Lucky Soul-Kozak star

A good pair of MTB hoops doesn't have to be heavy. Few words about my latest cross country "light weight" build with very interesting components in today's post. Enjoy!

Duke is a well known rims manufacturer. They are specialized not only in road but also mountain carbon and aluminum rims. One of the interesting option is Lucky Star rim with the impressive weight of 360g per 29'' rim.

Lucky Star 2018 edition has 24mm inner width and almost 26mm outer width. It comes with 2mm offset which is perfect to balance the spoke's tension between both sides (stronger wheel). Rim is designed for tubeless usage, mainly for cross-country XC with 85kg limit of rider+gear. 

Combining those with M-netic hubs from Soul-Kozak it creates interesting setup which should be considered by all XC riders looking for racing set or simply to loose few grams from their bikes.

Rims and hubs is not everything. Spokes and nipples are important too. I personally prefer brass nipples for any MTB build, therefore also here I used sapim brass silver nipples. Spokes are Pillar Wing21 which are stronger than Sapim CX-Rays and have reinforced J-bend section of 2.2mm instead 2.0mm. 28 spokes were used on front and rear wheel with 3-cross lacing type. In order to make everything even stronger, all crosses were soldered and cover with black paint, to make a nice final hand-build touch effect.

In terms of hubs, the front is 15x100 and rear 12x142 XD type. Hubs are super light with very simple but robust construction.

Large high quality bearings and 17mm axle guarantees durability and stiffness.

Soul-Kozak's patented system called M-netic is a ratchet clutch system with magnet instead of springs. That's why those hubs are much lighter and service free for many kilometers in all conditions as there are almost no moving parts inside them.

The overall weight of the set is 1445g without rim tape. Of course wheels come with tubeless tape and valves installed so all you need to do is to put the tires on and add some milk. All ready to go!

The weight could be dropped further to around 1415g by using alu nipples.

Wheels are made with highest possible precision. This can be seen by perfect spoke length on below pictures:

Rims are very well finished with additional protection on the rim joint:

Beautiful and fast set, ideal for smooth rides and racing. Don't hesitate to grab one. Any modifications in spoke type, count, nipples type and colors are possible. Just drop me email.

Wheels and prices are available in my shop 

Cheers

Tomasz 
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