Hunt seem to have new wheels coming out left, right and centre at the moment, and our experience thus far has been pretty positive. We caught up with their man at Eurobike, Sam, to have a quick peek at their latest wheelset — the E_Enduro.
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Big width and burly components
The E_Enduro is basically Hunt’s EnduroWide wheels, but slightly beefed up. Instead of a 33mm internal width, these alloy rims are 37mm wide inside, and 41.5mm wide externally — wide enough to provide ample support for 2.5in or 2.6in rubber, even up to 2.8in should you wish. With appropriate tape, etc, they’re obviously tubeless-ready too.
Next up are the spokes, which have a thicker gauge (2.3/1.8/2.0) to keep them nice and stiff, helping them deal with the larger loads an e-bike typically puts through the wheels.
Given their claimed strength, if you’re a heavier or more aggressive rider who often destroys wheelsets, these could be a good option for non-e bikes too. There are 36 spokes on the rear, though at present we don't have a front spoke count.
At the hub level, Hunt have again ensured strength and reliability, at the expense of some weight.
The rear hub uses a steel freehub body to cope with the forces put through the cassette and avoid the issue of cassette sprockets digging in to the freehub body. While the standard Shimano design was shown to us, Hunt will also offer it with an XD driver body, and, if the Microspline standard opens up, presumably with that too.
The freehub has 6 reinforced pawls. This ups the engagement angle from 3 degrees to 10, but this could well be a price worth paying, and is slightly less important on an e-bike. The bearings are protected by an extra set of seals on the non-drive side also.
Finally, and this is the first time we've seen this, there’s a cooling fin machined into the hub body by the disc mount. This is there to give a little extra heat dissipation from discs that may well be running hot on a heavy e-bike.
While Hunt still needs to confirm with production wheels, you'll be looking at around 2,500g for a pair of 27.5in wheels, or 2,600g for the 29in set. Pricing is expected to fall within £10-£20 (ish) of their Enduro Wide wheelsets, which have a £359 price tag.
More information will be available on full launch from Hunt Bike Wheels.
