US Brands Astral and White Industries were highlighting some bling items at Eurobike 2024. Astral, makers of rims and wheelsets, brought their now stock polished silver Outback Gravel/XC Wheelset with White Industries showing updated 12-speed 1x chainrings for their cranksets.
Back at the beginning of 2023, White Industries acquired Astral and their sibling brand, Rolf Prima. the brands were already working together, with White Industries providing hubs for Astral branded wheelsets. We previously did a build for Project OneBike using Astral’s Wanderlust aluminum rims and White’s XMR hubs, which created a very solid gravel wheelset with some bling machined hubs in anodized pink.
Astral Polished Silver Outback Wheelset
The Outback wheelset isn’t new, but how can you not stop and take notice of a modern, polished wheelset? These were part of a special, limited availability offering from Astral, but due to overwhelming interest, they have become a stock item. This meant Astral needed to update and enhance their polishing process to make production easier without a sacrifice in quality. Whether you are looking to build up an adventure gravel bike or looking for something special for your cross-country rig, these will definitely make a statement.
The wheels start off with a polished White Industries CLD hub that you can select a range of options for axles and freehubs for when ordering. And don’t worry, you can swap parts after your order to change from one standard to the other. The bodies are machined in Petaluma, California, and bullet proof while being completely serviceable. The freehubs are made from titanium to help keep them light and stopping cassettes from biting into them. A SON dyno front hub is also available.
Next, they use Sapim CX Ray J-bend bladed spokes, keeping with the light and durable theme, but also a spoke that is easily sourced from your local bike shop incase something breaks. 28 spokes are used front and rear in a 2X pattern.
Finally, the polished silver Astral Outback rim is used to finish the build. The aluminum, disc brake rim, is 25mm internal, 28.5mm external, with a 23mm height. The rim shape is asymmetric offsets the peak of the rim by 2.5mm to help improve the spoke tension by up to 30%, creating a more stable and balanced wheelset. The Outback is tubeless ready and made to easily mount up tubeless tires at home. Weight for the 700c with White Industries hub runs about 1,595g (freehub and axles not noted).
The Outback is available in 700c and 650b, and you can further customize the logo for and extra charge, along with adding CushCore inserts and valves, and reflective decals. Pricing starts at $1,299 for either size.
White Industries 12-Speed Chainrings
For White Industries, the 12-speed TSR (Tall Short Rings) chainrings were the highlight of the show. They make some beautiful machined aluminum cranks for road, gravel, adventure, and mountain biking, and these are the rings they use. The crank model names start with a letter that corresponds to the type of riding, and ends with 30, for a 30mm axle, so R30, G30, A30, and M30. The main difference is the Q-Factor, but also the axle width, with the R30 being the most narrow, and the M30 being the widest. White also makes a square taper version as well, but has specific TSR rings for that crankset. While you can buy complete cranksets, their crankarms are designed to be modular, so you can easily swap chainring sizes and even between 1x and 2x, all with the same crankarm set.
The 1x TSR chainrings are 10/11/12 speed compatible for SRAM, 10/11 for Shimano. The quicklink Shimano uses for their 12-speed chains was just a little too narrow to work with their chainrings. White went back and tightened up tolerances, which makes them more compatible with Shimano’s 12-speed chain. For now, they left the compatibility as 12-speed SRAM only, but in testing, they have not had any issues with Shimano chains.
The TSR Rings are available in silver or black, with ring sizes from 28 to 48 in two tooth increments. They are machined from 7075-T6 aluminum in all sizes, except the 48, which is made from 6061 T-6. The MR30 rings work with all four versions of the 30 crank arms, and are available in standard and boost spacing. Standard brings have a 3mm inward offset, and you can flip them to create a 3mm outward offset. The boost are a straight ring with no offset.
Pricing for the TSR rings run anywhere from $89.90 to $122.20, depending on the size of the ring.
We’ll have additional details coming soon on updates to White’s VBC (Variable Bolt Circle) 2x rings.
www.astralcycling.com www.whiteind.com
Heckling Editor, Image Taker, Crash Test Dummy, and Beard Master at Bikeworldnews.com
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Location – Lancaster, PA
Current Testing Rigs – 2024 Van Dessel Arch65, 2019 Van Dessel Full Tilt Boogie, 2018 Van Dessel Motivus Maximus LTD, 2016 Van Dessel Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, 2015 Bianchi Sempre Pro, 1978 Trek TX900
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