camelopardalis

One of my wheels with a 10 speed cassette developed a serious crack and am in the market for new wheels. I'm looking at wheels at Nashbar which are built for 11 speed drive trains but with spacers for the 8, 9, and 10 speed cassettes. Does that work okay or should I be looking for wheels built for the older cassettes?

Thank you very much for your comments.

dynaryder

Why bother with a wheel that needs a spacer? Plenty of 8-10spd wheels out there,and with 11spd the latest thing,the prices are coming down.

SkyDog75

It works just fine. You already have similar spacers installed with your cassette -- what do you think separates one cog from the next? Just spacers sandwiched in there.

I have a set of Vuelta Corsa HD wheels from Nashbar that are built with an 11-speed hub and I'm running a 9-speed cassette, and I ran into one small catch: The wheels came with a spacer, but the spacer didn't have notches for the three pins that protrude from the back of my Shimano cassette. I mounted it anyway, but it was kind of wonky. I've since replaced that spacer with a notched one from Shimano:
Shimano 11-Speed 1.85mm Low Spacer

Dave Mayer

Indeed. 11 speed wheels are structurally inferior and less stable than their 8-10 speed predecessors due to the increased cassette width. More dish, and more spoke tension differentials between the drive and non-drive side.

So because the bike industry just had to add another cog to the cassette (planned obsolescence) now we have an inferior product at a higher (gullible early adopter) price.

Go with 10 speeds. As other riders 'upgrade', you can find these new and used at firesale prices. As well as chains, cassettes, chainrings etc.

camelopardalis

I'm looking at these Vuelta wheels from Nashbar. Vuelta Corsa SLR Road Wheelset

Seems to be an excellent price for Sub 1500 gram pair of wheels. I haven't seen a comparable deal on a 10 speed wheelset.

hueyhoolihan

i can barely build a set of wheels, at that weight for that price myself!

BTW, i just checked and they are on sale, so $254.98 delivered to my door.

like Henry Ford's model A, they only come in black.

D1andonlyDman

Nowadays, with 8-10 speed wheels being End-of-Life cleared out, all over the place, you can get good wheels for dirt cheap. I recently paid $144 for a set of Easton AXR wheels that were $450 retail 1-2 years ago through Nashbar. That deal is still available ($180 less 20% with free shipping). The same 20% + free shipping discount is also available at Nashbar for the Vuelta Corsa SLR wheels, which I also considered - but I went with the Eason AXRs.

I also picked up a spare used set of 10-speed Mavic CX22 wheels - with Felt-branded Origin8 hubs (in really nice condition) for $50 locally off craigslist from a guy who just put a $1000 set of wheels on his bike (and surprisingly saw no reason to keep his old ones as spares).

well biked

+1. Non issue.

FastJake

+1 Get an 8/9/10 speed wheel. No reason to use a weaker, inferior, more heavily dished 11 speed wheel when you don't have to.

Part of the reason is that they use cheap, inferior hubs. Probably with an aluminum freehub body to save weight, which doesn't play well with the Shimano spline system (the splines get notches cut into them.) I generally hate the phrase "you get what you pay for" but there's a reason these wheels are so cheap.

Eric S.

I've been running a set of Vuelta Corsa HD (the HD means 36 spokes) wheels for nearly 5 years. As for quality, they're fine for me and the HD set can often be had for ~$130 from Nashbar. I'm a 200lb. rider so 4 extra spokes aren't going to affect me.

Anyway, just chiming in on being happy with a Vuelta product.

HillRider

Theoretically you are correct but in real-world use, the difference is trivial. I certainly haven't heard of a huge increase in rear wheel failures since 11-speed came out.

We get this same argument every time the cog count goes up. 8-speed wheels were gong to fail way sooner than 7-speed, etc. Didn't happen and won't happen.

You are correct that 10-speed wheels are now close-out bargains so for that alone it might be worth their purchase.

dr_lha

I did 2000 miles on an 11 speed wheel last year, on a 10-speed 105 drivetrain. I'm a Clyde (started @ 290lbs, down to 250 lbs by the end of the season). The wheel held up fine, despite dire warnings from people about how 11-speed wheels were weaker.

You'll be fine.

Willbird

Cannot imagine 1.85mm is a huge deal structurally :-)....as far as inferiority goes :-)

well biked

I don't have any 11 speed drivetrains on any of my bikes yet, but recently I built some wheels for one of my road bikes, and I wanted to use Ultegra hubs. I had the choice of 6700 hubs or 6800 hubs for about the same price. I looked at it as a choice between having 8/9/10 speed compatibility or 8/9/10/11 speed compatibility. It took me about 2 seconds to decide on the 6800 hubs. Wheels usually last a fairly long time, if you know what I mean.

dr_lha

^ This.

I just moved my 11-speed compatible wheels onto a new 6800 based bike I'm building. Going with the 11-speed compatibility was clearly a good idea for future proofing.

FastJake

But in the past the O.L.D. has gone up or the freewheel/cassette spacing has gone down to fit more cogs in the same space. In your example, hub spacing went from 126mm to 130mm when 8-speed rears were introduced. And today everyone knows trying to use an 8/9/10 speed body with a hub spaced at 126mm is a bad idea because the dish is too severe. This time the cassette/body width has increased but the hub spacing has not.

