FLITE Carbon Rims

Design

FLITE Carbon rims are built to our specifications using designs, carbons and resins specified by us. They’re made by a super high quality company with offices and factories in both China and Taiwan who produce rims for a spectrum of brands ranging from smallish companies like ours to some of the industry big-players. We license and borrow some of their tech such as the tubeless bead-seat area because it would be stupid for us to try and re-invent that section of the rim, and we design other aspects of the rim to give us the weight, durability and ride characteristics that we want.  This works really well:  We can design how we want our wheels to feel and to ride, and we can leverage the decades of composites experience of our manufacturer.

We demand the highest possible quality from the factory.  We have had only one single rim fail our internal pre-wheelbuilding quality-control checks from many thousands of rims – to put that failure rate into perspective we were returning one-third of carbon rims from a famous American brand because they weren’t fit to be built into wheels.

This complete control over materials, process and quality is what made us pursue our own rims rather than rely on other brands.  A nice side-effect is that when things go wrong we’re not waiting for approval from head-office for a warranty – we are able to quickly make those decisions so our customers are not waiting weeks or months for replacement rims.  For more on our lifetime warranty click here.

Rim Choices

FLITE Carbon rims are available in 30mm and 35mm internal widths in both 27.5” and 29” wheel sizes. For the Lite versions we use the same rim profiles but utilise differential front and rear layups and drillings.

30mm rims are designed for Down-Country and Trail riding on bikes like the Specialized Epic EVO or Yeti SB100 through to a Stumpjumper or SB130. The 30mm internal width pairs well with any tyre from 2.1″ up to around 2.4″. You can certainly mount bigger tyres for a day in the bike park or a trip to the North Shore, but if the majority of your riding is on 2.1″ – 2.4″ tyres then the 30mm internal will work best.

The 35mm internal rim pairs best with 2.4″ and upward tyres. If you’re on a bike with more than 130mm of travel or your go-to tyres are wide, grippy rubbers like the Minion then the 35mm rim will enable those tyres to give their maximum grip and control. You can fit a pair of 2.1” tyres for the occasional XC race or a Pioneer attempt, but if the bulk of your riding is with big burly tyres then the 35mm rim is for you.

Both rims are 28mm deep and have a hookless bead to shrug off impact damage.

Tubeless Ready

Tubeless allows lower tyre pressure, more grip and less punctures. It’s a no-brainer.

Tubeless rim-tape and a pair of light weight CNC aluminium tubeless valves are already fitted when you pull your new wheels out of the box. Our attention to detail extends to the tubeless valves: serrated lockrings makes them easy to fit or remove and integrated wrench-flats are provided for super-tight valves. The valve cores are removable for easy cleaning or for assistance while installing difficult tubeless tyres. The inner section of the valve is optimised for our rims ensuring an easy air-tight fit.

Tyre Inserts

Tyres inserts like Cush Core can be used with the FLITE Carbon rims but are not required and won’t affect your warranty.

We don’t find that inserts make any difference to impact protection on the FLITE Carbon rims but to be honest we see so few failures that it’s hard to correlate.  What we do find is that that inserts act as a volume spacer and will change the way the tyre behaves.