27.5er Carbon Boost Wheelset — Unashamedly Boost Wheels for Relentlessly Aggressive Riders
Have you been racing enduro? Dropping off cliffs? Bought one of our carbon S7 frames? Feel like pimping your bike up? Well, these carbon Boost wheels are just what you have been looking for, and as with all ICAN products it comes with our phenomenal value for money.
What is Boost sizing?
Boost as a sizing has been growing in popularity in the mountain bike world over the last few years. The basics of Boost are that you now have a front hub that measures 110 x 15mm and a rear hub measuring 148 x 12mm. Speaking of hubs, we spec Novatec hubs on this wheelset.
We use Novatec as they are easily serviceable, run sealed bearings, and are becoming a byword for reliability in the cycling world. As we have a huge range of Novatec hubs in stock, we have the various freehub bodies that you may need.
Whether you run a traditional Shimano freehub or a new SRAM XD driver, we will have them in stock, no need to compromise on wheel choice due to freehub design.
The great thing about Novatec hubs coming in the new Boost spacing is that the hubs have become stronger and allow us to build you a much stiffer wheelset.
As the front hub is now 10mm wider (5mm each side) than a standard hub and the back end has become 6mm wider (3mm each side), we can have hub flanges that are further apart, it may only seem a small change but it makes a world of difference.
Stiff and strong enduro wheels
The reason for Boost was that small wheels were strong and stiffer than larger wheels. A 26” wheel will naturally be stronger and stiffer than a 29” wheel.
This is because the spoke bracing angle was bigger on smaller wheels. This means that your wheel could survive more lateral forces being used against it, think about riding aggressively.
Making wheels bigger but not increasing hub width caused this angle to get smaller and make wheels less robust. Boost was then born as a way to stop this happening and with Boost our 27.5” wheel has a spoke bracing angle identical to a 26” wheel.
Not only did Boost help to solve the strong and stiff wheel conundrum but it also opened up the idea of rear triangle space.
By going wider we could have frames that allowed more travel, more tyre room, and shorter chainstays with no penalty compared to the old standards.
Just look at our P9 frame to see how much this small increase in width has allowed our frames to evolve. By shortening the chainstays, we have returned to agile, playful bikes and with wider, stiffer suspension bushings we have a stronger back end on our frames.
You can now have a bike that will roll as fast due to the bigger wheels but also be as stiff and playful as a smaller wheel size.
Maximise your tyre space
The best way to take advantage of Boost spacing is to maximize the amount of room it frees up in frames for tyres. Look at our P8 frame, a frame that can easily clear 3” tyres.
So why would you not want to fill all that space? Once you get to 2.5” tyres you will want to jump up to a plus-sized rim; otherwise your tyre will become a light bulb shape. If your tyre is light bulb shaped it means the tyre is constricted and you will be losing traction and cornering stability.
This is why we offer the wheelset in a rim width of 35mm or 40mm, think of 35mm as going up to 2.5” and 40mm going up to 3”.The biggest issue though with plus size internal width rims or AM style rims is that they are heavy, all that extra material comes at a price. As cyclists, we all know we want to lower rotational weight.
That is why we tasked our R&D department with making a lightweight but strong enough to last through any trail all mountain wheelset. They went back to the start and looked at how best to maximise carbon layup and carbon type to get the best wheel rim bang for your buck.
We could have just have taken a load of carbon and built a lightweight wheel, but that would not work in the real world. We had to look at how people ride and how we get the excellent riding feel of carbon wheels.
Which means the rims have to be super stiff but also have a small amount of vertical deflection to help dissipate trail chatter.So we worked hard and by using Toray T700 carbon fibres, have come up with the best rim in a weight/price/stiffness ratio.
Better than aluminium
Using carbon allows us to help protect you from the flat spots that could happen on aluminium rims when you hit a large object, and trails tend to have a lot of hidden large objects.
This will hamper your spoke tension, and that gives your wheel a nice wobbly trajectory. Our carbon rims will save you from that misery and as our wheels leave the factory checked to some of the highest tolerances you can be sure you will always be rolling straight.
Watch one of our carbon wheels hit a rock, deform and then spring back to a perfectly round shape, and you will be sold on our wheels.
You can now gain all of these benefits for the price of a mid-range aluminium wheel. So why stick with aluminium when you can step up to the high tech world of carbon fibre and make your riding time much more fun.
Our all mountain/enduro wheels are the wheels you need to conquer any trail and not have you worry about strength or reliability as we have done all the legwork there for you. All of this and they are tubeless ready but are you ready for a revolution in your trail riding?