I'm not saying the difference is necessarily going to matter much, but with 8/9/10 speed rear wheels already dished quite a bit I see no reason to make the situation worse with an 11 speed body I'm never ever going to use.

HillRider

I'm aware of the OLD increase but even with that many "experts" insisted the new wheels were weaker and going to fail almost immediately. As to "...I'm never going to use", maybe, maybe not. I have no interest in 11-speed either but who knows what we are going to do in the future and what we will have to buy to replace our current 8/9/10-speed freehubs if/when we run out of them.

79pmooney

But, but, but ... The bike industry has been making rear wheels less strong, less reliable but doing it with such small changes that no one notices. Kinda like moving your neighbors fence posts 2" every year. No one except those of us who ride zero dish rear wheels. Do that, then go back to the new wheels. There is a BIG difference. (Go for a ride on a high bottom bracketed track bike some time. High BB so you can put some load on the wheel on a corner without scraping a pedal. Good modern rear wheels are a great example of overcoming really poor design decisions. But go ride that well designed hub! I get long spoke life out of 2.0-1.5 spokes on both sides of my fix gear wheels, ridden on the road. Two to three rims and perhaps 2 broken spokes. And the wheel stays quite rideable with a broken spoke. Never a ride-ender. But the best part is those lightly spoked wheels feel SOLID.

Ben

well biked

That's probably the key issue. There may be some people currently riding fairly modern bikes that are sure beyond doubt that they will NEVER go to an 11 speed drivetrain, and so there's no reason to get an 11 speed compatible hub. But again, wheels usually last a long time, so each individual has to make that call. For a lot of people, very slightly increased dish vs. more compatibility is a case where compatibility would easily win out.

To the OP regarding the use of spacers to accomodate various cassettes on various hubs: it's been a way of life with cassette hubs for many years. Thin spacers are required on most 8/9/10 speed hubs when using 10 speed cassettes. Thicker spacers have been required when using Mavic hubs for years, Mavic's freehub bodies were "11 speed compatible" long before 11 speed drivetrains existed in the mainstream. It's a non issue.

HillRider

OK but I've got a couple of sets of those "fragile, highly dished", 8/9/10-speed rear wheels on my bikes and if they are going to fail prematurely they are taking their good sweet time about it.

One bike has a Mavic CXP33 rim laced 32H, 3X with DT 2/1.8/2 spokes to a Campy 10-speed Chorus hub and this Campy freehub body is already wide enough to accept 11-speed cassettes. The wheels have 29,600 miles on them and have never needed any truing and have never broken a spoke. Another bike has Shimano WH-R560 wheels with a 10-speed and only 20, radial DS, 2X NDS, bladed spokes. This wheel has 19,000 miles with equally little attention. Neither wheel is anywhere near replacement.

Now I'm not that heavy (~150) but the roads I ride on are hilly and rough so these wheels are by no means babied.

Dave Mayer

Yes, but every time the cassette gets wider, the integrity of wheels decreases. With 11-speed we are now at the point where the drive side spoke tension is double that of the non-drive side. And rear hub flange spacing has now shrunk to only 50mm.

In order to make these heavily dished rear wheels work, a bunch of bizarro solutions are required, which includes:

• Offset/assymetric rear rims. Harder to manufacture, at a higher cost. Lower wheel parts compatability.
• 2:1 or triplet lacing. Ditto problems as above.
• Bulked-up rear rims - need to make them laterally stiffer. This makes them heavier.
• Overhanging cassette cogs - to get them closer to the spokes. This makes it easier to snag the derailleur in the spokes.

The sum of all of this is that rear wheels are more flexy, unstable, difficult to manufacture, harder to stock parts for and ultimately heavier than the older low-dish wheels.

All of this is required so that the silly bike industry can add another cog to the cassette every 7 years.

Willbird

I still do not see it, but the solution is obvious really, people who feel as you do can just use IG hubs in the rear and avoid the whole issue totally :-). A triangle with a height of .073" (which is the 1.85mm) when the hypotenuse is the length of a spoke is a tiny triangle indeed :-). In fact it is not a whole lot more than the width of the spoke itself :-).

Bill

well biked

The 8/9/10 speed Shimano freehub body/cassette "era" spans the vast majority of the time that cassettes and freehub bodies have been widely used, with no changes to the freehub body's dimensions. Introduction of 11 speed is the first time in a very long time that the freehub body's dimensions have been changed, and even then it's less than 2 mm.

alcjphil

Mavic has been making wheels with free hub bodies that are 11 speed compatible for many years

Black wallnut 

You seem to have your facts wrong. The difference between Shimano 105 hubs is 1mm, if you can believe Prowheelbuilder.com spokecalc specs. The flange to flange spacing is the same. The hub body is 1mm longer but has less inboard rim, for lack of a better word. I've not checked more than just 105. Still the difference between 8,9,10 and 11 is not much. 11 speed wheels are not failing due to being unsound structurally. For those of you not likely to change over in the future then buying 11 sp. compatible wheels is probably not worth it. For the rest of us not afraid or opposed to change they are.