicator on a Park Tool TM-1:
Front Wheel (NDS / L / Brake Side is Steeper Bracing Angle):
NDS (L) Inner: 22 (117 kgf)
NDS (L) Outer: 21 (105 kgf)
DS (R) Inner: 20 (94 kgf)
DS (R) Outer: 19 (85 kgf)
Rear Wheel (DS / R / Cassette Side is Steeper Bracing Angle):
NDS (L) Inner: 20 (20 kgf)
NDS (L) Outer: 19 (85 kgf)
DS (R) Inner: 23 (131 kgf)
DS (R) Outer: 22 (117 kgf)
Per usual with carbon rims building is a matter of centering the rim, eliminating runout, and detensioning the spokes. There’s really no truing (in the traditional sense) because single-spoke tension doesn’t really affect a stiff carbon rim.
Out of pocket cost was $651.13 on top of of the original wheelset, for a total of $1519.27 (excluding tires and sealant and whatever I can sell the old rims for):
Original Trail S Hydra 28H Wheelset: $868.14
LB AM930 Rims (w/ Valves + Tape): $563.14
DT Swiss Competition Spokes: $87.99
Total: $1519.27
A complete Industry Nine Hydra Trail S Carbon would cost about $2015 (with Shipping + Tax), about $500 more than the end cost of building these. While this set doesn’t have the US-made Reynolds Blacklabel rims, I’ve been happy with Light Bicycle rims on previous bikes and anticipate these’ll be just as good.
The final build, without tape/valves/tires/rotors/cassette, comes in at 794g for the front wheel and 917g for the rear wheel (1711g total). This is a 51g savings over the Trail S Hydra build when going to wider and stiffer rims. This isn’t enough weight savings to notice, but at least it didn’t add anything.
When putting the wheels back together I fitted the old tires as they still have a good bit of life left. I also used the original valve stems from Industry Nine as they are a bit shorter and I prefer the brass body versus the aluminum valves that came with the rims. It also turns out that Light Bicycle provided more than 2x as much tape as needed for the rims, which is great for future spare use. (The rims came with two rolls, one roll did both with plenty to spare.)
[1] The shipping notification states: “It is scheduled to board a Matson Liner’ ship for a sea journey of about 3-4 weeks before its arrival at Los Angeles port in the US. Then UPS will pick the package up to manage the local delivery for you. It is only when the pickup is made, the information at UPS website will be updated further as well as you could reach out to UPS by calling 800-742-5877 for quicker help then.”