A better version of Scott's most advanced mountain bike wheels, will soon come to market.
Scott’s professional mountain bike riders will be rolling the latest monocoque Silverton SL wheels.
The Swiss company has invested in evolving its single piece wheelset technology with some impressive mass and tensioning claims.
Although monocoque wheels are nothing new in mountain biking, most of the designs have focussed on a tri-spoke configuration with limited rim width. When Scott showed its first Silverton SL monocoque spoke wheels back in 2018, the rim width was 26mm.
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Adding a few millimeters
With the trend towards 30mm internal diameter wheelsets as the standard in most forms of mountain biking, the available monocoque options are simply too narrow. A situation exacerbated by tyre companies launching new 2.4” casings of traditional fast-rolling mountain bike tyres.
Scott’s solution has been to introduce a new, wider, version of the Silverton SL carbon wheels. The result is a terrifically light 30mm internal diameter carbon-fibre wheelset weighing only 1280g.
With the spokes being moulded into the rim and hub, engineers at Scott have much greater control over the fibre continuity of those composites. This allows for exceptional spoke tensioning and the tailoring of a carbon-fibre wheel that is both vertical compliant but hugely responsive in terms of lateral steering and terrain feedback dynamics.
Scott spokes that never need tightening
In theory, these are maintenance free wheels, but for the hub bearings and seals. The spokes can never go out of tension, but if you do manage to break one, composite repair might be a hassle.
If these Silverton SLs look like your kind of hoops, having Scott’s pro riders make the switch to them, will add validation of their durability when riding over technical terrain.
With the 26mm width Silverton SLs retailing at £3399, don’t expect the new 30mm version to be any cheaper, when Scott’s latest wheelset goes on sale, this summer.