Would you use this wheelset on gravel?

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robeambro
Posts: 1829
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2018 6:21 pm

by robeambro

Hi all,

I am in a conundrum.

I own a road wheelset, Farsports (I think Feder rims?), 28H F/R (I think - or 24.. Probably 28) , 45mm deep, 21IW and 28mm wide. I purchased it before "wide was cool", and I suppose it doesn't play perfectly well with 28/30mm tyres which is what I run on tarmac.

I now need to buy a carbon wheelset for my gravel bike, which will also be used for racing (I don't expect to go above 40-42mm tyres ever). And I thought, why not repurpose the road wheelset for gravel and buy a road wheelset (wider, slightly deeper) instead?

I would imagine that the wheelset would be "tough enough" for gravel due to spoke count, but it may be a bit too deep, and a bit too narrow. Would it make sense? Can you give me your thoughts please?
Last edited by robeambro on Mon Dec 12, 2022 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

by Weenie


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mathias720
Posts: 242
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2021 8:14 am

by mathias720

i own 2 sets from farsport.
first set is feeder road set in 55mm with rd230 hubs (21 hole)
this i have also used for gravel with no problems at all.

i also own a set of their gravel rims i 40/30
with the rd230 (21 hole)

i dont see a problem in using your feeder set for gravel, the width is fine enough for gravel, could be wider but no need.
and the depth is no problem at all.

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stringbean
Posts: 132
Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2008 2:18 pm
Location: Ireland

by stringbean

When building my gravel bike I also didn't have a set of wheels at the time.Lying in the corner of the garage were my wife's racing wheels (Farsports feder 30mm) so I grabbed them,threw on some gravel tires and been using them for last couple of months no problems.
The Farsports road and gravel wheels are both 21 hole.Just the inner rim width is different.I've just received a set of gravel wheels from them and honestly after 2 rides I can't feel the difference.The only reason I bought a set of gravel from them is I wanted a deeper rim(40mm looks cooler) and was afraid my wife would eventually notice her wheels were gone.
Go ahead and use what you got

gorkypl
Posts: 529
Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2018 9:31 am
Location: Poland

by gorkypl

If they look OK on your bike - go for it. You'd lose the aero gains (so you will carry the additional mass of deeper wheels for almost no reason) but other than this, they will be fine. 21mm IW is totally suffcient, even if 25mm is better.

BTW, I find plenty much of use for such wheels with road plus tyres (~32-34mm) on a gravel bike.

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voicycle
Posts: 170
Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2021 8:38 am

by voicycle

They'll absolutely be tough enough but you will definitely damage the paint/finish with superficial rock strikes - all cosmetic but worth being aware of ahead of time. You're not going to have any trouble handling them in crosswinds either because there just won't be that much opportunity for the flow to detatch if it's rarely attached in the first place.

The bigger thing that jumps out at me though is you say you're going to race gravel, but I'm not sure based on this (or other conversations we've had off-forum) if you intend to race road as well. I'd say if you're not racing road then take the sub-optimal setup penalty there and run 28-30c tyres on the existing wheels for comfort. You can always drop back to 25s for a crit race or even do pretty good with a 25f/28r setup for a longer road race. And if road isn't your main discipline then presumably you'll either be OK with the disadvantage of larger tyres or the events will be seldom enough to make it worth doing tyre swaps.

If main events are gravel and that's what you care most about then that's where to put the money into the new wheelset. I'm sure you've come across the Nextie thread on here - that would be my most likely purchase if I had to pull the trigger today. Seems like you can get a 38c tyre at 40mm WAM and actually form a decent aero profile with the 45mm depth rims. That's a gravel race setup if I ever saw one!

Or for slightly less extreme and more tried and tested I'd go for LightBicycle WR series, which is what I bought before I knew about the Nextie rims. You don't get full aero benefit of the depth from these, but I'm convinced I do get something for my 45mm deep rims. And because everything in the setup is so wide I'd say they handle about like a 38mm road rim from a few years ago. Another point in favour of WR is that a 28c Continental tyre makes a perfect aero profile with these rims (approx. 31mm WAM). So if you are doing tyre swaps to optimise for significant events then you can always set up these 'gravel' wheels as aero-optimised road fatties. Only word of warning with this rim series is that certain depths are 'standard' and certain ones are 'pro' - the pro ones only come with a paintless finish and I'm not sure I'd trust it with the rock strikes from gravel racing. I mentioned this on another thread though (maybe the LB one?) and someone else commented saying they hadn't had any issues running them on gravel, so maybe I'm just overly cautious.

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hendemic
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:52 pm

by hendemic

I repurposed a set of Elite 50mm deep, 20/24 hole, rim brake rims into disc wheels. 17mm internal width. They are mounted with CX tires for racing (because CX is silly).

I've smashed them off barriers and they're fine.

There is a wobble in the tire at each valve stem because the casing interferes with the large footprint of the tubeless valve. But I never notice at 22psi.

Like the other post said, run what you brung.

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