We must be nearing peak disc road bike pretty soon, but at least there are now plenty of good aftermarket upgrade disc wheelsets on the market. The latest comes from Barnoldswick’s Hope Technology, a company rooted in mountain biking and famed for its beautiful hubs.
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The 20Five-SP24 features a 25mm deep aluminium rim with a 20mm internal and 24mm external width, and weighs a claimed 425g, numbers that compare favourably with a Pacenti SL23 or Stan’s NoTubes Alpha 340. It’s a wide enough rim to work well with wider tyres which are popular with disc and tubeless fans.
The rims are tubeless-ready, but you do have to fit your own tubeless rim tape (or Gorilla tape if you want to save some pennies) and tubeless valves, neither of which are supplied with the wheels.
Double butted Sapim Sprint spokes, 24 of them in each wheel, with brass nipples are used to lace the hubs to Hope’s road-specific SP24 hubs, which are available in a choice of six colours. The hubs come supplied with quick release end caps but they can easily be converted to thru-axle by simply swapping the end caps, which are sold separately.
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Disc brakes are fitted to the hubs using the regular 6-bolt mounting.
Weight is a claimed 1,640g (755g front, 885g rear) and they cost £450.
More at http://www.hopetech.com/product/hope-20five-sp24/
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9 comments
Hope pros are noisy hubs, but also excellent to boot. All you need to do to quieten them is pack in some thicker grease.
I thought I read on Hope's website the SP24 version wasn't QR compatible. The Pro4 version, comes with the end caps. Is the review doing a press release mash-up?
That very much looks like wheel set I built recently... Grail rim 24 H, Novatech hubs.
1605g
~345 EUR
Hope the rear hub is quieter than their mountain bikes ones. When I bought a Whyte mountain bike a couple of years ago that had Hope hubs, I sold the rear wheel and replaced it with an XT one. It was a good early warning but I quickly got fed up of being constantly stared at by everyone within 100 yard radius.
If they're anything like the 700c Hope Hoops Pro4 I have - they'll be like a bandsaw (noise wise) - which is only a problem if you stop pedalling...
I like a loud hub, saves on having to use a bell!
I've got a Pro2 Evo rear hub on the commute bike and make full use of it on shared use pathes, if freewheeling doesn't get the pedestrians attention then a quick spin of the pedals backwards usually works.
How much?
£450. Sorry, not sure why that got cut out when I uploaded the story