Chinese Carbon Wheels you've never heard of...

knee pest is the brand name of these wheels now I've honestly never heard of me pester view I Googled on the internet and there's hardly anything about this brand name well we're gonna find out for sure that's a normal wheel box not quite as wide so it's a little bit smaller the wheels just for dinner but one thing I noticed is when you put them in this way it's wider maybe it's something to do with the way they package it different than the other companies ah so that's why the box is wide there's wool bags and they're in the wool bag this is actually a really nice wheel bag it's semi-waterproof and 100 nylon of course the Zips are steel nice color in contrast dark gray with fluoro yellow and the labels on so the nepes labels on the zipper tags on the handles and on the bag itself it's got two zip tags for each wheel so they're in foam packaging more foam foreign axles and a nice ID tag holder on the back side for traveling nice professional looking bag surely it's got to be worth 100 to 150 alone and yes it comes with the wheel set yes something in there okay no other goodies so we've got some space boats tubeless Rim tape some instructions a cassette spacer ring and two long extension valves for your tubeless in there now let's see what really counts front one rear one so this wheel set is the model Maui Maui 50s I think that's how you pronounce it I Googled it and that said Maui so this is a UD raw paint free finish it's quite nice it's got a satin finish it's not a glossy and it's not a matte finish it's sort of satinish so being raw means you can see imperfections from the Finish they don't go over it with grinding and all that sort of thing and there's no clear finish no lacquer or varnish what you call it on the outside it's just the carbon fiber as it is the valve hole is also just a hole drilled all the way through no special extra layer up on there by the look of it however it's nicely done the rim bed very nice very tidy and you can see the carbon fiber weaving there the inside but you can't see it on the outside of course because it's got that UD effect these holes have been drilled very nicely very tidy and clean no shards or extra carbon and bits hanging off anywhere on any of the holes if you ever need to adjust the spoke tension then you use a five and a half millimeter depicts a decals on the rim are not decals and they're not stickers they're actually laser etched I don't know if you can see it I'll give you a close-up laser etched into the surface of the room very thin laser etching so if you want plain rims you don't want any labels on your Rim you're going to have to sand them off or scratch them off not that you really want to do that there's quite a nice label on itself so laser etching now that's going to last quite some time quite scratch resistant the rim width let's have a look at the widths the inner width so 19 now and the outer you get 28 and of course you've got the depth at 50. Rim shape they're all starting to look the same now it's hard to make an individual comment anymore whether it's Road or gravel the rims all have that same sort of shape maybe they've got it so that they've got the I do optimized shape and they're keeping it now so we've got a slightly rounded Inside Edge there very slight curve on the wall and of course the wider now to accept the wider tires so it's not a lot to comment on the rim shape they're all pretty much the same nowadays okay let's have a look inside one of these rims we're just going to have a look at one we're taking the rear Rim because the front and the rear are both identical rims anyhow they're made the same way so here's the spoke nipple first of all these spoke links is the right links there as you can see that's good not too long not too short there's a big wrinkle right next to the nipple there that line all the way across from one wall across the rim bed and starting to go up the opposite wall and on the left side where we're looking there's another wrinkle there it comes down from the wall across the rim bed see if we can twist the camera around to look how far it goes yep and it's going up the wall on the opposite side there not good not good okay now we're looking at one of the spoke nipples now if you look carefully here it looks like they've slightly drilled the surface there to make a concave shape for the nipple to sit in which is a good idea but you're drilling some of the strength away although it's only a small amount right we'll just skip across to the next spoke hole and you can see there another wrinkle and a bit of carbon fiber a strand just hanging in the middle nowhere there we can get focus on something else another nipple there and another wrinkle next to it and the same thing that you can see slight recess either side of the nipple there where they've drilled obviously that's what they're doing for every spoke nipple wrinkling more wrinkling there more wrinkling everywhere we're looking we see lots of wrinkling all this quite a bit there and again it's widespread it goes all the way up the wall