Syntace W35 MX Wheels
Wide or light; take your pick. That’s the choice that mountain bikers have always been faced with when choosing wheels; until now, that is. Late last year German component experts Syntace released four new wheelsets with external rim widths varying from 25mm up to a whopping 40mm, and all with ridiculously light claimed weights.All three wheel diameters are available, as are all axle standards, and instead of being sold as matched pairs, you can mix and match wheels sizes to your heart’s content. The asking price of $1,299 per set is on par with other high-end alloy wheelsets. So with such a juxtaposition of traits, we were curious to see how they’d perform.
We chose to review the second widest offering in the Syntace range; the W35. Without valves or rim tape the front wheel (20mm axle) was 809g and the rear (142x12mm axle) was 889g. That’s a combined total of 1,698g; exactly 40g lighter than our previous go-to alloy wheelset, the DT Swiss EX1750. Add in the fact that the DT’s inner rim width is only 21mm versus 28.5mm for the Syntace wheels and the picture starts to get clearer. Our W35’s have a rider weight limit of 120kg and according to Syntace, they are designed for all-mountain and gravity enduro use.
The W-series wheels don’t use any proprietary components. First up there’s 32 Sapim CX-Ray spokes laced three-cross; should you break a spoke they can be replaced by most bike stores relatively quickly, cheaply and easily. One little quirk is that the spokes aren’t actually interlaced like on most wheels; apparently the über-demanding Syntace customer wants quiet wheels, and eliminating the interlacing prevents the spokes ‘plinking’ under heavy side loads.
The eyelet-free, welded rims themselves are extruded from a custom alloy and the spoke bed is offset to help equalise spoke lengths and tensions. The entire rim inside and out is shot peened for a tougher outer surface and then anodised. There is a broad internal shoulder for the tyre bead to lock onto—a wrap of adhesive tape is enough to make them run tubeless, and we were able to air up tubeless-ready tyres with a track pump.
Syntace uses a spur-gear within the rear hub that’s very similar to the DT Swiss Star Ratchet, but where DT uses one large spring either side to engage the spurs, the Syntace hub uses four very small ones nested into the back of each gear. This is claimed, and in practice seems, to give more positive engagement between the spurs, although we’d hate to lose one of these tiny suckers on the garage floor! It’s also not the hub for stealthily sneaking up on your friends, as the buzz when freewheeling is loud. Bearing preload is adjustable by adding or removing a series of thin shims under the tool-free end caps. This process is a bit fiddley and requires some trial and error, but it allows you to set up the bearings perfectly for different bikes with slightly different clamping pressures or axle spacing.
Why Wider is Better
Nowadays it’s become widely accepted that lower tyre pressures reduce rolling resistance when off-road, as well as providing better traction thanks to the bigger footprint that’s better able to follow the contours of the trail. However, dropping the pressure too much allows the tyre deform badly under high cornering loads—this can lead to pressure loss through ‘burping’ or even cause a tyre to roll off the rim. It’s also well known in motorsport that wide rims give much better lateral support to tyres; just look at any motorbike and you’ll see that the rims are virtually as wide as the tyres they carry. Wider rims also give greater volume to the tyre, which further resists pinch flats and/or allows for even lower pressures. Combine these two facts, and a wide rim allows you to run very low pressures for better traction, faster rolling in the rough, and less deformation under cornering loads whilst still maintaining a secure connection between rim and tyre.
How low are we talking? For W35’s Syntace recommends between 15-23psi for a front tyre and 18-27psi on the rear. The exact pressure will vary with rider weight, tyre construction and terrain, but we’ve been happily running tubeless at 20psi front and 23psi rear on some pretty rocky trails with no drama at all. In fact it’s safe to say that the tyres feel far more stable and secure in fast corners than they did with an extra 5psi on our old 21mm rims.
As for volume, a Schwalbe Hans Dampf on the 21mm rim measured 59mm across the casing and 62mm across the tread. With the 28.5mm inner width W35’s, the same tyre grew to 62mm across the casing and 63mm across the tread. These differences may seem small, but visually the Hans Dampfs have taken on the appearance of fatbike tyres, and it’s worth noting that the casing is now essentially as wide as the tread, so no matter how far you lean over the cornering blocks are supported by the casing underneath.
It’s too early to say anything about long-term durability but the wheels remain perfectly straight and true. Logic dictates that the lighter rims must have less metal somewhere, but so far the custom alloy has managed to resist rock-strikes though some fairly solid riding.
At this stage it’s very hard not to be impressed by the W35 wheels. They’re very well designed, very well engineered, and are stupidly light for their width. And it really is the width that makes them such a game-changer; the extra low-pressure traction and tyre stability provided but the ultra-wide rim really does transform the feel of any bike that they’re fitted to.
EightyOneSpices (08) 8388 3581 / www.eightyonespices.com.au
