Gravel Grinder News: Atomik Wheels And Route Finder News – by Guitar Ted
Today we have news about a new wheel set from Atomik and how Continental Tire and Trailforks have partnered up to share gravel ride routes. Let’s go!
Atomik Announces New “FusionFiber™” Wheelsets Made In The USA – Atomik released news of a new, US made carbon fiber wheelset using a new carbon rim made with “FusionFiber™” carbon. Just what is this new FusionFiber™ stuff anyway? Well, I’ll let the press release speak to that following here:
“Made using advanced techniques in a state-of-the-art Southern Utah facility, FusionFiber™ is lighter and stronger than conventional carbon fiber and 100-percent recyclable. Unlike traditional carbon, FusionFiber™ is produced via an advanced thermal process that does not require epoxies and resins to suspend the fiber, but instead utilizes long-chain polymers. This allows the fibers to flex on a microscopic level and radially dissipate impacts in a way other carbon wheels cannot, providing 50-percent better vibration damping and up to 300-percent more impact resistance. They also provide a minimum of 950 pounds of spoke pull force at the spoke holes. The manufacturing process also uses less energy and results in less waste and fewer toxic byproducts. “
Atomik has mountain bike wheels using this new technology, but we’re most interested in the model called the “Atomik FG23“. This wheel, as the name suggests, has an inner rim width of 23mm. The rim depth is 24mm. The rim weight is a claimed 400 grams each. This model is available in 700c with either 28 spoke count drillings or 24.
You can opt to have a set of the FusionFiber™ rims laced to Berd spokes on Industry 9 hubs. The Berd spokes, which are fiber type spokes, were in a wheel set we reviewed here. They are unusual, ride well, and save weight. The resulting wheel set would also be, according to the press release, 99% US made. Only the nipples would be sourced outside of the US.
Pricing: Complete FG23 gravel wheelsets start at only $1,848.99 with Industry 9 1/1 hubs, and are available with i9 Torch Road hubs for $1,998.99. Atomik BERD Ultimate FG23 wheelsets with i9 Torch Road hubs retail for $2,498.99. Atomik FM30 and FG23 FusionFiber™ rims are available separately for $650 each. Atomik offers custom wheel builds using hubs from i9, Hope, Profile Elite, Chris King, Project 321, Onyx and others by request.
For more information on this and other Atomik products see their website here: https://atomikcarbon.com/
Trailforks And Continental Partner To Showcase Gravel Routes: Continental Tires, who have a line of gravel tires in their Terra range, are partnering with trail finder company Trailforks to showcase 11 US based gravel routes within the next three months. The plan is to release a route every week. You can check out the gravel routes on Trailforks here; https://www.trailforks.com/routes/gravel/
Note: Riding Gravel recommends that any GPS generated route should be vetted out by anyone desiring to use that route. Road closures, natural modifications, and actual road conditions can change in a hurry and are not represented in gpx files. Be careful, plan ahead, and always do your due diligence in recon before trusting any route share files.
Note: Images and information used in this post were provided to Riding Gravel by Atomik Wheels and Continental/Trailforks.