You have questions? We have answers!

Hookless is the future of low pressure, high-volume tires. It's a tubeless specific design that is generally stronger and lighter than a hooked clincher design. The tire is held in place by its bead, a "shelf" in the rim and air pressure. This is how tires and wheels are designed in the automotive world as well. 

Hooked beads use a "hook' on the inner wall of the rim that coincides to a ridge on the tire bead. Hooked rims use this system to hold the tire in place along with, historically, the pressure of an innertube.   

Why choose one over the other?

Hookless rims are great for high volume / low pressure situations and for tubeless tires ONLY. When a tubeless tire inflates, it wants to do two things. The air pressure wants to move the tire outward, and the bead wants to compress. You may notice that the bead seat shelf on the has a downward angle. This means as the air pressure moves the tire out of the center channel, the tires snap into place and lock into the bead shelf. This is the loud snapping sound you hear when you inflate tubeless tires.

At some point however, the outward force of the air pressure will overcome the strength of the bead and this is where you can have a tire that blows off the rim. As long as you are not approaching the strength of the bead with the amount of air pressure, the tire is held super secure, and the rim strength is improved. This is great for larger tires (gravel, CX, MTB) that will be used in places where the rims can have large impacts.

Hooked rims are great for low volume / high pressure. This is going to be your road tires that are pumped up to 65PSI or more. As the air pressure increases and puts more pressure on the bead of the tire, having the hook to hold that bead in place is helpful. If you are planning on running over 65PSI, then you should choose a hooked rim. This means if your wheelset is going to pull double duty of being both a road and gravel set, you will want to opt for the hooked rim profile.

You may notice that we have different widths, depths, and shapes for the rim brake and disc brake wheels.

Why is this?

In wanting to design the wheels for a disc brake bike, we starting looking at the entire picture. Taking a rim brake rim, removing the brake track, and calling it "good enough" was not going to cut it.

Disc brake rims have no heat generated in them so it wasn't necessary to use the higher temperature resins found in the rim brake rims. We were also able to reduce wall thickness, yet retain the same strength and durability.

We took a look at tire sizes, riding styles, and also spoke tension balance. The days of 23mm tires are over, especially with the larger clearances found on disc brake bikes. With this, the disc brake rims are designed with a larger internal width, designed for those larger volume road tires.

With the larger volume road tires, and with introducing a rotor, crosswind stability was a concern. A larger tire generates more instability in crosswinds, so the rim depths were slightly reduced over the rim brake offerings. The tire to rim interface was also designed around 28mm tires and having good airflow from the larger tire over the rim. This lets you have the larger tires and not fear every time a gust of wind hits!

Also, with disc brake hubs, we are able to run an offset nipple bed on the rims. This helps to even out the spoke tension between the left and right side of the wheel. More even spoke tension will make a better balanced wheelset. One thing you will notice is the rims will face opposite directions for front and rear! 

The front wheel is dish away from the rotor side (the higher tension side), and the spoke tension becomes almost even. For the rear wheel the rim is dished away from the drive side, and the non-drive spoke tension is about 85% of the drive side (instead of the typical 55-60%).

All Boyd current production wheels are tubeless compatible and ship pre-taped for tubeless. It's also perfectly fine to run tubes on a tubeless compatible wheel and our tubeless tape makes for a great rim strip either way

We spent years in coming up with the new rim profiles to ensure a perfect tubeless setup.

Things like angle of the rim bed, center channels, rim diameters, even spoke hole width were considered. With this, we are confident that we have the best possible solution for running a tubeless setup (right down to the nut used to tighten the valve).

Here we have a video showing how easy it is to install a tubeless conversion kit and tire!

What type of coating is on the ceramic coated rims?

The coating is actually a Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) coating. This is an electrochemical process of oxidation that is performed by creating micro-discharges on the surface of components immersed in an electrolyte. The process is applied to Aluminum, Titanium, and Magnesium to grow a dense, ductile nano-ceramic oxide layer that improves mechanical, wear, thermal, dielectric, and corrosion properties.

This is a much different coating than the anodization that is used on the sides of almost all alloy rims. The PEO coating is a much harder, and more durable coating, leading to increased longevity in all conditions.

Do I need special brake pads for the ceramic coated rim?

Yes, we include the Swissstop BXP brake pads which we have tested to work excellent with the ceramic coated rims. The main thing you will want to ensure is that you are not using the brake pads on a regular machined brake track rim as you can pick up slivers of aluminum which will scratch the coating on the brake track.

With the increased durability, will the coating wear off?

Under many different riding conditions, both wet and dry the coating has not been wearing off. That being said, you are still rotating a wheel between the brake pads. If there is hard material like sand or rocks trapped between the brake pad and the rim this can wear streaks into the ceramic coating.

How can I ensure the best longevity from the ceramic coating?

The easiest way to ensure longevity is to ensure that your brake pads are free from any debris that can scratch the rim. This is actually a great recommendation for any wheel, not just the ceramic coated. We have seen grooves worn into braking surfaces from debris left in the brake pads for a long time.

Riding in the rain can be inevitable. The problem with riding in the rain is that the debris from the road will splash up and coat everything. This is what makes it easy to get into your brake pads and create a point to scratch a rim. Thoroughly inspect your brake pads after every ride in the rain and make sure there is no debris left over. This can easily be done in most cases with a rag and rubbing alcohol (you will need to remove the wheels to do this). More stubborn and embedded debris may need to be picked out of the brake pad.

