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RaceFace launches new Era Carbon Wheelset

  • Ron 

Strong, compliant, light and snappy. The Era Carbon wheelset from RaceFace strikes the balance between all these attributes, excelling at each but sacrificing on none, all coming together in the best overall carbon wheelset on the market. The result is a lively, bomb-proof, corner-railing wheel that eats up small bumps, and the competition. All this with RaceFace’s Lifetime Warranty, inclusive of crashes.

New RaceFace Era Carbon Wheelset

Compliance Where It Counts

The new Era wheelset features optimized rim profiles specifically for the front and rear wheels. Era’s front wheel was designed to prioritize comfort and ride feel using a shallower, lighter rim to achieve additional compliance, without sacrificing the overall strength.

Riders can point and shoot through a rock garden with absolute peace of mind knowing their wheel can stand up to the abuse and without the harshness that carbon wheels have been known for in the past.

Talking Lateral Compliance

Like many wheel manufacturers, in the past we understood vertical compliance of a wheel to be the source of improved ride feel. But our testing of Era and a range of competitors’ carbon wheels revealed there’s more to it than that. Take the vertical transmission of force from the front wheel hitting a bump. The force goes through the tire, then the wheel, then the suspension fork, then the handlebar before reaching the rider’s hands.

Lateral compliance is your wheel’s ability to deflect away from its neutral position when hitting rocks, roots or other trail features that could knock you off your line, alleviating the negative feeling of pinballing down a rocky chute or through a sea of off-camber roots. We believe that a comfortable ride feel in carbon wheels is the result of wheels flexing in the LATERAL plane, not just the vertical plane.

Lab Tested. Trail Proven.

Utilizing the engineering expertise and advanced research equipment of our FOX Factory labs in Scotts Valley, CA, we built a new test rig to measure forces carried throughout the wheel during an impact. We tested Era against both our competitors’ carbon wheels and our own carbon Next R.

But favorable test results in a controlled lab environment don’t tell the whole story. Era wheels were subjected to over 5,300 hours of rider testing to ensure durability in the harshest riding conditions.

The Vault Hub. Tying It All Together:

At the heart of the Era Wheel is the Race Face’s flagship Vault hub. A refined and iterated design has cemented Vault’s place among the best mountain bike hubs on the market. Rear mountain bike hubs have two sets of bearings. One supports the weight of the rider and allows the wheel to rotate, and the second allows the cassette to freewheel. The wider these bearings can be spaced, the less torsional force they are subjected to from the axle, and therefore the more durable they will be.

Vault Hub highlights:

  • 3-degree engagement for almost instant power transfer.
  • 60-tooth drive ring with six pawls and two teeth per pawl.
  • Low-drag springs ensure quick and positive engagement while retaining low coast drag.
  • Over-sized hub shell increases rear drive torsional stiffness as well as optimal lateral stiffness
  • Large diameter 6902 bearings offer robust durability and serviceability.
  • Low-drag labyrinth seals (designed specifically for the Vault hubs) keep the grease in and the elements out. Long-term tested in the rain and mud of the Pacific Northwest.

Features

  • Anvil Edge bead wall: Save your tire sidewalls by dispersing the energy of a pinch flat across a broader, flatter surface.
  • Balanced spoke tension: Asymmetric rim cross-section and an offset nipple bed improves the overall strength, durability and longevity of the wheel.
  • Free hub compatibility. Available in XD and Microspline, with Shimano HG available for aftermarket conversion.
  • 6-Bolt rotor compatibility (Centerlock variant coming late 2024)
  • Weight: 1750g (29” Wheelset)
  • 30mm internal rim width.
  • 28 straight pull spokes.
  • Double butted — 2.0 / 1.65 / 2.0*
  • 29” and 27.5” size.
Tags: carbon, crashes, cross, light, mountain, mountain bike, power, RaceFace, RaceFace Era Carbon Wheelset, Shimano, wheel, wheels
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