across the rim bed and possibly up the other side of the wall on the opposite side you can't see with this endoscope very well that's a little bit there you go you can see it sort of ends there not good not good lots of wrinkling as a side point here see that line running along the center of the rim bed that's a join line because these rims are made in two halves a left and a right and glued together in the mold it's a cheaper way to make a carbon Rim rather than a one-piece molded rim there's one of the nipple access holes from looking inside the rim fairly well drilled out it's a little bit of a Shard hanging off the end there and back to the hexagonal spoke nipple more wrinkling lots more wrinkling lots lots more wrinkling and some resin staining there and lastly having a look through the valve hole there's lots of lines there I don't think that's wrinkling it looks more like scratches how do they scratch so much like that I don't know but anyhow it's less wrinkling than this area it actually looks quite clean besides those scratches anyway that will do zero rear wheel first 750 grams zero front wheel 620. the clutch sound everybody wants to hear the clutch sound and faster now why some people like a loud clutch I don't know maybe if it's like or listen to my loud clutch listen to my strong clutch listen to my fast clutch whatever you like to think I think it's nice to have not completely silent clutch would be nice that's nice too because let's just take in the surroundings not necessarily you're going on a picnic but if everyone's got a loud clutch what a racket it would be but sometimes it's nice just to instead of writing full pace you're relaxing a bit more when you're going at a slower pace and you take in a bit more of the atmosphere of what's going on chat to your bike riders next to you Etc all that sort of thing without having to hear well that really loud all the time from whoever's got loud clutches oh well each to their own and also you should be able to tell how many engagements per Revolution by just listening to the clutch if you watch enough of my videos you're probably getting used to how to tell anyway most of them are 36 and this is a 36. just check that later on the bearing feel there's a rear one very very good can't tell when you hold the clutch all you can do is feel the click but if you spin it with the clutch spinning as well then all four bearings are rotating have to get your mind around that if you stop the clutch you're only feeling two bearings the ones in the hub that are going around ones in the clutch the two bearings are in your free Hub body are stationary as soon as you let go of the free Hub body then all four bearings are rolling so at the moment we're filling all four bearings smooth as no problem try the front wheel oh yes just a fraction rough just a fraction just it's just a fraction certainly acceptable now just a word on if you get a brand new set of wheels and you do encounter rough bearings usually on the front wheel head on a few of them then what you'll find is sometimes they don't seat them in the factory in the hub properly they can be slightly out it's called an angular alignment if the angular alignment is out when it's brand new and you feel a little bit rough Don't Panic put the wheel in your bike tighten your through axle up and spin the wheel and then listen to the bearings or feel the bearings in the bike which can be difficult or you can do that go for a couple of rides and then take the wheel out and then fill the bearings and quite often you'll find that the bearings are a lot smoother than when you had them brand new and that's because when you put them in the bike tighten up go for right it pushes the bearings in alignment where they should be or where they're naturally going to sit when you ride your bike and they could be worse or they could be better quite I've found that pretty much 100 of the wheels when they're slightly rough on brand new and you take them for a ride they go smoother because the angular alignment this is with sealed bearings only of course yep so that'll get smoother I'd say it'll be an angular alignment issue nevertheless even without that that's very good now I'll pull this clutch apart of course nowadays they're really easy to pull apart no tools required pull the end cap off and the clutch just falls off there you go that's inside so we have a spring and a cap washer there on top of the bearing in the free Hub body then you've got a clutch ring rubbing on another clutch ring then we have another an internal spring and washer and then the little spacer on the axle ceramic bearing inside well we've got this apart of course if you want your clutch to be louder then you clean all the grease out of inside of here maybe not all of it but the majority of it if it's thick and a lot of Grease clean it up and your clutch will be louder and vice versa if you want your clutch to be quieter and a bit more grease to your clutch and it will quieten it down these clutch Rings you can replace them they're available on AliExpress if you wear them out if you wear