Crank Brothers Iodine 3 Bicycle Wheel Set

Love these rims. They are very stiff and light and they look sick! the manufacture is interesting. It looks like they molded an inner ring all the way around the inside the rim and then ground it away to leave the spoke tabs. They left a little extra metal in the spoke tab opposite the valve too, to counterweight the valve. I also love that they are made for tubeless. There is no need to mess around with rim tape because the hubs have no holes. You could ride with tubes on these if you wanted...but for why? I think I notice what folks are saying about the pawls on the rear hub. I guess the hub could be quicker to engage...I'm no pro though. These hoops work for me.

So far so good. I took these out for the first time on a fairly technical ride and they performed beautifully. I noticed right off the bat that they were significantly lighter than my previous wheelset. They took some hard hits and didn't flinch! At first I was put off by the relatively loud freewheel click, but have come to not notice it after a few rides.

Do yourself a favor and get a good set of 32 spoke, 3-cross wheels built up with standard hubs, double butted spokes and good quality rims, nothing exotic. Look at 99% of the mountain professional out there and that is what you’ll see, sometimes 28 spoke to save a few grams on x-country but almost always a well-built standard wheel set. Nothing really exist out there more durable or lighter without sacrificing strength or at excessive cost. There is also the issue of repair. Break a spoke on a standard wheelset and go to ANY bike shop for a quick repair. If you break a spoke on this wheelset, and you will, parts can be very difficult to obtain. You will have to order any and all parts directly from Crank Brothers and wait, that is, if you have the skills to repair it yourself. If you are not keen at wheel repair, the entire wheel has to go back for repair. There is nothing standard on this wheelset. Based on my experience with these wheels, see the pros and cons below.Pros:• Looks• Easy to go tubelessCons:• Looks• Non-Standard hubs, spokes or rims. Parts will never be locally available.• Spoke replacement is difficult and requires removal of the adjacent spoke.• VERY difficult to get equal spoke tension and good radial true.• Hub bearing durability and quality is in question. Lots of failures and shedding grease onto breaks.• 3-pawl, 21 engagement points is not great. Look more for 4-pawl, 40 point in a quality hub.Overall, they are not bad wheels if they have the look you are going for but if you ride hard on a regular basis, look for a more durable, easier to repair wheel set and be much happier in the long run.

Didn't get to test these out on more than one ride because they were defective, so I can't say a lot about how the non-defective ones perform. For the pair I received, the rear hub made a loud popping sound any time a new set of pawls was engaged. The three pawls did not engage the hubs teeth at the same time as they were supposed to.This will happen occasionally for any good company. That's why they have warranty policies, to maintain their reputation and happy customers.Unfortunately, their warranty policy requires you to send the product back at your own cost (~$30 for a wheel). In my case, they attempted to repair it by changing out the grease and spring. They told me they could not test whether or not they fixed it at their facility, but that I would have to reassemble it on my bike and test it myself. I did, and it wasn't any better. Now I'm faced with saddling the cost of sending it back and fourth, disassembling and reassembling my bike each time, and hoping that their shot-in-the-dark "repairs" solve the problem at some point.

Stunned!1. Thousand dollar wheels for 400 bones.2. Stupid light.3. Quieter rear hub noise.4. Absolutely beautiful.5. Stiff as you can get.6. The quality is obvious.7. The bearings run smooth as silk.