Project Wide Gravel Wheels v2: Built And Tires Mounted!

Almost there....

Over the long holiday weekend I managed to get the Project Wide Gravel Wheels v2 completed. Then I mounted up some tires and got to mounting rotors and a cassette. One small detail has prevented me from getting them on a bike yet. 

First, the wheel build; It went well, even though I had to use those spoke washers, which made things a bit more fussy, but I managed the task. I only dropped one washer inside the rim well too! The Spank 359 rims built up well and I had no issues bringing the wheels up to tension or with having to chase any out of round condition on either rim. You never know with rims that have been sitting around a while. One drop, or ding and you can find yourself having a lot more difficult time with a wheel build. 

The only other thing worth noting is that Spank specifies a slightly lower maximum spoke tension than maybe some people think that they need. I have never subscribed to maxing out the spoke tension on a new wheel build anyway, so I was fine with the limitation. Again, everything went super-smooth with that aspect of the build and I had zero trouble with the way Spank made this rim. 

Once that was over with it was on to mounting tires. Tubeless, of course! The choice of tire was somewhat in question right up until I got the wheel set built. I had done some scrounging around for another reason and saw that I had a pair of used WTB Resolutes in pretty good condition. These are listed as 42mm tires and often come out slightly wider than that on many wheel sets. So, this seemed like a decent tire to try to see what would happen. Furthermore; I have another set of Resolutes set up on Spinergy GX wheels to compare to. So the Resolutes were chosen based on those reasons. 

The taping was super easy, despite the Spank 359's having a mid-rim well 'hump' instead of a "U" shape. In fact, I thought that the hump shaped rim well was actually easier to tape. I then mounted the Resolutes, and despite their being used, and therefor probably stretched somewhat, they fit super-tight! I used some Stan's sealant and they aired up with a floor pump. Easy-peasy. 

So.....how do the tires look on there? Well, I had a big surprise. On the Spinergy GX rims, the Reso's are actually wider than they are on the Spank rims. Not by just a wee bit either, you can visibly see the difference. The tire on the 359's squats out a bit, making it less rounded in profile and 'shorter', meaning that the diameter over all is affected. I suspect that with the beads sitting further apart on the Spank rims that I will get away with running lower pressures, but there is that chance that I get too low and bang the rim bead on the inside of the tire casing over a big bump. Maybe the psi differences will be somewhat nullified by this? That will have to be tested later. 

And finally- Somehow it escaped me that the front hub has 15mm end caps. Doh! So, I need to order some 12mm caps and then I can complete the process of the wheel build and mount these to a bicycle. Stay tuned...........