Fulcrum Wind 40 Disc Brake Wheels

The new Fulcrum Wind 40 DB wheels are beautiful to ride. They look classy, and with their rounded profile focusing on aerodynamics they feel fast too. Stiffness is impressive, and with a medium rim height they cover a lot of disciplines.

• Pros: Look great; quality ride feel; plenty of stiffness
• Cons: There are cheaper and lighter alternatives

If you are a quick road rider who likes to dabble in a little bit of everything, blasting along on the flat, climbing, and tackling technical descents, then the 40mm rim depth of these wheels is pretty much the sweet spot. It's not as affected by crosswinds as deeper alternatives, keeps the wheels light enough to attack the hills but still gives that little aerodynamic nudge once your speed is above about 23mph – it's an all-rounder, and it's what makes the Wind 40 DBs so much fun to ride.

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A weight of 1,620g isn't exactly chunky for a wheel of this depth, but the Fulcrums feel lighter than that anyway once you have them moving. On rolling terrain, just a little dig on the inclines sees you lose minimal speed, and they feel very responsive.

Even from a standing start I wouldn't describe them as sluggish, helped by the quick engagement of the freehub, and if you were to use them anywhere that demands plenty of accelerations out of corners or standing starts you aren't going to feel frustrated.

The 40 DB really is just a beautiful wheelset to ride – with the tyres at 100psi they feel really comfortable and never harsh, even on dimpled road surfaces.

Fulcrum packs a fair bit of technology into its wheels, and there is a lot of trickle-down spec from the more expensive models in the range, including its 2-Way Fit. With a solid rim bed – no spoke holes, basically – you can fit tubeless tyres on these TR (tubeless ready) rims without the need to faff with tubeless tape, as there is nowhere for the air to escape.

This does mean there are no holes to drop the nipples into, but Fulcrum gets around this by dragging nipples around the inside of the rim by magnet until they fall into place. This means Fulcrum can still use traditional style nipples for easy truing and adjustment.

Each wheel uses 24 spokes, laced in a 2:1 pattern to deal with the braking forces and loads. On the front wheel you get 16 spokes on the braking side, while the rear has the bigger number on the drive-side as it only deals with about 20 per cent of the overall braking.

Keeping the cost down compared to Fulcrum's more extravagant wheels, the Winds use aluminium alloy hubs. They are still beautifully machined by CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, though.

December in the south-west has been damp and mild, and these wheels have seen plenty of rubbish weather. They've had loads of water spray and grit chucked up at them – certainly more than I'd like if I'd just laid down a grand on them – but they have come out unscathed. The sealed cartridge bearings are still running grumble-free, and at the end of testing the freehub body was showing no huge indentations from the cassette biting in.

Things seem to have settled down (for now) on the axle front, so it's no surprise to see that the Wind 40 DBs are set up for 12mm thru-axles, although there are adaptors available for a 15mm front axle and quick releases.

When it comes to fitting rotors, Fulcrum has gone down the Centerlock design rather than the six-bolt option. It makes things much simpler as you can swap discs just by removing what is something similar to a cassette lockring.

Value

Priced at £1,099.99 the Fulcrums are well specced for the money. The quality is very good – holding them in your hands you can just feel that it's a really nice set of wheels, handbuilt, with full traceability, and perfectly true straight out of the box.

Compared to the opposition they mostly hold their own; they're about the same price and weight as the Reynolds AR 41 DB wheels which David liked when he tested them in June last year.

> Buyer's Guide: 20 of the best disc brake road wheelsets

There are cheaper and lighter out there, though, such as the Scribe Aero Wide 50-D wheelset. They're £870 and nearly 200g lighter.

I stand by what I've said about the Fulcrum Wind 40 DBs, though. They look great and are well built, and if it was my money I would be very happy with how well they perform.

Verdict

Quality wheels, in both build and the way they ride