Hey guys, since the topic of second wheelsets and putting road tires on a gravel bike comes up a lot i thought why not make a post about it where i share some pics and my experiences.
I didn’t want to spend a fortune so i went with a set of elite wheels ENT 2.0 directly from aliexpress. You might think: aliexpress isn’t that place only for chinese garbage? I can tell you that while there might be a lot of trash on ali there are a lot of honest sellers with great products. I got the wheels in a sale for 368 us-dollars including shipping, taxes etc. Elite wheels has a lot of reviews out there. So far i love them but only time will tell how durable they are. For the tires i went for the continental grand prix (not the gp5000) 28 mm width.
I had some slight rubbing on the front brake and no issues on the rear. Shifting works flawlessly but I expected that since i put on the same cassette. I might get some shims for the rotors to really nail the alignment but it doesn’t really seem necessary at the moment.
When riding on the flats and on descents i felt a difference to the stock dt swiss aluminium wheels with the 40 mm gravel tires. I get to over 30 km/h way easier and can be faster overall. On climbs the difference wasn’t that significant. All these impressions are highly subjective since I don’t have a powermeter and can’t tell you how many watts i‘m saving.
Is this the perfect alternative to a road bike? I‘d say it depends. For me as a recreational rider that likes gravel and wants to try out some road biking it‘s pretty great. For someone extremely performance oriented who goes on fast grouprides the gearing will be a limitation i guess. But spending maybe 500 bucks for wheelset + all accessories compared to buying another canyon bike seemed like a no brainer for me.
If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments.
by Tilmanstoa5ty
4 Comments
Doesn’t look half bad! Enjoy your upgraded bike!
I have a Grizl with a second wheelset as well and what I found is that overtightening the front TA causes the disc to rub. It should still be tight but not too much.
I have a similar setup on my Grizl, it’s perfectly fine for solo road rides but I do notice my turning radius is kinda wide which can be sketchy on group rides and as you say the gearing isn’t super high so any long descents where people are pedaling up to 50kmh+ I run out of gears and get dropped.
It’s been a great setup for the past year especially because I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to do road rides or not, and I got the wheels for super cheap. I’ll probably try to find a good deal on a road bike sometime before next summer but i’m not in a rush, the gravel bike works fine.
Hi. I am planning to buy elite wheels for my Grail 6 bike. What country did you ship the wheels to and were there any additional charges?