DT Swiss has a bunch of new products being released this year, the most prominent is the new tubeless ready Tricon wheelset. They are also releasing some new carbon wheels, new forks with a better price point and some minor tweaks to their existing top of the line carbon fork.

Tricon Wheelset
The new Tricon wheel system has some very innovative features that were engineered into them. Foremost is that they use a multiple piece hub, which is comprised of 2 spoke flanges and a hub body. The separate spoke flanges are tightened down onto the hub body, so they are not part of the hub itself. This arrangement leaves the hub body and the bearings free of tension from spoke pull, so the bearings can spin as smoothly as possible. Usually a hub has to have a built in amount of bearing bind, since once spoke tension is applied the body is pulled outwards, thus freeing up the bearings. Otherwise the bearings would be sloppy and more apt to wear if that factor was not designed into the hub.

The spoke pattern is a combination of radial and crossed spokes, for maximum stiffness and torque transferal. The spokes use Torx nipples, and are threaded on each end, and are straight pulled. Lastly the rim, uses small spoke inserts, which are supported on two sides of the rim, think of them as a sort of rectangular spoke nuts. This arrangement allows the rim to be built lighter, and in addition it is airtight for tubeless compatibility.

The mountain version of the wheel system is the XM 1550 Tricon, and is 26mm wide. The front is available as either 100mm/15mm or 110mm/9mm, while the rear can be 135mm/10mm or 142mm/12mm. Weights are 700 grams for the front and 850 grams for the rear. It is also available in a road version RR 1450 Tricon.

Next -> Forks & Carbon Wheels

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Daily Coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.