Thanks for tuning in
this is The Sweet Cyclists and today we're going
to be looking at the Token
Dhuezz road cycling wheels.
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Today we have a really exciting
review, we're going to be looking at the
Token Dhuezz
road cycling clinchers. These are alloy
set of wheels that are really optimized
for climbing
and they come in at a claimed 1400 grams
so really lightweight.
If the name sounds familiar it's because
it's named after the famous Alpe D'Huez
climb.
What Token does with a lot of
their products, they just misspell
famous places like the Kona
route is called the Konax
This is kind of ingenious, it makes
it really easy to google it really
puts across
their mission for each product. I'm going
to go ahead and take this out of the box
and while I do that
we will go over the specs. This
retails for
$799 which is quite affordable for a
lightweight set of wheels.
They're alloy but they have a special
ceramic coating
that gives it a extra durability. Inside
the box you see we get wheel skewers.
This is a pretty nice set of skewers and
we also get the carbon specific
pads. This is kind of interesting, even
though it's an alloy wheel
because it has a ceramic coating on the
entire exterior
you do have to run the
the ceramic brake pads.
They also have a XDR or the
Shimano freehub option. These are kind of
a more traditional wheel set
with the internal diameter of 18
millimeters. Pretty narrow
they offer quite a few wider variations of
wheels, so if you're looking for something
wider
they have everything from triathlon
wheels to really wide gravel wheels, so
if these don't match what you're
looking for Token definitely has a
product that probably does.
The company itself has been around for a
while, since 2002.
They have triathlon wheels,
they have road racing wheels,
they have gravel wheels so really big
product catalog.
What's also really great about these
wheels is that they come with a two year
warranty
as well as a crash replacement program
so you can definitely
rest assured that if anything
were to come up during your ownership
they'll also be there for you. This
is a really cool part about this, it has
that
coating as I mentioned and it gives it a
slight bluish
tint to it which i'm not sure how well
it comes on camera but
definitely a good looking alloy wheel.
Really shallow
so the depth on these is only 22
millimeter so
pretty shallow. Radially laced for the
front wheel
and then the back wheel they call it a
diametric lacing
and it's kind of interesting. It's
radial on the non-drive side
so you can see standard radial spoken and
then a different lacing pattern on the
drive side, so an interesting
variation.
The rider weight limit on these is a
hundred kilograms
and the claimed weight is the 1400
grams so on the lighter end of things.
It's also tool-less
as you can see you can actually pull the
free hub apart
and actually see the internal mechanism
in here so pretty cool.
I've configured this with the Shimano
hub to match my
groupset. Now let's take a look at
the weight of the wheels,
I've tared the scale with a little
potting plant to help balance the
wheels.
We have the rear wheel that comes in at
826, actually
824 grams
without the skewers. Then we have the
front wheel,
we'll do the same thing.
That comes in at 650 grams so quite
lightweight.
Now we're going to take a look at the
weight of the skewers that are included.
The front skewer comes in at 58 grams
while the rear skewer comes in at
62 so not the lightest weight on the
market but actually quite nice. If we
take a little closer look here
you can see a really easy handle you get
the nice
springs and the end caps.
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Now take a closer look at the fit
and finish of the
wheels. Although these are alloy
wheels they actually look a lot more
like a
carbon set of wheels because of this
nice matte finish.
They describe this as a ceramic coating
for durability
and it gives it really nice smooth kind
of a light gray finish on.
There's a couple cool distinguishing
design features they added you have
Token kind of ghosted on here with
raised lettering
so it's something I imagine you can actually
take off. You also have the product name
here in gold,
pretty cool with one gold nipple so it
gives a little bit of flare.
Spoke count wise pretty
low just to keep the weight down so the
front you have 18 spokes
radially laced while the rear you have
21 spokes
and this is their diametric lacing.
It's a radial on one side, the
non-drive side, and then on the drive
side you have this really interesting
pattern to it. For the free hub I have the
Shimano on here and it has a pretty nice noise to it
too.
It's not too buzzy but has nice
precision. There are external nipples,
these are called Pylar wing spokes,
so you can see if we go close up
they're a little bit flat in the middle
so a bladed style spoke for
a little bit improved performance. They
also have the Z1 hub, this is their top
of the line hubs.
The wheel set itself is part of the
Zenith line collection so they have
three
levels and this is the highest
performance level
so cost a little bit more but lightest
weight and highest performance for road
racing.
Also these are tubeless ready which is
really cool and right out of the box
uh you can see this really nice tape
here so you don't have to do any
tubeless tape.
