Optimizing Chinese Carbon Wheels on the Road

Optimizing Chinese carbon wheels, such as roads and mountains. Among them, with regard to road bikes, many riders also use their gravel bikes on asphalt roads. Either connect the various gravel/soil parts together, or because they also continue pure road cycling. How to optimize your carbon wheel stone settings?

We will introduce a brief summary so that you can understand the specifications of the bicycle. You can browse our custom carbon wheel webpage and choose a carbon wheel that meets your requirements. Some may pay more attention to the competition, some are more suitable for the toughest terrain, etc. But you can also adjust yourself further according to your riding style and position.

How do you ride?

Your riding style determines which method is best:

If you often mix on-road and off-road in the same ride, you need a setting that can do all of this.

If you prefer a rider who rides off-road on one day and the road on the other day, setting up two wheelsets as described in this article will be a good solution.

Want better road performance than ever before? Do not install standard 25/28mm road tires on your bike!

Choice of Chinese carbon wheels

Wheel set 1: road wheel

Once again there are many options, alloy or carbon, pneumatic or light, some of which are budget issues.

Just make sure that the rim has a larger internal width to match the wider tire. Especially if you use carbon fiber rims, please use at least 23mm rims, so you can use 28mm tires or 40mm tires.

Wheel set 2: Off-road wheel

If you have some budget but not unlimited, please spend your money on wheels and save some money on off-road wheels. Cost usually equals weight reduction, and for a 650b setup, you might want durability to be more important than lightness. So focus on larger rim widths and focus on the quality of bearings and seals instead of saving a few grams.

For example: 650B Carbon Rim Hookless Tubeless Ready, 650B Carbon XC Rim Hookless Tubeless Ready etc.

How to test

If you want the wheel to rotate well even when it is dirty, please perform a “reverse rotation test”. Turn the wheels to see which wheel stops the fastest. There is no guarantee, but it is likely that this is the wheel you want. The first thing to note is that if the wheel stops spinning quickly because the bearing feels rough, it’s not good. But if the rotation speed is fast and evenly slows down, it means that the seal is tight.

This is what you want. If the seals are tight when you buy the wheels, they will settle within the first 100 kilometers and will be sealed for a long time. If the wheel has been spinning freely in the workshop, it means that the seal has left a gap and will allow dirt and water to pass through from the beginning. Of course, this also applies to your road wheels.

Adjustment when switching wheels

When you switch wheels, you want to make sure that the brake disc does not rub against the calipers. In 80% of the cases, no adjustment is required, as long as the wheels are replaced, the bicycle can be ridden

However, if you have two wheel sets with different hubs that happen to be at the ends of the brake disc position tolerance range, then you may need to adjust the caliper position.

Ideally, you can do this by placing a thin shim behind the wheel disc rotor closest to the centerline. The shims move the rotor out a bit, just where the rotor is already on the other wheelset.

It is important to ensure that there are enough threads on the lock ring to allow it to be firmly clamped. In addition, the lock ring must have sufficient clearance with the front fork and the frame. This is usually not a problem. With 6 bolts, this is more challenging. But the same principles apply.

Final thought

If you plan to change wheels regularly, it’s best to use a setting that keeps the same chainring and chain length

Depending on the range you need, you may need to do some experimentation. Because not every flywheel ratio you want exists. This may also mean that you have to slightly modify the top equipment after all.

Click here, we also shared a lot of knowledge about optimizing Chinese carbon wheels on Twitter.