A big product news week this week.
The first announcement is that we'll be offering builds with Boyd Cycling's Altamont and Altamont Lite rims in both standard machined and all-black brake tracks.
The Altamont is a 30mm deep, 24mm outer and 20mm inner width tubeless ready rim that sits right under the 500g mark.
The Altamont Lite is a slightly shallower, 25mm deep rim that otherwise shares the Altamont's width and tubeless readiness. It sits just below the 450g mark, and we know a lot of people love the feeling of a light wheel set, so this one allows rim brake builds in the low 1400g range, with disc builds coming in way under 1500g. Yes, both the Altamont and Altamont Lite are available for both rim brake and disc builds.
This may seem like somewhat crowded territory with HED, Easton, AForce, and Kinlin all having rims in this general box, but what's not to love about a world with so many choices of the aerodynamic-ness, light weight-ness, cost effectiveness, excellent braking-ness, and no brake heat worrying about-ness of alloy clincher? Especially with more options of brake track all blackness.
This has been "blow up your computer week" here, so we're sort of limping into getting all of the product variants of these loaded into the store, but if you just can't wait then please contact us and we can get a build started for you.
Not to be a big tease, but I'm going to be a big tease now. The next product is for the 650b gravel freaks among you, a cohort which grows by the day. There's one rim we've advocated as a secret gem in this use space, and we've managed to lock down a bunch of rims to be able to do a special offer on what could easily be the most sexy time build for the 650b part of your 650b/700c gender fluid bike.
Finally, since we're getting comfortably into the 6 months of the year when all Dave (that's me talking about myself in the third person, in case you were unclear) wants to think about is mountain biking, we're finally going to populate our mountain bike wheels section with regular products like you see in the road and disc builds sections. The crazy number of diameter, width, and axle options make this no small challenge, but since we get a ton of mountain bike build searches these days (clearly I'm not the only one with a dirty mind), we're going hammer down.
4 comments
Codey – it’s kind of potato – patata. They’re both great rims with brake tracks that stay black and brake really well. The example shown of the Al33 is a one-off outlier that totally contradicts our rapidly becoming vast experience. you see one-offs in anything – even Boyd’s coated rims I’m sure. End of the line for me is I’m happy to be where we are – selling both (and a bunch of other great options as well) and able to be detached and as objective as possible.
Dave,
I noticed this explanation of brake track differences offered up by Boyd on their site
http://www.boydcycling.com/shop/road-rim-brake/ceramic-coated-alloy/altamont-wheelset-gen1-ceramic-coating/
Any thoughts?
Hi Lennie -
As far as I know, they are slightly different processes that yield the same result – a very grippy brake track that lasts a long long long time and prefers SwissStop BXP pads.
Dave
Interesting development here… I would love to know what the difference is between the AForce ceramic break track and the Altamont’s. Does one coating last longer than the other? Or is this even a concern?