them out I don't think I've ever seen a worn out one yet or you want more engagements per Revolution you want like a buzz sound then you can go from maybe a 50 I think it's a 54 tooth so you when you spin your clutch you've got or buzz and I think there's a 48 and then there's the 36 available it's not necessary to have a lot of engagements per Revolution on the road bike maybe mountain biking or Trail biking yes but not Road biking 36 is what we've always had and it's perfectly fine so you can buy these clutch Rings separately bearing replacement no problem for your Hub and for all the free Hub they're a standard sort of size 6808 6809 not sure I'll put it on the screen for you and you can replace them with either steel or ceramic bearings whichever takes you fancy whatever you want to do so standard size bearings easy to replace in time same with dust caps some Hubs Don't have dust caps on the axle cap here they've got two flanges as you can see this one's got no flanges at all however in the free Hub body there it has a plasticy rubbery soft dust cap over the top front bearing there so this cap axle cap fits nicely in with that how good that is it looks pretty good fairly flush good tolerance so it should work quite well so each hub's a little bit different so dust caps are important and not so much the term dust caps but more water caps because it's not so much dust that gets in it's water that will bring it in so water Ingress under your dust cap will bring in dirt at the same time and it'll get inside your bearings so it's water so really there should be water caps not so much dust caps anyhow it's an older term and we stick with it so if you live in an area where it rains Fair bit get a fair bit of moisture then it would be good to make sure you've got good dust caps and you can put a bit more grease take the cup caps out put a bit of Grease underneath over the top of the bearing and put your cap back on and the same in your clutch you could probably put a bit more grease inside there and that'll protect some from the water Ingress coming in from the outside so if you live in dry areas though then not so much of a problem you can run it a lot drier because remember any grease or oil will attract dirt and eventually find its way into the mechanism or into your bearings thank you boom easy done spokes are carbon fiber and written on each spoke is the initials st01 and sgo1 I've seen that written on I think it's wind space wheels so these are the same carbon spokes that are used on those wheels and they've been around for a fair while now so Fairly reliable now let's have a look these are not the ultra wide spokes these are three millimeter by 1.4 1.3 1.4 so straight pull from The Hub and the nipples are semi I'd say half into the rim and half knot so you could call that semi-aero if you want to instead of being fully in the rim they're sticking out just a bit but not fully out that count there's two four six eight ten twelve fourteen on the three Hub side and one two three four five six seven on the disc row to side that's for the rear wheel and the front wheel on the rotor side is 14 and 7 on the non-roaster side because the radio on the non-racer side and crossed for extra strengths on that righter side for your braking get on your rear wheel for your roadside for your braking it's a radial so I can never work that out why they do that why they don't keep them crossed butt anyway a lot of Wheels now a lot of road wheels are going that way that's pretty much a standard now and of course being carbon fiber spokes where they cross they're not touching no need to explain why not okay smoke tension you know the drill we get a Spoke tension meter and we measure every spoke and we write down every measurement and we plug it into the app and we look at the diagram so we're comparing each spokes tension to within five percent tolerance that's the narrowest margin that this app allows so this is the rear wheel as you can see by the red markers near the figures we have two on the left side on the that's the rotor side and five on the free Hub side that are either too tight or too loose and looking at the graph you can see the spoke tensions are not very even looking at the front wheel there's 11 out on the rotor side and one spoke out of tension on the right side now we can certainly broaden out the tolerance to 10 or 20 percent but I've certainly seen quite a few Wheel sets better than this at five percent tolerance one quick way you can test your spoke tension say you're at a bike shop and you want to see about a pair of wheels that they've got there or your mates place or anywhere and you just want to check really quickly spoke tension approximately what it's like for a set of wheels but brand new or second hand what you can do is just flick your finger these are the carbon spokes of course a bit easier with the blade spokes doesn't hurt your finger as much and you can just hear it [Music] so that's not too bad the other side [Music] so that's fairly good you can hear them the the tone is fairly even and I know the front one because