#Vesper hubs upgrade

#Vesper hubs upgrade

For $140, you can shave roughly 90g from the wheelset weight and increase strength by opting for the Sapim CX-Ray bladed spoke upgrade option. The Sapim Race spokes are the standard option on We Are One’s custom wheel builder, with a double butted profile that tapers the stainless steel from 2mm at the ends to 1.8mm in the middle section.

Onyx offers all the major standards for frame, cassette, and rotor fitment, so you should be able to have your custom built We Are One/Onyx wheelset built to fit any modern mountain bike. The Vesper hubs come as standard with high-quality stainless-steel bearings, which use a double lip seal to keep the crud out and ensure they spin smoothly for a long time. The freehub and drive mechanism were slimmed down, excess material was machined from the flanges and brake mount, and the hub body now has a large step down towards the non-driveside where the internal space isn’t required for the clutch mechanism. The Vesper hubs are Onyx’s second generation of hub, which lost around 23% of the overall weight compared with the original model following a drastic redesign. Onyx hubs are renowned for the instant engagement of their freehub mechanism, which uses a sprag clutch design that completely disengages when not pedaling to provide drag- and noise-free coasting. They can be purchased directly from We Are One as rim-only for $475 per rim, or with a variety of custom-built wheelset options including the Onyx Vesper hub and Sapim Race wheelset we tested. We Are One offers the Union rims in 27.5” and 29” options, drilled to 28h or 32h.

The result is a rim that tips the scales at 495g for the 29” size, with an inner width of 30mm that’ll support 2.35”-2.8” tires, and a relatively shallow 21mm depth. The third was to improve the impact resistance, increasing durability to survive the toughest of punishments while being raced on the world stage. The second was the search for improvement in the radial compliance of the wheel to improve comfort and traction out on the trail, which led to them making a rim with their least radial stiffness to date.

The first was a reduction in weight, which provides benefits that go without saying. They took their original and successful Agent rim and set about improving three key points to end up with a rim they claim will silence any carbon fiber rim naysayers. The Union rim is We Are One’s carbon fiber enduro hoop, designed to offer all the strength and stiffness required for hard punishment while reducing rider fatigue on the longer timed stages. Simply put, the bike had a defective part that negatively impacted our impression of the wheels, and now that we have another set on a different bike and have also received a new shock and shock extension link for the Norco Range, our impressions have changed greatly. Shortly after publishing that video, we were trying to diagnose the reason we were not loving our Range test bike and discovered that there was a defective bearing in the shock extension link, resulting in a less-than-desirable feel out of the bike and wheels. We were stoked to put a We Are One Revolution wheelset to the test on our high-pivot Norco Range C1 and We Are One Arrival test bikes for some extended mileage.ĮDITOR’S NOTE: Before we get further into this review, we must admit a bit of a screw up on our end…We recently published a carbon wheel video and mentioned that we were not pleased with how stiff the Revolution wheels were on our Norco Range. The process is controlled in a way that means the rims need no post treatment once removed from the mold, which is a mark of how well We Are One Composites have their process nailed down. As with the rest of the Revolution range, the We Are One Union rims are made by hand in Kamloops, BC, with their unique layup process that ensures precise fiber alignment which should produce the strongest rim possible. We Are One released their newest generation of Union carbon fiber rims a couple years back, with options that span from gravel and dirt jump bikes through to enduro and downhill. Review by Drew Rohde | Photos by Dusten Ryen