New Build: Stan's NoTubes Flow to Chris King Mountain Wheels

These are a truly special build.  Working in a shop, especially a shop that's lucky enough to build some really great stuff, opens your eyes to some great possibilities.  When the chance came up for Ben to pick up a new Yeti ASR7 he wasn't about to clad it with shoddy parts.

Many of the shop employee builds are dreamed up but toned down once it comes time to buy parts.  This time though, Ben took his time to build the perfect bike.  The perfect bike needs the perfect pair of shoes, and Ben outdid himself here.

Starting with Chris King hubs is always a good idea, especially when they are gold.  The front is the oversize 20mm thru-axle version of their 6-bolt disc hub.  King makes two versions of their front disc hub for thru-axles.  The oversize version is ready for 20mm or 15mm thru-axles, but is slightly heavier than the standard hub shell.  Though, the standard hub shell won't accept 20mm axles, which Ben needed in this instance.

The rear hub is set up for a 12mm thru-axle, though it still includes the Chris King "buzz" these hubs are so well known for.  I was recently anointed into the world of thru-axles on the front of my Niner, I can only imagine the stiffness the rear of this bike will have with a thru-axle in the rear hub as well.

Ben went with NoTubes Flow rims, an excellent choice.  The Flow is a relatively light rim, but extremely burly.  It also offers plenty of stiffness, but more importantly is extremely wide and should offer up top-notch tubeless compatibility.

Set up with yellow rim tape, these should work well tubeless and set up easily.  The NoTubes system is the best I've worked with so far, but with a number of other systems popping up we can hope they'll get even better with time.

Gold alloy nipples finish off this build.  It's more likely that if we were building for a customer we would have used brass nipples for their strength, but with a full-service bike shop at his disposal every day and the ability to fix just about anything, alloy nipples will most likely work just fine and will of course look the part.

New Build: Stan's NoTubes Crest 29 to DT Swiss 240s Mountain Wheels

When an email came in for a new Niner Air9 Carbon, I knew special wheels were needed.  This bike is going to a great home that already has a beautiful Independent Fabrication SSR that we built a while back.  That SSR is sporting some DT Swiss wheels we built (not pictured), and since the rider was so happy with them the natural choice was 240s hubs for this new build.

Actually, lets check out this IF SSR.  Custom paint all over, tons of little custom touches, Super Record:

Now you see where we were starting and why these wheels needed to be something nice.  The choice of a rear 240s hub is simple.  DT Swiss engagement and quality are well known, there's no debate there.  The front 240s hub is also a perfect match for the SID XX fork since it has a 15mm Maxle thru axle.

The wheels were built with DT Swiss Competition spokes laced 3x all the way around.  Competition spokes offer light weight and excellent durability and stiffness.  DT Swiss ProLoc black brass nipples were used to match the black theme and to provide a solid base to work from.

Rotors are Shimano IceTech XT, which in my opinion are setting a new standard.  I've never used a brake set that was so powerful and so functionally flawless.  They are a little heavier than some of their counterparts, but will more than make up for their weight with their unbelievable performance.

Cassette is also Shimano XT, an 11-36.  Wide range cassettes have opened the door to 2x10 drivetrains and Shimano has provided on that front.  With excellent shifting and a light action, XT shifting provides great feedback without too much effort placed on your thumbs.

The bare wheelset came in at 1,580g, about 30g lighter than I expected.  Always a welcome surprise!

Niner EMD9 w/ 2012 Shimano XT

This one was a pleasure to build, because well, it's mine.  I previously had built an EMD9 but it's since been sold.  I loved the frame enough that I just replaced it with an identical one.

For the first time for me, I decided to build it with a Shimano build kit.  I spent some time chatting with some mountain biking friends who do some "real" riding, you know, in the mountains.  The consensus was easy to gather: Shimano XT brakes are the best.  I heard from many of them that XTR works just as well, but at a far higher cost.

Since I was going with XT brakes, I stuck with the full XT kit.  Shifters, derailleurs, cranks, chain, and cassette are all XT.  The fork is a Niner carbon unit, bars and post are also Niner carbon, the post is the RDO version.  The stem is ole faithful, a 130mm Thomson X4.

Wheels were hand built Stan's NoTubes Crest laced to DT Swiss 240s 6-bolt disc hubs with DT Swiss Revolution spokes 3x and DT Swiss ProLoc brass nipples.

Price as built?  $3700 out the door for a pure-bred race bike.