I've checked it prior to doing this is not too good [Music] like a detuned piano it's all over the place isn't it yeah that really high really low on the other side is not too bad so this one's a bit questionable if you find a wheel like that it's a bit questionable because when you think about it you've got a perfectly round circle here a perfectly round circle for your Hub flange and the spokes are evenly put into the Rim so ideally the spokes should be exactly the same tension all the way around of course here they're not on this front wheel so that's a quick way of testing your spoke tension just with your finger that's that low one and it's the high one it's a big difference [Music] hmm okay let's check the spoke twist starting at the valve hole good without boring your to tears with all 84 of the spoke twist measurements let's just skip to the summary so spoke to us for the front wheel no problem whatsoever excellent very very straight spokes on the rear wheel we had on the free Hub side near the rim two that were Twisted too far out and on the Hub near the Hub on the freehub side as well also Twisted a bit too much so they really need to be realigned on the rear wheel right let's check how true these walls are so checking out the rear wheel first the sideways movement or technically called the lateral true just to note the decals are well away from that pickup needle 18 19. 0 again 18 Again back down to five here we are going up ten fifteen down again up so I've got about 19 at the maximum there 0.19 millimeters that's very good rear wheel again this time up and down movement or concentricle ten oh right up there 17. 15. 17 going down up again about about 17.17 that's excellent as well over to the front wheel the lateral true sorry about the dial being out of focus eight five zero minus two okay so we're going to start off from -2o so that means 15 there is really 17. and 16. which is really 17 18. uh look like we're back to where we started so 18.18 millimeters that's even better than the rear wheel and lastly the concentricity of the front wheel we got about 15 maximum there oh 1920 2020 any advance on 20. 2020 yes about 23 there 23.23 still very minuscule well I'm pleasantly surprised how true these wheels really are considering how varied the tension is of the spokes you would expect if the spokes are unevenly tensioned then the rim would take a more of a buckled effect but these wheels are extremely true we're just going to have a look at the balance of the wheels since these bearings are very free as you can see the wheel goes back and forth and back and forth until it settles upon the weightiest part of the rim down the bottom and the lightest part of the rim up the top okay so the lightest part of the rim up the top actually is the valve hole the valve hole is right here and so the heaviest part of the rim is here so what it is is most probably the fact that this has been drilled out on the inside and the outside part for the valve so you're missing probably I don't know half a gram to a gram because you're talking about carbon fiber mix with resin and you drill out a hole two holes that size probably maybe a gram but if your bearings are extremely free then will make a difference so there you go and of course the valve when you put your tires and tubes on the valve itself assuming that the tire is evenly weighted all the way around and assuming your tube is weighted or evenly all the way around the valve is quite heavy so when the valve's up here then this is going to be the heaviest part of your wheel and so when you spin your wheel fast if you're going fast and only fast then you're going to feel slight imbalance well you probably won't feel it because your own weight on the bike but if you're going extremely fast maybe anything over 75 80 K's an hour down the hill of course then you can feel the may feel and in Balance if the valve causes an imbalance too much you may need to add a little bit of weight on this side of the rim to counter balance Don't Panic about that issue just being Ultra particular in this case let's just check the front wheel so it's the front wheel okay the valve holes up the top so it naturally wants to fall back to the valve hole at the top there you go it's stopped the valves actually there so these bearings are not quite as free as the rear ones but by the time we put this wheel in the bike of course then hopefully they'll help the bearings align a lot squarer but nevertheless the valve is up the top so same issue so it's pointing the fact that probably it is the drilling of the valve hole causes the imbalance but again don't panic if your wheels do that don't panic you're not going to be falling off your bike getting the speed wobbles or anything just because of a slight imbalance like that but if you want to be particular and you want your wheels to be perfectly balanced then yes you can counterweight it well only one more thing to do you know the drill the most important thing let's ride them so here's the bike we'll swap the tires and tubes cassette and rotors over to these wheels put them