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I am a proud owner of a Starling Murmur but and a Cotic Soul 26. Due to a change of home I have to reduce the amount of space dedicated to bikes and would like to get rid of the Soul.
My local riding is very XCish but I enjoy going up to tharn hills on a big bike. The soul isn't really suited to the big mountain stuff so I was wondering about getting a set of spare wheels and putting some light fast rubber on them so I could switch them out accoring to the riding style.
Has anyone ever tried anything similar?
To be honest you can get some fairly light wheels which are more than capable of ‘Enduro’ certainly in the U.K. I run DT Swiss XM1501’s. I’m not a light rider by any stretch and have been known to clatter through. Biggest difference for me is tyre weight/speed. I will say that having run my ‘big bike’ around my local XC loop it is a massive fun sponge. Even with lighter tyres. Where as in my xc/hardtail it’s bloody good fun!
I have the same frame and 2 sets of wheels and tyres. The light ones are about 1.6 kg + normal tyres. The others are 2.1 kg with 2.4 kg of tyres.
I use the heavy combo for uplifts the light ones for trail/xc. It works a treat. Though as said above, light fast rolling tyres on any wheels will make them faster. They can be a bit flimsy if they are too light, depending on how clumsy you are, of course.
How heavy are the wheels and tyres on your Starling? If they are already at the light end of the scale you may not notice a huge difference going lighter.
I have some DT EX 1501 splines, 1800ish gr according to manufacturer. I have found a set of DT 350 carbon rims on 350 hubs for a decent price second hand.
Paired with lighter tyres I would expect them to make a significant difference.
I run a 650b wheelset with chunky tryes/rims and inserts on my trail bike, for traisl/jumps/messing, then swap to 29er wheels with smaller/lighter tyres when i'm off for a longer XC type ride. Works a treat.
Smuggler has two sets of wheels, albeit the same (Stan's Arches on Neo Hubs). One set with proper tyres on, one set with xc tyres on.
Was swapping tyres at one point, but its messy and time consuming. Now its 5mins to swap discs/cassette over and a bit of fiddling with gears/brake mounts.
What xc tires do people use? I'm thinking about doing the same thing but don't want awful tires that'll make xc rubbish.
The ex1501 will give you scope for lighter wheels. The DT rim you mentioned, I think is a narrow one at about bout 20mm internal width. It is light, though.
i use Bontrager SE4 on my lighter wheels. Not exactly an xc race tyre, but I was given them. I used a Schwalbe Rock Razor on the back for a while. It was light, but the carcass tore at the base of one on the side knobs, so I replaced it with the SE 4 (which I would never have bought, but is ok)