What happens if the coating does wear off?

Even if the coating managed to completely wear off from the rim, you can still use the wheel as normal. The ceramic coated rims are the exact same rims as our silver brake track alloy, so it's definitely not a situation where if the coating develops any streaks or wear that the rim is no longer fine to ride. Ride hard and have fun!!

Below are some pictures of the PEO coated rims both brand new and after one of our professional test riders has put over 8,000 miles on them in all types of weather conditions.

Brand new ceramic coated wheel

Brand new ceramic coated wheel

Wheel with 8,000 miles on it

Wheel with 8,000 miles on it

Quest

Our quest hub is our road and gravel disc brake hub. These use our quick change freehub body system. 6 pawls and 5 degrees of engagement. All Boyd hubs use sealed bearings.

Read more about the Quest Disc Brake Hubs here: Quest Disc Brake Hub Tech

85

Our 85 series hub is our rim brake hub. These use our quick change freehub body system. 6 pawls and 5 degrees of engagement. All Boyd hubs use sealed bearings.
Read more about the 85 Road Hubs here: 85 Road Hub Tech

Tripel

Our Tripel hub is our flagship mountain bike hub. These use our quick change freehub body system. 6 pawls, 3 engagement surfaces on each pawl, and 3.5 degrees of engagement. The axle, pawl system, and freehub body are all designed around having the quickest engagement, lowest drag, and highest torque capacity. All Boyd hubs use sealed bearings.

Read more about the Tripel MTB Hubs here: Tripel MTB Hub Tech

Unfortunately the hubs that we had in production until 2015 we no longer have parts for. 

We had them available for a many years, and eventually just ran out of parts. All wheelsets sold after 2015 were automatically 11 speed compatible. 

Do you have a wheel from before 2015 that you want to convert your wheels to 11 speed? You have a few options! 

• Trade in your current set of Boyd wheels and receive a special offer to use towards a new Boyd wheelset. This is by far the easiest option and an amazing deal!
  https://boydcycling.com/pages/trade-in-trade-up
  
• Refurbish your wheels with new spokes and the latest Boyd hubs, ask us for a custom quote.
  Typically the quote will be ($275 for a hub set, $2 per spoke, $45 for labor, $30 each way for shipping)
• Run a Shimano HG-800 11-34t cassette on a ten speed freehub body, as long as you have a medium cage rear derailleur. This cassette has the 34tooth cog that does not sit on the freehub body (much like a mountain bike cassette). With this, you can run an 11 speed cassette on a 10 speed freehub body.
  

For current model Quest and 85 hubs

These all came with an 11 speed freehub body on them already. If you need any replacement freehub bodies you can simply choose the one you need here: 85 and Quest Freehub Body

With the 85 and Quest hubs you can swap any freehub body (Shimano, Campy, Sram XDR Driver) back and forth with no tools and no redish of the wheel required.

You CAN NOT use the 85 and Quest freehub body on any previous model hub. They are NOT compatible with each other!

The hubs we have designed are designed to be easy to work on, and be relatively maintenance. That being said, it's the only part of the wheel that has both moving and non-moving parts. This is where you want to ensure that you check over the hubs at regular intervals to keep everything running smoothly.

The easiest thing to check is the bearings. If you spin the wheel in your hand, you can feel if the bearings still feel nice and smooth or if they have gotten gritty over time. Bearings are a part where they are good until they are not. Once they feel like they have gone bad you will want to replace them. Riding on bad bearings for a prolonged period of time could lead to the bearing suffering a failure and leaving you stranded (similar to if you drive your car on a bad wheel bearing). Pressing in new bearings is very easy and usually relatively inexpensive.

Keeping the pawls and driver ring lubed is important. This is the only spot on your bike where you have metal parts moving against metal parts (not counting bearings). The hubs will come pre-greased, but over time this grease can wash out of the hubs. I usually add grease to my pawls about twice per year to ensure everything remains properly lubed and running smooth. We sell the NixFrixshun Speed Coat grease that was specially designed to work on the insides of hubs. One tube is pretty much a lifetime supply and will keep your hubs running smooth.

We have a video showing how easy it can be to clean and lubricate your hubs to really prolong the life of your hubs!

All Boyd current production wheels are tubeless compatible and ship pre-taped for tubeless. It's also perfectly fine to run tubes on a tubeless compatible wheel and our tubeless tape makes for a great rim strip either way.

For all road, cyclocross, and gravel sets (rim brake and disc brake) we use the Pillar Wing 20. 
For the mountain bike wheel sets we use the slightly thicker Pillar Wing 21 spoke.

The Rouleur is our only wheel that uses round double butted spoke versus the aero spokes.

Read more about our spoke selection on the Boyd Cycling Blog: A well spoken change!

We have the following recommendations for spoke count based on rider weight.

Rim brake alloy
Under 180 pounds - 20/24
170 pounds to 240 pounds - 24/28
225 pounds plus - 28/32

Disc brake alloy
Under 240 pounds - 24/28
225 pounds plus - 28/32

Rim brake carbon
Under 180 pounds - 20/24 (90mm will be 16/20)
170 pounds to 260 pounds - 24/28 (90mm will be 20/24)

Disc brake carbon
Under 275 pounds - 24/28 (90mm will be 20/24)

We only use external brass nipples for strength and durability. 

Since 2009

Greenville, SC