Looks really clean so makes the tubeless
conversion really simple they don't
provide valves but
you can buy them separately but they do
come with the pads and the skewers which
is a nice feature.
Next thing we'll do is we'll start
setting this up with a tubeless set of
tires.
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We're going to set up these Token
wheels as tubeless right off the bat
and since they already come with the rim
tape pre-applied this should be pretty
easy. These are a hooked rim design
so again really simple. The tires we're
going to be using are the Hutchinson
Fusion 5 Galactik. This is one of their
most highest performance variations from
the Fusion 5 lineup. It
uses their ElevenSTORM rubber compound which provides
really good grip and really low rolling
resistance as well as light weight.
This is a really great tire to match the high
performance climbing
Token wheels. To do the installation,
because the tubeless uh the rim tape is
already applied
going tubeless is really a breeze so i'm
just going to put the tires on.
These are directional so be careful with
that unless you want to do this a couple
times.
Just like any tire installation you
want to be really careful
to not force it on and damage
anything
and then of course the hardest part is
always that last little section in the
middle. You can see it fights you,
the trick to that is to
hold both sides
and then work your way in slowly just
putting it on.
Thankfully these Hutchinson tires are
quite soft so
pretty easy to do, you see it's on
pretty simple. To make the
installation a little bit easier I'm
going to take a little sponge with soapy
water and
run it along the rim
and that should help the bead pop
into place a little bit easier.
Now we'll take the Tubibooster,
I've taken off the core as well
just to make it a little bit easier
and I'm going to pop it on here and
hopefully the bead will pop in place.
You heard that 'pop pop.' Now i'll remove it
and it looks like it actually popped in [lace.
I've already
rebooted up the Tubibooster i'm
going to
put it on the valve. I've got the valve core
off again and
soapy water around the rim. Let's see
how it goes.
There you go, a nice pop pop pop
and then we'll remove it so with these
successfully
installed I'm going to put some sealant
on them and we're going to get the
wheels and tires on the road.
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Now let's get the Token wheels on the
road with the Hutchinson Galactik tires.
We're going to do a lot of mixed riding
here. We will do some descending,
climbing and flats to really gauge the
performance.
When we came to descending we found the
wheels really provide a lot of
confidence,
they provide enough stiffness that you
can really get a lot of feedback from
the road but it's not jarring.
With the Hutchinson tires attached in
the tubeless setup it's provides a lot
of grip so it's really easy to go fast
and on the flats as well because the
wheels are so light it was easy to
accelerate.
That also really translates to a wheelset
that's really well designed for climbing
especially with a really shallow rim
height
and the low weight. It made it really
easy and responsive to climb.
You kind of forget the wheels are
there, especially if your a weight weenie I
highly recommend
going after grams on your wheels rather
than carbon fiber bottle cages or
saddles
as rotational weight is really important.
As you can see here on the climbs I
found a really
nice combination between the wheels and
tires, they're really easy to climb with.
The Z1 hubs also mean it's very smooth
wheels, with really low
rolling resistance on them. The other
important thing is braking performance.
We found that the carbon brake pads
did a really great job, it has really nice
modular braking that gives you a lot of confidence
when you're descending.
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So now let's go over the pros and cons
for the Token wheelset.
What I really like about it is the price
at 800 and 1400 grams I think it's a
really good competitive
lightweight climbing wheel set
especially compared to the Mavic Ksyriums.
They also provide really impressive
braking performance
with the special ceramic coating on the
rims
you get really nice modular braking
which provides a lot of confidence when
you're descending.
Also they're really responsive and
lightweight which means it's really easy
to accelerate with these wheels as well
as climb
and because it's a rotational weight it
really pays a lot of dividends on the
road.
Some of the cons is the fact that the
tire size is limited to 700x25.
The internal rim width on these is
fairly narrow
so if you want to go wider you need to
look at other wheel sets Token offers.
They also require carbon brake pads and
that's one negative.
When you go with alloy wheels you hope
you could use standard alloy brake pads
instead of having to switch them out
but because of the coating you do need
to use carbon pads.
Lastly I feel like the gold accents,
although they look cool
are a raised sticker look
which makes it feel a little bit cheap. I
wish they'd powder coated it on or
something a little
cleaner. Taking everything into account I
would give the
Token wheel set a 9.0 out of 10. I think
they're really
light and responsive so if you're
looking for a clincher wheel set
that's not going break the bank I would
really consider these wheels. Thanks for
watching this review,
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