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Gravel rims on road bike (sorry, don't know many roadies)

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67King

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
Sorry for asking this here, but the forum in general seems to have a lot of mechanics and folks who probably know better than me. I'm just not a road guy, and all of my peers who are roadies are the types who do little more than lube their own chain. All the guys who do everything short of forging bearing races and laying up frames are all nearly MTB exclusive.

Anyway, have a really nice road bike that I never ride. Had to build from the frame up back in the supply chain issue days and pieced it together from a high end frame. I had to skimp on the wheelset at the time to make the budget fit. I picked up some i9 hubs a while back, but haven't found any rims on sale. However, seems that the trend is towards wider tires now, so I'm thinking perhaps I could use some gravel rims. e13 offers NICA coach discounts, I could pick up a pair of gravel rims and build up a nice set of wheels. Inner rim width is 26, which isn't even all that wide by today's standards. What is concerning me is that they are hookless, and it seems that most, but not all, roadies go with hooked rims. I want to think there was some controversy around the Tour de France about blowouts with hookless rims.

I've been surprised that I haven't found anything online anywhere about gravel/road wheelset interchange. Just wondering if anyone here has any experience on that end.
 
#2 ·
There's a lot of overlap between road and gravel. A few things to consider:

Not all road or gravel tires are compatible with hookless rims. It's worth looking into the selection before committing.

I seem to recall some concerns with tires coming off of hookless rims, particularly at the higher road pressures. I'd want to look into that before going hookless.

That is a very wide rim, so check your tire clearance. I have 24mm wide rims and the tires I've mounted measure about 2 mm wider than advertised. (This depends on how the manufacturer measured the tire size.)

Personally, I'd probably avoid them. I'm still running tubes on my road bike though.
 
#3 ·
How much pressure do you expect to run? The max recommended pressure for hookless rims is 72 psi. I have two wheelsets for my gravel bikes. The first always has gravel tires over 40mm in width mounted and the pressure never goes over about 40 psi. For those I'm comfortable using hookless rims. The other set is for road-like riding and I have a set of 32mm GP5000s on them at pressures up to 60psi. For that set I chose to go with hooked rims as the safety margin to 72 is a lot narrower - and a tire blow off at speed would ruin my whole day.
 
#4 ·
67King said:
Sorry for asking this here, but the forum in general seems to have a lot of mechanics and folks who probably know better than me. I'm just not a road guy, and all of my peers who are roadies are the types who do little more than lube their own chain. All the guys who do everything short of forging bearing races and laying up frames are all nearly MTB exclusive.

Anyway, have a really nice road bike that I never ride. Had to build from the frame up back in the supply chain issue days and pieced it together from a high end frame. I had to skimp on the wheelset at the time to make the budget fit. I picked up some i9 hubs a while back, but haven't found any rims on sale. However, seems that the trend is towards wider tires now, so I'm thinking perhaps I could use some gravel rims. e13 offers NICA coach discounts, I could pick up a pair of gravel rims and build up a nice set of wheels. Inner rim width is 26, which isn't even all that wide by today's standards. What is concerning me is that they are hookless, and it seems that most, but not all, roadies go with hooked rims. I want to think there was some controversy around the Tour de France about blowouts with hookless rims.

I've been surprised that I haven't found anything online anywhere about gravel/road wheelset interchange. Just wondering if anyone here has any experience on that end.
Click to expand...
More an issue of tire size. No point in "gravel rims" if you can't fit "gravel tires". This is a function of your frame, not the wheelset/tires.
 
#5 ·
It makes sense only if your frame has the clearance for wider all road tires like 35mm at least. If you plan to run regular 28-30mm road tires you will be better served with narrower road rims, alloy is totally fine for recreational use
 
#6 ·
Been using hookless rims since ZIPP came out with them. Zero issues even at 75 PSI which I wanted to test a few times. Tires sizes 30 and 32 and now actual 34. I run 55-60 PSI now. Thousands of miles, descents at 50 MPH+ - zero issues. My buddy uses the ENVE hookless and zero issues.
 
