Santa Cruz Reserve Carbon Wheels

Five years ago, a little Santa Cruz video on a bike web site debunked every sceptic's fear about the long-term durability of carbon fibre bicycle frames. Now Santa Cruz are doing the same for wheels. Reserve wheels are built on the highest quality carbon rims on the market. Their confidence in the design and strength of their wheels is backed up by a lifetime warranty, just like Santa Cruz frames.

Strongest Wheels on the Market

Whether it's a sunset lap with friends or a race run against the clock, a broken wheel ruins any ride. Santa Cruz set strength and impact resistance as their highest priority, but strength doesn't have to mean uncomfortably stiff. Their wheels are compliant enough to avoid that harsh "wooden" ride that gives some carbon rims a bad name off-road. They only make off-road bikes at Santa Cruz, so they have the privilege of being able to focus purely on the mountain bike experience. Everything from the thickness of rim beads to external spoke hole reinforcements comes purely from their experience of knowing what riders need at every level—from international racing to your local trails.

Mountain Bike-Specific Design and Testing

One thing they knew for certain going into this project three years ago was that the industry standard impact test for carbon wheels wasn't going to cut it. That test, approved by the UCI, impacts both sides of a rim equally with a flat rubber pad without a tire mounted on the wheel. It's designed to replicate a pothole-type impact on the road. On a mountain bike, a rock is much more likely to only hit one side of the rim, so the rim beads have to be independently strong. Santa Cruz created a test in their lab that simulates one side of the rim landing directly on a square-edged rock from over 3 feet in the air with no suspension, and a lightweight tire inflated to 25psi. As they began to put some of the other rims on the market through this test, thye broke a lot of them more or less as they expected to—on the bead—but they also found that a critical failure mode was the spoke nipples pulling through the rim due to the sudden increase in spoke tension as the wheel flexed on impact.

Material Where You Need It

This information in hand, they set about determining how they might design a rim to mitigate those failures, and part of the result is the square-shaped reinforcements you can see around the spoke holes. They made plates of different carbon spoke hole designs in their carbon lab in Santa Cruz, developed a test that mimics the sudden increase in pulling force associated with an impact, and spent a few months breaking bits of carbon, spokes, and nipples until they got to the point that they were breaking all spokes and nipples and no carbon.

They're far from the first company to reinforce high-stress areas with more material, but they're visible to ensure that the spoke hole drilling matches the reinforcement. Super-precise placement of these reinforcements allows them to use only the amount of material necessary to achieve the strength required, rather than reinforcing the entire rim. They then invest that extra material into the other common failure point of a rim—the bead.

The rim beads on the Reserve wheels are thick, relative to other rims on the market. As much as a millimetre thicker on either side, in some cases. The material they saved by optimising the placement of the spoke hole reinforcements went directly into the bead, making it extremely strong without adding weight to the overall construction. The beads are hookless: this makes for a better fit with modern tires, but also simplifies manufacturing, which results in more consistent carbon compaction—the technical way to say stronger rim.

Lifetime Warranty

Lifetime. No gimmicks. Not limited. If you do actually manage to break a Santa Cruz Reserve Carbon rim while out riding, they'll replace it free of charge. And probably high five you in the process! If it gets run over by a truck they'll help you out with a low cost accidental 'crash replacement', because life's too short to argue. We know riding time's too precious to keep you waiting, so they'll do their best to sort you out fast.

Never Miss A Ride

If you buy a set of Santa Cruz wheels, or they come as stock equipment on a bike you buy, they're covered by a lifetime warranty. If you break a rim, just fill out the warranty form, and they'll get a replacement headed your way within 24 hours. Simple as that. If you're on vacation, they can even ship a new wheel to wherever you're staying.

If you break a wheel through some momentary lapse of judgement, just get in touch with the Santa Cruz warranty department and they'll still help you out. They stand behind their products, and they want you to be happy with your purchase. If you're ever unhappy, give us a call or shoot us an email and we'll try to make it right.

Make sure you take a minute to register for your warranty so that they can process your claim as quickly as possible if the need ever arises. We'll keep that image of your receipt on file so you never have to worry about proving that you're the original owner.

Built in Santa Cruz Using Sensible Parts

The guys at Santa Cruz never want to miss a ride, and when you travel to remote places, it's impossible to bring a backup for everything, or all the special tools for all the different parts. They've always taken great pains to use readily-available, standard parts on their bikes, and their rims are no different. J-bend spokes, mechanical-lock nipples (that you can access without taking the tire and rim strip off), and hubs from DT Swiss and Industry Nine make building good wheels easier for them, and maintaining the wheels or finding spares a lot easier for you.

Manufactured for Wheelbuilders

Santa Cruz spent a lot of time making sure the rims were strong enough, light enough, and durable enough, but they also spent a lot of time making sure that their master wheel builders here in Santa Cruz would approve while turning rims into high-quality wheels. The spoke holes are asymmetric, which isn't an innovation on its own, but it does make for a very strong wheel build because the spoke tension is equal on both the drive and non-drive sides, front and rear. They also drilled the holes at a bit of an angle to allow the nipple to sit straight against the rim, which prevents uneven force from being applied to the carbon, and makes lacing easier. Their favourite feature? External, easily-accessible nipples so you don't have to break the bead or get sealant on your shorts just to make a small adjustment.

Standard, High Quality Components

Santa Cruz try to avoid proprietary designs in their bikes, so they were never going to use some double-threaded, straight pull spoke in their wheels. All of the wheels they spec on their bikes are built using standard J-bend spokes (DT Competition Race), mechanically-locking nipples (Sapim Secure Lock), and either the venerable DT Swiss 350 or the much-loved Industry Nine Torch hub. If you break a spoke anywhere in the world, you'll probably be able to replace it with parts available at the local bike shop.

Specs

• Internal width: 27mm (27.5" & 29er)
• External width: 33.5mm (27.5") | 34mm (29er)
• Single rim weight: 435gr (27.5") | 455gr (29er)
• Complete wheelset weight (incl. valves & tape): 1677gr (27.5") | 1755gr (29er)
• XD = for SRAM XD freehubs
• HG = for Shimano