on this bike and let's go for a ride you want to come let's go foreign [Music] tubes went on super easy no problem we're giving all the sprockets a nice clean before we put them on just for the meal the thin smear of grease on the cassette body when you're putting your sprockets on this is a Shimano cassette the numbers written on the individual sprockets face outwards okay then smooth grease on the rotor spline and the lock ring thread rotor alignment beautiful just right coming for ride let's go foreign [Music] you know how you didn't like the other rims to color yes what do you reckon of these ones all right yeah they're better but I still like the matte color if you look at my rim rather than the shiny black I reckon it still looks better than that these are too shiny yeah these are what you call a satin finish they're a minor in that finishes even sat in all the gloss I don't never liked it but the mat always looks really good yeah but other than that you know all you have to do with these wheels if you want them to make and go mat is get some 800 wet and dry and just go around them and they'll go matte color anyway which I've done before so um but there you go if you don't like shiny go over some wet and dry sandpaper and you can make my matte finish yeah will that make them weaker [Laughter] well there you go what do you like for your carbon rims the matte finish satin finish or a shiny finish what about the decals do you like them showy like white on black or stealthy where you can't hardly read what's on there well not much time left in the video so really quickly how did they ride just fine just like any other 50 millimeter as you'd expect no issues I've got nothing to complain about now one of our bike riders actually makes carbon fiber bits for sailboarding and he also repairs carbon bike bits and pieces like your levers and rims and your frame he'll patch them up um now I asked him about these rims and the spokes I said what about the tension in the spokes on front wheel and we tapped them and he said well the only thing he can think of is when they make these carbon rims they can either do it in one piece or they can do it in two pieces and they join them in the mold so what he said when they do that the cheaper way is in the mold when they've had two pieces they inside here can be rough and sometimes the nipple sits a little bit higher might be a millimeter higher or a millimeter lower on the carbon fiber inside it's not as clean finished as a purely molded under high pressure carbon fiber Rim excuse my voice just got back from the ride so that could explain the fact that some spokes are looser and Tighter as they go around performance wise it doesn't seem to make any difference in performance whatsoever he grabbed hold of my rear State my bike ideas and he moved the wheel and he was expecting some movement he go how many spokes in here 24x7 oh is that all and he grabbed it and oh oh no he made no comment whatsoever so he was expecting some movement there but really they're very strong that's quite that's amazingly strong for having only 14 spokes on one side and seven on the other same with the front wheel you grab that as well down here and there's hardly any movement at all they're very very strong rims if you're a heavier Rider over 80 kilograms might not be advisable to ride these sort of Wheels if you 80 kilograms approximately in under then they'll be fine it goes to my voice again I'm 76 kilos at the moment and I had no issues anyway that sounds quite feasible doesn't it thanks Robert for the advice there and we'll hopefully get some more advice from him in the future videos as well so the wheels great I have no issue whatsoever hopefully they'll be able to clean up the rims on the inside and make these spoke tensions all the same the bearings the bearings in the front is Hub as well they're perfect nothing wrong with them whatsoever there you go if I spin the wheel put your ear earlobe on the end there or a pickup and put it through an amplifier you'll hear it's just as clean as the rear one now so just put it in after a couple of rides it's fine another thing would have been nice to see on these knee pest Wheels is wider inside width the rims are 21 millimeter on the inside I run 28 mil tires but if you want to run wider like 30s or 32s then you're pushing the aerodynamic limits your tire tends to bulge out a bit more so to get your aerodynamic benefits that have a wider Rim so it would be nice to have these rims at around about what 23 inside width something like that 23 24 and that would have made more aerodynamic with a wider tires up to 32. that's about the only thing I could say about these knee pest wheels that they need to improve just go a little bit wider and that'd be fine well that's about it it's all I've got to say about these wheels really performance wise they're just fine we'll see you soon coffee and chocolate

Channel: oz cycle

Views: 10,071

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Id: AHSU3vwZY2s

Length: 32min 58sec (1978 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023