Discussion starter · #9 ·
Sorry guys, not looking for gravel tires, looking to use hookless, 26mm internal width rims with some appropriate road tires, probably 32mm.

Currently, my frame is 42mm wide at the top of the tire, getting narrower as I get higher, wider as I get lower. Fork is 41mm. Giant says the current TCR can fit a 33mm tire, but I don't know about my year (2021).

And one of the reasons to try to do this is to see if I can sell it. Having alloy wheels on the bike was a non-starter when I tried to sell it previously.
 
#13 ·
67King said:
Sorry guys, not looking for gravel tires, looking to use hookless, 26mm internal width rims with some appropriate road tires, probably 32mm.

Currently, my frame is 42mm wide at the top of the tire, getting narrower as I get higher, wider as I get lower. Fork is 41mm. Giant says the current TCR can fit a 33mm tire, but I don't know about my year (2021).

And one of the reasons to try to do this is to see if I can sell it. Having alloy wheels on the bike was a non-starter when I tried to sell it previously.
Click to expand...
You're good.
I'm fat dude and ride 25mm internal wheels on my road bike. My go-set is hooked (obvi), but I have few other hookless sets. I never ran into issues (knock on wood) with 30-32mm tires. I was running ~60-64 psi at ~230-250lbs so unless you're heavier than that or wanna run very narrow tires (don't) you should be good.

TCR frame might not fit wide tires on wide rims. But I can measure 30C tires on 25mm internal hookless or 32c on 25mm internal hooked and few clearances.
Can tell from the memory that 32c on 25mm hooked fits in SLR01, but clearance gets a bit too small. I'd go with 30c unless you can return mounted tires to lbs.
 
#14 ·
jannmayer said:
There's a lot of overlap between road and gravel. A few things to consider:

Not all road or gravel tires are compatible with hookless rims. It's worth looking into the selection before committing.

I seem to recall some concerns with tires coming off of hookless rims, particularly at the higher road pressures. I'd want to look into that before going hookless.

That is a very wide rim, so check your tire clearance. I have 24mm wide rims and the tires I've mounted measure about 2 mm wider than advertised. (This depends on how the manufacturer measured the tire size.)

Personally, I'd probably avoid them. I'm still running tubes on my road bike though.
Click to expand...
agreed
 
#15 ·
67King said:
I've been surprised that I haven't found anything online anywhere about gravel/road wheelset interchange. Just wondering if anyone here has any experience on that end.
Click to expand...
There is no such thing as "gravel rim" in space other than marketing. There is only ETRTO size and width. If it fits your tire, and the result fits the bike - you can use it. Today's road rims are not far removed from MTB rims from 15 years ago.
 
#16 ·
My wife and I have been using tubeless, hookless , 25mm wide road rims for several years. We only use good quality Tubeless road tires from 28-32mm. We have followed the recommended air pressures on Silca, ENVE and ZIPP web site over the years and have had zero issues. They are all pretty close, but no exactly the same so we get a 'range'.

Contact E13 directly and ask what minimum tubeless road tire size they recommend. And to add more data to the mix, contact the tire maker you are thinking about (Conti or Schwalbe rule) and find out what is the minimum width rim they recommend for a given tire size. Since you are not a serious crit racing roadie, a 30-32mm road tire will be you best option. I hope your frame will accept those size tires.

The E13 rim is only 1mm (thickness of a single dime) wider than what I have extensive use with. I would not hesitate to ride a 30-32mm road tire on that rim.

Something to keep in mind, high pressure truck rims are hookless. All passenger tire rims are hookless. Tubeless motorcycle tires are hookless. See a trend here? The problem has been bicycle tire/rim makers holding tolerance, either due to poor quality control or drum rolllllll..... because the snug fit was slowing down the assembly line, the suppliers (tires and rims) were asked to loosen things up a tiny bit for ease of assembly. No ****. Higher quality aftermarket parts are much more likely to be holding tolerance than high production OE who needs to keep the line moving and is installing tubes just to get the wheels in the box.

