First Look: Hope Tech Enduro 27.5 Wheelset
If you have been watching the footage of this weekends amazing EWS, you cannot fail to notice that here in Scotland, wheels get a fair amount of abuse! You need to keep tyre pressures down to maintain traction on the often wet trails, and so most keen local riders now run tubeless as a rule! If you ride your bike daily on some of the toughest trails in the UK, your kit needs to be tough too! Boutique is shunned, while reliability and strength are desirable. It may come as no surprise to find out that a huge proportion of ‘in the know’ riders are rolling on Hope Pro 2 Evo hubs.
When it comes to reliability and ease of servicing, Hope hubs have been market leaders for many, many years and it is easy to see why. If you have the right tools you can do a complete bearing change in under 10 minutes and the freehub is easy to keep in good order. If you ride a lot in wet grime and grit then expensive factory wheels are never going to cut it. If you want the best bang for your buck then nothing really comes close to the Hope Pro 2 EVO hubs, twinned with ZTR Flow rims, a bombproof combo run by hardcore riders and bike shop staff all over Scotland.
But that may be changing! Traditionally Hope have steered clear of the rim market, lacing up their hubs into the market leading rim options. However, the design focused company is now keen to reinvent the wheel and are now offering a complete factory wheel-set, the Tech Enduro, retailing at a very competitive £380 for front and rear! The new rims are not manufactured in-house, but the wheels are still designed and hand finished in Barnoldswick.
Word on the grapevine is that Hope’s own gear tester, Adam Brayton has been running these for a while now and has not snapped or folded any. Notorious for his aggressive and ‘full gas’ style, if Adam cannot break these, Hope are onto a winner
and are welded and eyeleted 6061 T6 Aluminium
We have just received this 27.5 wheel set for testing and will be putting them through the worst abuse we can dish out. With the race season kicking off, these should get a few big wallops, so we will be reporting back in a few months with a full review to let you know how they perform.
Words and photos: Trev Worsey