Hunt launches Carbon Aerodynamicist rim brake wheel range

Well this got the crank going...

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Can you remind me if you've rowed back on your lies that Hope and DT aren't manufacturing and assembling in europe yet? I'm losing track of your inconsistencies. Cheers!

It certainly makes me angry when someone comes off with a bunch of lies denying the skills base of the UK artisanal wheelbuilding industry. We have an excellent wheelbuilding industry, from Spa to Wheelsmith to the guys in your local shop. They produce excellent value goods, much superior in value to Hunt's off-the-shelf and marked-up Chinese imported catalogue wheels. It's ignorant and insulting. It's not 'just an opinion' anymore than it's 'just an opinion' that it is preferable to be operated on by an NHS surgical team than a bunch of "self-taught" DIY chirugeons. Some things actually just are facts and this is one.

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I thought the guy from Hunt actually categorically stated they don't use Novatec hubs?

If they were DT they'd say so. Otherwise they're formula, novatec, or some other Chinese design.

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 what rims should I get?

Kinlin or DT Swiss are good VFM. Belgian HED are premium, you'll pay a lot for them. TBH assuming you aren't unusually heavy and are doing regular road riding I would just use Kinlin rims (Kinlin rims are the actual name for makes such as Halo). They're what Malcolm at cycle clinic (he brands them as BORG) uses a lot with many happy customers. https://thecycleclinic.co.uk/pages/wheelbuilding

They're probably what the Hunt alloy rims are TBH, they've just got an expensive sticker on.

I thought the guy from Hunt actually categorically stated they don't use Novatec hubs?

Anyway, a little OT, but might make people wonder about their Chinese/Taiwan/other manufactured products .....if I was to build (or get built) my own set of wheels for road racing, what rims should I get? Either disc or rim, as I have both types of bike.

BTW there are no import duties or VAT on products from Taiwan because they have a comprehensive trade deal with the EU.

FWIW I own a pair of Hunt Wheels, 2.5 years after I bought them I had an issue with the axle, I contacted Hunt about sourcing a replacement and they sent one out a few days later free of charge.

Their customer service was fantastic and I would happily pay slightly more for their wheels in the future knowing that the after sales service is top notch.

To give a real example:  a set of wheels sold by Farsports that have identical parameters as what I purchased with Hunt, except

- no replacement spokes are included with the Farsports set

-need to put rim tape on them yourself and fit the valves (included) yourself

- but they come with DT Swiss 350 hubs instead of Hunt's Novatec.

Price would be 745 USD ExW.

DDP price to continental EU would be 50 USD more, that's supposed to include shipping, payment of duty and VAT.  Caveat:  this means that they undervalue for sure so might be that customs come knocking. 

Total price would be 795 USD or  573 GBP, delivered to my doorstep.

Quick calculation assuming that duty and taxes would be levied on that ('worst case scenario'): 716 GBP.  I put the odds of that happening at 20%, certainly no higher. 

Hunt price ex shipping is 799 GBP.  Of course, the Farsports set has a better hub imo.  Then again, forget about warranty.

Up to everyone to decide what risk/reward ratio they're willing to take on.

Probably more demoralising being an independent wheelbuilder that creates high quality artisan products here in the UK and watching Chinese catalogue brands charging more than you for inferior products, surely. 

The hubs on the prime wheels are completely different to the ones on my Hunt wheels. Those Prime wheels are J-bend spokes, Hunt wheels are straight pull.

I have some Prime wheels with very similar straight pull hubs/spokes but even they aren't exactly the same dimensions.

Either way, both sets of wheels work, well built and haven't let me down racing.

Must be demoralising working in the bike industry when some people post with such aggression and not necessarily with a valid basis.

Taiwan = Republic of China. That's their actual name.  People say 'Taiwan' to be politically sensitive to the rage of the Chinese Communist Party but it'll be a cold day in hell before I acquiesce to the demands of student-massacring, concentration camp-running nutters like them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Chinas

BTW if I were the Hunt brand manager I'd be very wary of 'denying' the oneness of China, might incur the ire of the CCP...

Haha! Excellent post from Hunt. A mic drop moment for sure.

