ENVE M60 Forty HV 29” Wheels

The Wheel Build

When you order an M60 wheelset from ENVE, you can choose the hub (options are Chris King ISO, DT Swiss 240, or DT Swiss 350), rotor mount (6-bolt or centerlock), spoke count (28 or 32), axle dimensions (traditional or Boost), freehub type (Shimano or XD), and of course, color. After you order, the wheelbuilders at ENVE hand build your wheels in-house.

The wheels I tested came built with Chris King ISO hubs set up with an XD driver, and with 32 Sapim CX-Ray spokes laced in a 2-cross pattern. Depending on the wheel, ENVE will also use DT-Swiss Aerolite or DT-Swiss Competition spokes.

Noah Bodman reviews the ENVE M60 HV for Blister Gear Review
Noah Bodman on the ENVE M60 Forty HV, Nelson, BC.

While there’s not a huge difference between 2-cross and 3-cross lacing patterns in terms of wheel stiffness and strength, there’s at least a slight improvement in radial stiffness with a 3-cross pattern. Other differences likely exist as well, but that gets into a messy discussion of bracing angles, marginal differences in spoke weight, etc.

Personally, I think the 2-cross pattern is entirely adequate, but there are likely some out there who would like ENVE to offer a 3-cross pattern as an option.

The Sapim CX-Ray spokes are generally regarded as some of the best spokes in the business. They’re light (around 35 g lighter that a double butted DT-Swiss), and by all accounts, very strong. While some people doubt the strength of bladed spokes, the process of forging the spoke into a flat shape actually makes the spoke a bit stronger (although that’s somewhat irrelevant, since the middle of the spoke isn’t usually where they break).

Since the wheels came pre-built, I don’t have a lot of comments on the process of building with the ENVE rims. The M60 rims are intended to be built up with 120kgf spoke tension, and that’s about where mine were set. I took tension readings on the rear wheel just to check on the tension balancing, and I found drive side spokes to be about +/- 8% of the average, which is well within the 20% range that’s generally considered acceptable. If none of those numbers mean much to you, suffice it to say that the M60’s are nicely built wheels that’ll likely hold up better in the long run.

Probably the most significant downside of the ENVEs is that they use internal nipples—the nipple is fully hidden inside the rim, and can only be accessed by removing the tire and rim strip. This design appears to be the result of the process of making the spoke holes in-mold rather than drilling them.

Noah Bodman reviews the ENVE M60 HV for Blister Gear Review
ENVE M60 Forty HV nipple-less rim

ENVE says that a well-built wheel should never need truing, but there’s no getting around the fact that any wheel using traditional spokes is going to need a little attention at some point in its life. With the ENVE’s, it’s a bit of a pain since you’ll need to remove the tire to do it.

Mounting and Initial Setup

ENVE ships their wheels with a roll of appropriately sized rim tape (which appears to just be Gorilla tape) for sealing the rims, and they also include a set of good quality valve stems.

I mounted up some 2.3” Maxxis tires: a DHF and DHRII. The process was uneventful; the rims are tight enough that the bead seating process was easy, but not so tight that I started swearing or throwing things while mounting the tires. The Gorilla tape works great for sealing rims; I vastly prefer it over Stan’s tape or other such thin plastic-y stuff.

The only negative note I had on mounting the wheels was that the adjustment on the hubs was a bit off—both the front and the rear had a little bit of play. This takes all of 25 seconds to adjust, so it’s not a big deal at all, but if I’m going to be hypercritical, a super expensive wheelset like this should be dialed from the start.

While I didn’t notice until after a few rides, I also found that the driver on the King hubs was inclined to skip from time to time. I’m not entirely sure what the cause of this was—perhaps a bit too much grease from the factory, or maybe something isn’t quite to spec in there. I pulled the hub apart and didn’t find anything obviously wrong with it, so now I’m putting more time on it to see if the old “take it apart and put it back together again” tactic has resolved the problem.

Weight

According to ENVE’s website, the M60 HV’s should weigh 1716 g total, and mine come in at 1735 g (780 g front, 955 g rear, without tape or valves). Since they’re a fully built wheel, I can’t say if the discrepancy is in the rim or some other part of the wheel—my guess would be a combination of the above, but a 19 g difference is pretty minor.

Now someone out there is likely mumbling to themselves that 1735 g isn’t that light for a trail wheelset. And yes, it’s not the absolute lightest wheelset on the market, but it’s most definitely not heavy.

I took a quick poll of a few other 29” wheelsets that I had at my disposal. This isn’t meant to be a comparison of wheels that are directly equivalent to the M60’s, but rather a handful of comparisons for the sake of discussion.

Noah Bodman reviews the ENVE M60 HV for Blister Gear Review
Now obviously the M60’s are lighter than all of those, and they’re quite a bit lighter than the the aluminum options. It’s also worth noting that the M60 HV rims are wider than all of those with the exception of the Reynolds, which are slightly wider (27.2 mm internal). I’ll be putting time on the Reynolds this spring to see how they stack up against the M60’s.

It’s also worth noting that, while the Chris King hubs on the M60’s I tested are highly regarded and have super quick engagement, they’re also not that light. If you’re truly concerned about weight, simply switching to a DT Swiss 240 hub will drop around 75 g off the wheelset (at the cost of that quick engagement).

