Mountain Biking Australia Magazine
Mountain Biking Australia is a down to earth cycling magazine for those who like to get off-road and dirty.
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We’re faced with a bewildering range of suspension systems, each claiming to be the best thing since sliced bread. Steve Hinchliffe takes an independent look at the popular designs to separate the fact from fiction.
More than just a novel trick, being able to ride ‘skinnies’ is a skill that can provide real benefits on the trail.
You’ve probably noticed that ‘top whatever it may be lists’ are all the rage these days. Just this week I read a list of the ‘50 Rules of Cycling’. Not road rules or legalities, but anecdotal rules like ‘look where you want to go, not at the obstacle’ and things like that. It made me think for a moment about what my own list would look like. Initial thoughts were that it’d resemble a derailleur moments after being sucked into a rotating rear wheel; a mess!
Of late there’s been an overwhelming focus on new wheel sizes. It’s enough to have you thinking that any 26-inch wheeled bike is inherently and unavoidably inferior. Forums are loaded with talk of new 29-inch and 650B bikes, along with a good deal of bemoaning directed at brands that haven’t released a model to suit one of these new-school wheel sizes.
Let’s get it out there from the beginning; these rims are expensive—bloody expensive. Think of how much a range topping alloy wheelset will cost, around $1,000 perhaps? Well that’s about the price of a single Enve rim—one rim, no hubs, no spokes! You can also purchase them as complete wheels built with DT Swiss 240 hubs and Aerolite spokes for around $3,500. 
When it came to building my Enve rims, I wanted to use some high-quality lightweight hubs. While the obvious choice would be from DT Swiss or maybe American Classic, I was curious to try something a little different. German brand Tune specialises in really light gear and their hubs are offered in a broad range of spoke hole drillings (I wanted to run 28 spokes and some MTB hubs are only offered in 32-hole). 
