CX DISC

Tubular tires feature a rubber tread sewn onto a tube and they’re glued or taped onto specifically designed rims. Tubulars rims are significantly lighter because the reinforced walls that support a clincher tire are not necessary and the overall wheel and tire system is lighter. Tubular tires are more expensive than their clincher equivalents, harder to change because they’re glued in place and they usually go in the trash after one puncture, negatives that rule them out for most riders most of the time. However, the lower system weight makes a tubular wheelset more responsive when accelerating, climbing, cornering and braking. For this reason, tubulars remain the default choice of professional racers and also many amateurs, and that’s why ENVE is committed to offering the tubular format.

It used to be simple – train on clinchers, race on tubulars – but advances in clincher rim and tire design, plus the arrival of tubeless technology to the road, means that’s no longer the case. The best clincher and tubeless tires now out-perform top tubulars for rolling resistance. What’s more clincher rims and tires also integrate slightly more aerodynamically. For triathlon, grand fondos and nearly all road riding, tubeless/clinchers are recommended. In shorter events, or if you’re lucky enough to have a support car, committed racers will tell you that little else feels as good as a set of superlight tubs leaping out of a corner.

Need to know:
• Lighter and more responsive rims and total wheel and tire package
• Tires must be glued in place
• Recommended for criterium and road racers
• Everyone else is recommended to go tubeless
• Clincher and tubeless tires are more practical

At ENVE, we do a lot more than just slap decals over the brake track and lace the same rim to a disc hub. Drawing on our expertise gained developing the world’s best mountain bike wheels, our disc-specific road rims are fully optimized for the format. Freed from the constraints of a heat-proof carbon braking surface, the optimal construction of a road wheel can be reconsidered. The result is a rim that is even lighter, stronger and faster than our standard-setting, group test-winning rim brake wheels.

Carbon brake tracks dictate a lot of rim design. By taking them away and re-engineering the rim we have improved the lateral stiffness, the impact resistance and the weight by 40-60g per rim. While disc hubs mean that total wheelset weights will remain near identical between rim and disc brake wheelsets, the disc brake wheelset will feel more responsive in acceleration, steering and braking because the mass has been shifted from the rim (higher rotational inertia) to the hub (lower rotational inertia).

Need to know:
• Disc-specific construction with no brake tracks
• Rims are lighter by 40-60g per rim
• Impact resistance increased
• Greater lateral stiffness