Someone with more math chops than myself might wade into a calculation of the rotational inertia of a light rim vs a heavy rim. Conventional wisdom indicates reducing weight at the edge of the wheel has an amplified effect because it’s spinning. There are a few articles arguing the difference is overblown, but most of these arguments seem to be in the context of road biking.

There’s no question that the difference (however significant it may be) is most apparent while accelerating. On a road bike, hard accelerations don’t come as often. But on a mountain bike, those accelerations come at every corner.

I don’t have the benefit of any lengthy calculations to quantify the improvement that the M60’s bring. What I do have is a bunch of days riding them back to back with other wheels (including the Vittoria Deamions and the Race Face Turbines), mounted up with the exact same tires, cassette, and brake rotors. And I can say is the difference is immediately noticeable and clearly beneficial.

So with that said, on to the most important part…

NEXT: The Ride, Stiffness, Etc.

8 comments on “ENVE M60 Forty HV 29” Wheels”

  1. ………carbon rims are still relatively new to the mountain bike world, and they need to be fully vetted.

    Yes, critically vetted. If the rims are wear parts on your bike, if you ride most of the time with good speed in rocky terrain with loose stones, than I can tell you my experience.

    After 9 Months of usage, the front wheel of my Carbon Sram Roam 60 29 – with a Michelin WildrockR2 mounted – cracked suddenly in a rock garden (25mph speed). I crashed (high side) hard and had a lot of luck to survive (crashed into stone blocks)…cash replacement on carbon wheels are nice (SRAM did not offer this), but nobody wants to be a crash test dummy.

    The problem is, carbon rims breaks without any previous signs…..hear some photos of my cracked SRAM Carbon front rim.

    http://fotos.mtb-news.de/p/1969399

    http://fotos.mtb-news.de/p/1969395

  2. Mountain bike wheels with internal nipples are just silly. I have a set of these wheels and have had numerous spoke failures. Spoke failures will happen on MTB wheels and on these wheels, the effort to remove the tire and then reseal to change a spoke offsets any of the other virtues these wheels provide. The tires are often very difficult to remove on the trail. This can be improved by substituting Stans or Schwalbe rim tape for the significantly thicker Gorilla tape.

  3. Nice review. As far as internal nipples on an mtb wheel, I’m firmly in the “never” camp. Ditto CK hubs. Arguably the best in the biz, but after 15 years, I just got tired of the finicky preload adjustment (esp in back) and somewhat sadly went to DT hubs. So easy.

    I’ve had good luck with Derby/DT 350 wheels, and GREAT luck with Nox Teocali/DT 350 wheels. Nox hired some hot shit wheelbuilders and it shows on my truing stand and tensiometer after about 30 hours.

    Unrelated request: As a subscriber, I’d like to put in a request for a 1X chainguide comparison. There are some intriguing and light ones out there (MRP, One-UP, e13 come to mind).

    Thanks!

    • Hey Tom,

      Good insight on the hubs. I’m actually spending time on some M70’s at the moment that are laced to DT 240’s. Those things are definitely bomber, but I do occasionally find myself annoyed with the slow engagement (which I could upgrade, but I feel like a high end hub shouldn’t need to be upgraded).

      We don’t have any reviews of chainguides in the pipeline at the moment, but we’ll try to put something together on that front. Stay tuned.

  4. I’d stay away from carbon wheels. Have few friends who cracked the rims on brand name expensive wheelsets and went back to aluminium.
    There’s simply no reason to go for carbon rim for when riding full suspension bike and a voluminous tires. The theoretical difference in stiffness is masked by tires and suspension.

    You can get excellent aluminium wheelset for the same weight and fraction of the price of these enves and it will last longer.
    Think of DT 240s with EX471 or XM481 rims.

    Carbon is really not the material you want to expose to loose rock strikes.

  5. Great review. I appreciate you always trying to find ways of explaining the more technical aspects of your reviews to the less knowledgeable or less patient.
    This review reminds me that what I really wish Blister would capitalize on, is long term reviews. The German Site Enduro MTB routinely does a Long Term Review a year or two after doing an initial review. For something like a carbon wheelset, I feel like this would be especially valuable.
    Thanks

    • Hey Michael,

      Thanks for the note! We’ll definitely be following up with a longer term review on these Enves, as well as some other wheelsets we’ve reviewed lately. Because like you said – for something like a carbon wheelset, it’s the long term durability that really matters.

  6. I am curious about all of the comments here about the lack of durability of carbon rims. Has anyone in the industry actually spent the time to prove or refute the perceived lack of strength and durability of carbon VS alloy? Has that comparison also factored in a sliding scale of price point in the category VS those in the other? You can buy knock off Asian carbon rims and knock off Asia or Euro alloy rims, and from what I have seen first hand they will not be as good as the real thing. Is knock off or b tier carbon more affordable? Hell yes. Would you be better off buying a high end alloy rim than a cheap carbon rim? I would say yes. Something tells me there is more this conversation than just a carbon VS alloy argument. For what it’s worth, I have now owned 5 sets of ENVE wheels – both road and MTB – and they have been the truest, most durable and best ridging wheels I have ever owned. After over 35 years riding high end bikes, I will state without hesitation that they are the single most trusted and durable bike related items I have ridden. Remember, wheels are the soul of any bike. If you are going to spend money on something to really move the needle on the performance of your bike, then spend it on wheels, then spend it on suspension tuning/components and take the time and money to keep these parts working correctly. After that, if your bike fits you, good choices were made about your terrain VS travel, your riding style and wheel size, then you are probably set for your best ride.

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