Enve alloy hub vs chris king: is it as good or should you spend the extra 500+ dollars. Dt swiss hubs gone from enve. And if you get the chris king r45 should you spend even more for the ceramic bearings adding 700 to cost of wheels?
Depends on how long your planning on keeping the wheel’s for. If your trying to keep the wheels as long as possible, I would go with the Chris Kings. If your keeping for 5 years or less go with the Enve hubs.
Chris Kings has a lifetime warranty while Enve has 5 years on their warranty.
Assure from that, from what I can tell, the engagement of the ratcheting system is pretty similar so there isn’t really any marginal gain/loss between the two.
I would get the Chris King hubs and add some Phil Wood carbonyte bearings.
I have both in different wheelsets, wouldn’t get King again.
Enve alloy hub vs chris king: is it as good or should you spend the extra 500+ dollars. Dt swiss hubs gone from enve. And if you get the chris king r45 should you spend even more for the ceramic bearings adding 700 to cost of wheels?
You can always buy the Enve rims and have them built by a wheelbuilder with the hub of your choice. King R45 are nice but the maintenance is more involved than other options and the spare parts and bearings are very spendy. DT 240s hubs are nice and simple and last forever.
My advice would be to get them built with DT 240s hubs and you can also use DB 14-15 spokes and not the CX-Ray that Enve use. You’ll end up with a laterally stiffer wheel and the aero loss will be minimal.
Why would you not go with the Chris King hugs again? For those trying to make a decision, it is helpful to hear the reasoning behind the statement.
Cost I think. An extra $500.
Cost is one factor and I’m also not a huge fan of the preload (like when they loosen mid-ride). More than anything, they don’t improve the ride quality one bit, IMO. I know people love King but that’s my 2 cents.
I have both in different wheelsets, wouldn’t get King again.
I wouldn’t either. Too much drag, too heavy, too expensive to service, etc. Don’t know what the Enve hubs are like to live with, but I’d choose them over King.
Hubs don’t need to be fancy. I have some Bitex that were like $120 for the set and they’ve been great for ~25k miles.
I have both in different wheelsets, wouldn’t get King again.
I wouldn’t either. Too much drag, too heavy, too expensive to service, etc. Don’t know what the Enve hubs are like to live with, but I’d choose them over King.
Hubs don’t need to be fancy. I have some Bitex that were like $120 for the set and they’ve been great for ~25k miles.
same here… no more CK for me.
I’m upgrading the wheels on a new bike purchase to ENVE and the bike shop offered the Chris King hub upgrade for less than the retail, buying-just-wheels price. My top priorities are durability almost tied with low drag, then weight and price. Weight is within a few grams of each other, so that’s not a meaningful criteria in this decision.
If CK hubs are head-and-shoulders above ENVE hubs in either durability or low drag, I’m willing to pay the upcharge. The CK web site is pretty convincing regarding the quality of their bearings. But I have extremely high respect for ENVE products (clearly since I’m buying their wheels) and am confident they are specifying extremely high quality bearings.
Any thoughts on how ENVE compares to CK for durability and low drag? Both web sites boast about these characteristics, but that’s not surprising since they are top priority for pretty much every wheel purchaser.
I plan to keep the bike and the wheels pretty much forever, but I’ve planned that for many bikes and many wheelsets, so take it with a grain of salt. At least 3 or 4 years, hopefully more like 10+.
- Durability
1.2) Low drag -
Price including price of maintenance (service, tools, replacement bearings)
Thoughts?
This. The ENVE hubs have been bomber and maintenance free so far.
Have you seen this? https://www.enve.com/en/lp/upgrade/
Approximately how long have you owned yours (months)? Could you estimate how many miles you have on them? Even a rough estimate would be interesting to me.
Thanks for the link to the ENVE upgrade program. My bike dealer is giving me a better price and than that would result in. Of course they get to keep the brand new Reynolds wheels that come on it and resell them as “demo“.
I have pretty much decided to go with the ENVE hubs. I doubt there is much difference in drag and the lower maintenance versus Chris King hubs is very appealing to me.
3.4 AR that went into action in April with 6-7000 miles on them, no issues so far.
That’s remarkable! 1000 miles per month! 250 miles per week. Are you retired? Or a pro cyclist? Just curious. I’d love to be able to ride that much.
Have you done any maintenance? Clean/lubed bearings? Replaced bearings? That’s a great reference for their hubs.
For cyclists that’s not an exceptional amount, and I’m a volume guy and just like to ride. Am a partner in a business and can usually build flexibility into day (start work early take longer lunch, work later).
Haven’t done any hub maintenance at all so far but time to do it preventatively. Some of the late spring rides were soakers, and I often do light gravel sections, so they’ve seen some hard miles and held up perfectly.
Seems like a lot of miles to me (as an avid cyclist who rides 8-10 hours per week which is 150-200 miles). But I very much appreciate the feedback from someone with so many miles! My expectation is that the quality of ENVE hubs is in line with their wheels and it sounds like that is your experience. I decided to go with those and save the $$$ vs Chris King. Am hoping for a similar experience as you – thousands of worry-free miles!