Awesome post Huntbikewheels, you might have won yourself a future customer, especially if you keep doing posh rim brake wheelsets!

I'll be riding rim brakes so long as they are available on the market, so there will always be a minority market at least!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you're well and thank you ever so much for your interesting and deep discussion with several insights. Being complete bike geek riders ourselves, just like everyone here on road.cc, is what drove us to want to start Hunt in the first place. From our industry experience we knew that the high spec rims hubs and spokes used for most alloy wheelsets sold at around £700-£1000 were being sourced from Taiwan (not actually that much from China), several were open mold, and all 3 large Europeans wheel/hub companies use Taiwanese made hubs for pretty much all their supply. We knew that tubeless ready, high end bearings, adaptable wheels, high end spokes, good low weights were all things we wanted to serve riders with at competitive prices and so the Hunt 4Season Disc (Hunt co-developed disc specific road rim mold) was 1589g/wheelset and £349 with fully adaptable hubs, half the price of the heavier Mavic and Shimano competition.

You're absolutely right we considered that a direct to market business model (but with shop stockists, of which we have many) would serve the rider well and we knew it was right to be open about the model and our Taiwan supply (as has always been clearly shown on our website homepage, just scroll down). Our aim is just to supply the best wheels we can for the types of riding that we all do with excellent support and a rider driven approach in a country with good consumer protections.

It's worth being aware that a very large top 3 European wheel company used open mold rims made in China to launch its carbon wheel range in 2010, but of course the internet did not talk about Chinese carbon rims back then and of course they charged £2000+ for those wheels due to their higher cost distributed business model; expensive = "no questions, it is good!"

Let’s be very clear, closed molds only serve the wheel company, not the riders. There is no technical or performance benefit for the rider from a closed mold if the shape, material and layup are the same, so there is nothing inherently wrong with an open mold product, however the majority of our wheels now feature closed mold rims and hub designs. These Aerodynamicist wheels are developed by Luisa here at Hunt and so this is a clear reason to have a new exclusive mold.

The video linked above was made by someone who understood some bicycle manufacturing/supply chain and then draws several assumptions and inaccurate conclusions. The video does not consider larger wheel companies’ involvement with trading companies and far eastern suppliers or the distribution costs that make their products seem different. The video assumes there is a clear line but really there is far more cross over. All we do is look at what choices serve the rider the best and we are hugely grateful to all the riders who see that and choose Hunt wheels.

Of course, Farsports have many customers but no Hunt wheel has ever come from Farsports and all our wheels are built in Taiwan not China. There is a considerable difference in terms of longevity of technical and bicycle experience between Taiwan and China. All our hubs and spokes are Taiwanese too. Please note these are not Novatec road hubs which have 14 degree engagement, and again many large wheel companies use open mold hubs. The hubs on the Aerodynamicist wheels use an open mold freehub that is very well proven (no-one wants a newly designed freehub system, freehub systems take such high loads that new systems always have teething problems) with a fast 7.5 degree engagement with our own Hunt lightweight hub body. The open freehub system used in many of our alloy road wheelsets (again not Novatec) is shared with 2 of the USA’s largest high end wheel companies. We are about to source some alloy rims from Giant Light Metal in China (yes part of Giant), but they are probably Asia’s largest high-end alloy rim manufacturer and make the highest spec rims for the 3 largest European alloy wheel companies and many major motorbike companies too, so they will provide us some of our best aluminium rims moving forwards.

PRICE COMPARISON – You can’t actually spec this wheelset from Farsports (which indicates we don’t use Farsports of course, or any Chinese trading company) these Hunt rims, hubs and Pillar Wing Aero spokes are all made in Taiwan, not China. I have of course a good and regular understanding of our competitors to make sure we keep serving riders better than other companies. As such I am confident that if you spec up a similar wheelset with fast (similar to 7.5 degree straight pull engagement hubs, oval aero triple butted (not flat) spokes, and Ceramicspeed bearings and similar overall weight, plus then add shipping you will have a very similar if not more expensive wheelset. Especially if the customs decide you will need to pay the import duties due. Of course we do also offer 35 & 50mm Carbon wheels and EZO Japanese bearings rather than Ceramicspeed from £799 and will continue to compete hard on price.