Something else to keep in mind. If you embrace the modern tubeless advantages which largely comes from lower air pressure in bigger tires you will have no problem when using quality parts.

DT
 
Discussion starter · #17 ·
turnerbikes said:
My wife and I have been using tubeless, hookless , 25mm wide road rims for several years. We only use good quality Tubeless road tires from 28-32mm. We have followed the recommended air pressures on Silca, ENVE and ZIPP web site over the years and have had zero issues. They are all pretty close, but no exactly the same so we get a 'range'.

Contact E13 directly and ask what minimum tubeless road tire size they recommend. And to add more data to the mix, contact the tire maker you are thinking about (Conti or Schwalbe rule) and find out what is the minimum width rim they recommend for a given tire size. Since you are not a serious crit racing roadie, a 30-32mm road tire will be you best option. I hope your frame will accept those size tires.

The E13 rim is only 1mm (thickness of a single dime) wider than what I have extensive use with. I would not hesitate to ride a 30-32mm road tire on that rim.

Something to keep in mind, high pressure truck rims are hookless. All passenger tire rims are hookless. Tubeless motorcycle tires are hookless. See a trend here? The problem has been bicycle tire/rim makers holding tolerance, either due to poor quality control or drum rolllllll..... because the snug fit was slowing down the assembly line, the suppliers (tires and rims) were asked to loosen things up a tiny bit for ease of assembly. No ****. Higher quality aftermarket parts are much more likely to be holding tolerance than high production OE who needs to keep the line moving and is installing tubes just to get the wheels in the box.

Something else to keep in mind. If you embrace the modern tubeless advantages which largely comes from lower air pressure in bigger tires you will have no problem when using quality parts.

DT
Click to expand...
Haven't contacted e13, since they market them as gravel wheels, nto road. Just inclined to bet they'd tell me to not run them. But the unasked question.......

The hookless thing is that the hookless tires you mentioned are all run at lower pressures, typically under 40PSI, though rarely slightly higher. Not sure abotu heavier trucks, my 3/4 ton I think runs 50? No idea on motorcycles. I think my road bike runs at 80? Rim sizes on cars usually arne't a whole lot narrower than the section width of the tire, but on bikes, the section width is notably wider. So the sidewall will roll more, which would put more demands on the bead.

But yeah, I do get your point. I've since found out a little more, and the rim's max pressure is 60, so I'd be running lower.

I might grab a 32mm tire and mount it on my gravel wheels, which are close, but a tad narrower (which makes me think maybe I should grab those 24IW and build them, and buy the new ones which are 26IW for the gravel bike), for a test fit. I'm surprised there seem to be so many comments about fitting, there seems to be a lot of space there, perhaps as one mentioned,the disk bikes have more space and mine is disk. And like my MTB's and gravel bike, it is tubeless!
 
#18 ·
3/4 / 1 ton pickups run 80psi by the millions and millions of tires, rims and miles. Commercial trucks up to 120psi.

More information. Maybe the discount rims will work for your weight and tire size, maybe not. These will help.


silca.cc

SILCA Professional Tire Pressure Calculator

Dial in your bikes' tire pressure to get the most comfort, speed, and efficiency on your ride. If you are looking for the best free marginal gain, click here
silca.cc
 
#19 ·
turnerbikes said:
3/4 / 1 ton pickups run 80psi by the millions and millions of tires, rims and miles. Commercial trucks up to 120psi.

More information. Maybe the discount rims will work for your weight and tire size, maybe not. These will help.


silca.cc

SILCA Professional Tire Pressure Calculator

Dial in your bikes' tire pressure to get the most comfort, speed, and efficiency on your ride. If you are looking for the best free marginal gain, click here
silca.cc
Click to expand...
And adhere to established and tested standarts.
Two bike tires labeled as 30c will have different widths based on manufacturers and rims being used.

Wanna adhere to standards in bike industry?
Internal width 26-28mm, approved width 35-46mm renders those wheels incompatible with Giant TCR.
 
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