I’d like to start by saying that now I’ve typed that title out I’ve committed myself a nursery rhyme ear worm from hell for the rest of the day.

Right, so this year for the first time in my professional working career I’ve been in receipt of a modest pay bonus from my employer. In my 35 odd years of mildly gainful employment this is the first time this has happened and has induced dilemmas I’ve never really had to consider before – what to spend this hitherto unknown bounty on? Well obviously some of it was going to be splurged on something cycling related but what?

The Moulton TSR being new and shiny doesn’t need anything spending on it. The Cotic MTB has just had a wad of cash thrown at it (see previous posts) so that left me looking at my beloved and well used Ti Sabbath road bike.

Cost was obviously still a factor as my little windfall wasn’t anywhere near the level of even the smallest bung a Tory MP would expect to get just for remembering which constituency they represented, so for the last couple of weeks I’ve been trawling the new years sales offers on the internet and considering my options.

Lured by the promise of endless braking performance I briefly considered looking for a Ti disc brake compatible frame (secondhand of course at my budget) but I couldn’t find anything in my size or remotely within budget so that idea was canned pretty fast. Similarly a Di2 upgrade was investigated, but the cost and frame compatibility issues with the Sabbath put me off.

Wheels it was then, after all many experts both credible and dubious often say upgrading your wheels and tyres is the best upgrade you can make in terms of performance gains, and lured by the pictures of the pro’s rocking deep section carbon rims with hardly any spokes I thought a nice pair of Zipp’s or similar would be just the ticket, and then you guessed it after looking at the prices there was a lot of teeth sucking noises and the iPad was put away for a few days.

Then as often happens fate intervened….. weirdly in the shape of a YouTube video. If any of you fellow cycling aficionados also spend more time than is probably healthy watching random cycling related content on the worlds favourite video streaming platform you may well be aware of the often scourge of the cycling industry called ‘Hambini’ a young engineer who delights in deep dives into cycling products and their quality or lack there of in the design and manufacturing department. The list of big names in the cycling industry that he’s as he likes to call it ‘reamed’ is long and includes the likes of Cervelo, Specialized and Cannondade to name just a few. His videos are pretty brutal and not for everyone, but are always (at least to me) thought provoking even if I don’t always agree with all his conclusions. (I thought for instance that his review of one of Cotic’s steel frames said more about his lack of knowledge of how a low manufacturing volume steel frame is produced than any supposed ‘defects’ in the frame itself)

Anyway, a Hambini video praising a product is a rare thing so when I saw the thumb nail of him holding a carbon wheel set with a positive tag line I couldn’t click fast enough. I won’t give you a blow by blow review of the video but I will link it here for anyone who’s interested. https://youtu.be/DDNm7vFNxjE?si=wif68vinOIhjafdn

After watching the video and about 20 seconds of hard thinking I was straight over to 9Velo’s website, and of course straight into their ‘sale’ section. Spending money is only ever a few clicks away on the internet, and after that all I could do was wait. The shipping time from China was quoted at between 4-8 weeks and the tracking link provided never seemed to change so after a couple of weeks I tried to forget about it and push the fact that I’d sent a chunk of cash to a small company on the other side of the globe to the back of my mind.

I was in fact so successful at forgetting about the vagaries of the international shipping world that when my long suffering wife rang me while I was at work to ask what was in the large box that the neighbours had taken in I truthfully told her I had no idea, it was only when we sent me a picture of the airways bill on the outside of the box that the penny dropped.

Within this exciting box were two beautifully packed wheels both in individual linen bags along with some tubeless valves, nice quality feeling Q/R skewers, a full set of carbon rim specific brake pads and even some spare spokes. After some long and hard thinking about the pro’s and con’s of running the wheels tubeless, I’d decided to keep things simple and had opted for a set of lightweight latex tubes and a nice new set of Continental GP 5000 tyres.

Fitting the tyres was definitely a serious workout for my thumbs, and in the end I had to resort to some mechanical assistance to get the last of the tyre bead over the rim on both wheels, I know the internet is full of experts showing these tyres just falling on with just a gentle twist of a nonchalant thumb, but believe me these suckers were most definitely not going on without a fight. getting them off again at the roadside if a puncture strikes could be interesting……. 🤔

So what did they look like fitted? and how much weight did they save? well I’ll let the picture below show you the new look, I really like the look of them, I deliberately hadn’t gone for a mega deep section rim because I don’t ride time trials and I was worried about the adverse effects in crosswinds which can be quite prevalent around where I live. I think these 40mm deep rims with the chunkier than I usually run 28c tyres give the bike a more modern slightly aggressive look, but what do I know?

What’s the weight saving? well its exactly 0.5kg which I was a little disappointed with seeing as they are replacing some pretty basic spec Fulcrum C17’s. Some of that might be down to my choice of wider tyres I suppose.

But the big question is how do they ride? well they didn’t for a few months until this week, although the wheels arrived at the end of January there was absolutely no way I was subjecting them to the winter roads after the weather has been doing its worst in the UK for the last it seems like forever. The Moulton TSR has been my exclusive weapon of choice for all outside riding and it’s been soaking up the potholes and puddles with aplomb. This last week however theres finally been the merest hint of spring in the air, and even though the sun has not exactly been cracking the flags as they say, but its been possible to ride outside without needing to wear enough layers to make movement difficult and give me the drag coefficient of a Transit van. The 9Velo’s were taken down from their home on the garage wall, dusted off and given their first shakedown rides. (And yes I did remember to swap the brake pads first)

The experts are right, it does appear that a decent set of wheels really can transform the way your bike rides. Straight away the trusty Sabbath felt as if it was faster, lighter and just all round better to ride. Ok, I’m going to temper my enthusiasm slightly by saying that the Sabbath was always going to feel significantly faster and lighter to ride after the Moulton but even with the lack of miles in my legs I was instantly seeing some Strava segment times which were up there with my best efforts from my Covid induced fitness peak when I was putting much heftier milages in. I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable they were as well, again that might be at least partially due to the bigger tyre footprint and the slightly lower pressure I was running but after being a bit worried that the carbon hoops might prove a bit harsh, those fears have been quickly dispelled. My second worry after reading various reports about the braking performance being a bit poor on carbon rims has also proved to be a non-issue, if anything the brakes are a bit better , theres certainly plenty of power if I grab a handful of lever, the modulation seems a bit less subtle but I can live with that.

So overall I’m a very happy customer, if you’re after a carbon wheel set at a very competitive price (these where less than £400 including the shipping costs from China) and you’re not a brand snob then in my admittedly limited experience 9Velo are most certainly worth a punt. I’m looking forward to putting some serious (for me anyway) miles in on them this summer.