Interbike Bits: Sun Ringlé and Enve Carbon DH Wheels

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Sun Ringlé’s Charger (all mountain) and Black Flag (cross-country) wheelsets are intended to bring  performance, value, reliability, adaptability and user friendliness to their owners.

Sun Ringlé has licensed the rights from NoTubes.com for its patented low rim wall design (the rim walls are shorter than on most mountain clincher rims in order to better seal the tire bead in a tubeless configuration and to allow the tire walls to spread out, rather than being forced to go straight up by deeper rim walls, thus inviting burping problems on hard cornering).

The upper end models, the Charger Pro and Black Flag Pro, each cost $650 per pair, and that includes Stan’s NoTubes rim strips already installed, tubeless valves, NoTubes sealant and end caps for the front hub to convert it to 20mm through-axle, 15mm through-axle, and quick-release configurations. All this comes in the box, and additional options adding more to the cost include end caps for the rear hub to convert it from quick-release to 142 X 12mm or to 135 X 12mm through-axle configurations.

The Charger Expert and Black Flag Expert models cost only $450/pair and have most of the same options (except the Charger Expert only comes with end caps for 20mm and 15mm through axles – no quick release – while the Black Flag Expert only comes with quick release and 15mm through axle end caps). The rims are the same on both Pro and Expert level, but Pro wheels have alloy nipples and hubs for straight-pull spokes, while Expert nipples are brass, and the hubs are a standard design for spokes with elbows. The spokes are Wheelsmith.

These wheels are designed not only for reasonable pricing with all of the little accessories you might spend otherwise-productive time chasing down, but they also are available in 26-inch and 29-inch versions.

The Sun Ringlé Carbon SRD wheels are reputed to be extremely tough and long-lasting. They weigh 1530 g/pr. and cost $1600/pr.

Enve (Edge) Carbon DH Wheels

Jason Schiers, founder of Edge Composites (now Enve composites), claims that the Edge carbon wheels used this year by South African gravity speedster Greg Minnaar were the first carbon wheels to ever win a World Cup downhill race. Minnaar also was within 0.3 seconds of winning the overall World Cup title.

Schiers says that Minnaar’s Santa Cruz Syndicate mechanic told him that he has to do less work on the wheels than with aluminum rims. Incidentally, Edge changed its name to Enve after it was brought to the company’s attention that Bianchi owned the rights in Europe to the name “Edge” in the bicycle business.

Readers can send brief technical questions directly to Lennard Zinn.

Technical writer Lennard Zinn is a frame builder (www.zinncycles.com), a former U.S. national team rider and author of numerous books on bikes and bike maintenance including the pair of successful maintenance guides “Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance” – now available also on DVD, and “Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance,” as well as “Zinn and the Art of Triathlon Bikes” and “Zinn’s Cycling Primer: Maintenance Tips and Skill Building for Cyclists.”

Zinn’s regular column is devoted to addressing readers’ technical questions about bikes, their care and feeding and how we as riders can use them as comfortably and efficiently as possible. Readers can send brief technical questions directly to Zinn.

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