Hey everybody how's it going?
Looks like no matter the bike that I'm building
when it comes to wheels I'm always going back to DT Swiss
as their wheels are good bang for the buck.
This time I am building a cross or gravel bike
and I chose to go with the DT Swiss Spline C1800 wheels.
Let's take a closer look at them!
In the past you guys have seen me looking at the mountain biking series from DT Swiss
but these Spline C1800 are meant to be used for cyclecross, gravel or even road.
I have to admit that I'm not too crazy about that white branding
that's on these rims pretty much everywhere,
however if you look here next to the valve
you're going to see that these rims are 22 millimeter ID so internal dimension,
and here on these two stickers left and right
Dt Swiss provides us with recommended minimum and maximum tire width
25 minimum, 64 mm max - that's kind of crazy that's like a 2.4 tire!
Also here where it says tubeless you see their maximum recommended pressure
and on the other label you're gonna see the maximum recommended pressure
if you are to run these wood tubes.
And height of the rim is 23 mm definitely not great for road aerodynamics
but perfectly fine for gravel or cyclocross.
Otherwise the finish of the rim seems to be high quality.
These are sleeved rims, you can see that line over here so they're not welded
and you're gonna get these wheels with 24 spokes.
These are bladed spokes believe it or not and you're gonna have aluminum nipples
and the hubs that they use for these wheels are DT370 or version of that.
And if the branding on the rims seems to be painted, here on the hubs these are decals
so if you want to peel this off I guess you could do it.
You can see Spline over there and you can see these are straight pull spokes
again 24 spokes on this wheelsets.
DT Swiss is going to mention Center Lock /6-bolt in the specs that's because
they include these adapters so this is a Center Lock to 6-bolt adapter for your rotor.
Otherwise as you see here the hubs are actually Shimano Center Lock.
You get that little user information attached to your spokes, not a whole lot to see there,
and the rims come pre-taped, I already mentioned that these are 22 mm ID,
and you can see that little hook here because hookless rims are not that popular yet with a gravel or road crowd.
Not only that the rims are taped but you're also getting a couple of valves so if you want to run this tubeless
you can do it right away.
These are thru axle hubs so 12 x142 rear, 12x100 mm front
and interestingly DT Swiss included in the box a couple of adapters.
The first one is 15 mm front axle adapters
and the second one it's gonna be QR adapters for that front wheel as well.
Nothing for the rear axle from what I can tell
however these end caps can be easily replaced with QR if I'm not mistaken.
Freehub options are Shimano splined you see it here, 11 speed road or SRAM XDR.
On this you can install pretty much 8, 9, 10, 11, speed from shimano, no problem,
and remember this is the road standard so the freehub body it's a bit longer.
I'm gonna have Shimano GRX installed on these so this is pretty much a mountain biking cassette, 11-42T
so I'm gonna need a little spacer here, that's a 1.85 mm spacer that you need on this freehub to make it work.
Interestingly DT Swiss doesn't include that little spacer even though they gave me all the adapters for that front wheel.
And I mentioned that the hubs are DT 370 even though that's not mentioned anywhere
and that means no ratchet in here instead you have the 3-pawl system.
As usual with DT Swiss you can remove the freehub without tools
and you see that red grease that they've used even with this 3-pawl system
which by the way provides you with 24 clicks or 15 degrees of engagement.
This is a Shimano splined freehub from a MTB wheelset
and if I put the freehubs side by side you can see how the mountain biking one is just slightly shorter
than the one that says 11 speed road.
So this will be compatible with any 370 freehubs from DT Swiss whether they're MTB or in this case road.
Weight of this aluminum wheel set is not too bad either,
you can see that front wheel at 824 grams.
Rear wheel is at 953 grams
so for the wheelset we're looking at 1777 grams, not too too bad for an aluminum budget friendly wheelset.
So what kind of wheels are you guys using for your cyclecross or a gravel rig?
Do you use something like this a budget aluminum from DT Swiss or something fancier?
Let me know in the comments below.
This is going to be my beater wheelset for the Trek Crockett that I'm building right now.
I hope you guys found this useful and if you did don't forget to like, subscribe and comment,
and until next time hope to see you on the trails guys.
Cheers!