Please note we could ship directly from Taiwan if we wanted to but we are not willing to undercut and evade the UK’s tax system (which pays for schools and hospitals) by not declaring goods for tax purposes. This obviously is applicable to any import into any country and we wouldn’t feel it is ok to lie to about our income to evade tax so why should any of us do so for imports.

Of course we also serve riders with alloy wheels which we all use here at TheRiderFirm, but FarSports and other similar companies only offer higher cost carbon wheels as they are not riders and purely look at it from a business point of view.

We care about riders and want to be able to sleep at night, plus we actually put our lives, and those of our friends and families in the hands of our own wheels. All Hunt wheels pass full ISO testing, burst pressure testing, impact testing, rolling road testing, heated pressure testing and many more and will implement a recall when it is right to serve the safety of riders in just the same way that at least 6 of the largest major bicycle brands have in the last 6 months, just search google. Do you think it is likely that a Chinese company will decide they should incur the huge cost and negative implications of a recall when there is no likelihood of your lawyer being able to take legal proceedings in China? Because of this Hunt wheels have full UK based product Liability Insurance back-up, this cost runs into the £10,000s and requires even further stringent regulations which we follow in our product development, production and testing.

Why would we pay the considerable cost of two highly qualified full time engineers based in Sussex to do no work?

https://www.huntbikewheels.com/blogs/the-rider-firm-people

The Aerodynamicist shapes were developed by Luisa from wind tunnel testing over an extensive period of time. With significant investment in wind tunnel testing and prototyping, these are newly engineered never before used by any wheel company. The 52 is a HUNT owned mold and world exclusive, the 62 and 83 are HUNT engineered also and we have an exclusive on them, but unlike our larger competitors we could not afford to cover the very large mold costs for them. If we had not shared these costs with the rim maker the costs of the wheels would be higher for the riders, we felt this was the right choice as extra costs would only be serving to protect Hunt not serve the rider. Luisa also has vast experience in composite lay-up engineering so worked a lot on the lay-up plan, extra 40T fibres to keep these wide and light, and Chris and Luisa carried out mechanical testing on these rims before finally signing off the layup. I hope this make sense, but of course would be more than happy to discuss openly further. No other wheel company has these wheels. The key difference with us is we have a Canyon style business model and we have always been more open about our Taiwan sourcing and this openness has made us look different, and be more scrutinised, than other more costly distributed wheel companies when the reality is our suppliers are widely shared by these incumbent wheel companies.

Today (election day in Taiwan) Paddy, myself and Pete are finishing off a week working in Taiwan with suppliers, Luisa was here most of the week too. We are working (on a Saturday) in Taiwan (not China) at our exclusive hand wheel builder, set-up just for Hunt wheels. Today’s job is testing de-tensioning methods and specs for the new UD Carbon Spoke wheels. You can see some pics and vids I just took here on my google drive: https://photos.app.goo.gl/acp6UzoQHxNf9CEr9

Big thanks Xenophon2 we’re definitely looking at more specifications and options and how to achieve this and thank you to the people here already riding Hunt wheels with first-hand experience and have provided their honest opinion.

Thank you again to everyone for their feedback it helps us massively. Our job is to serve riders, and so far we work hard every day to do so and we are hugely grateful to all you cyclists who have chosen to ride Hunt wheels. We always want to improve and if we ever fall short please do tell us https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.huntbikewheels.com Trustpilot reviews all go live and cannot be edited by us and we hugely value everyone’s feedback to help us serve riders and continue to make better wheels.

Thank you again and enjoy your riding,

Tom Marchment

Co- Founder HUNT / TheRiderFirm

I think there will be a market for rim brake wheels for a while yet, and people still want the top end stuff. 

Rim brake rims wear out.

If ever Mavic want to make the 26 inch rim brake version of their quite wonderful XC717s I would buy a good handful.

Not being able to obtain good quality rims for my commuter was one of the reasons I have put it in semi retirement.

And the knowledge that my good XC bike has unobtainable 26 inch ceramic Mavic XC717s (one very used 719 as an emergency backup)  probably reduces my desire to throw it around as much as she is capable of.

There are carbide rims out there, as well as cheap alloy rims, but you know, quality.