Product Full Name | e13 TRS Race Carbon Enduro Wheels 27.5in

Retail Price | Front £599 | Rear £699 

Available From | Silverfish

e13 TRS Race Carbon Enduro Wheels

Designed to be tough and light enough to withstand Enduro racing, the e13 TRS Race Carbon wheels are a high end wheelset using a carbon fibre hookless rim design, and enormous carbon shelled hubs.

We’ve been riding the 27.5in version since January this year on a variety of different terrain, and on various different bikes too – and they’re still running true and have zero play…

The Details

Available in 29in and 27.5in models, the e13 TRS Race Carbon wheels are based around the enormous e13 TRS Race carbon shelled hubs.

These hubs have massive flanges and are drilled for 28 spokes. The rear hub is compatible with 12 x 135; 12 x 142 and QR via interchangeable end caps – or Boost 148mm; and the front 15/20mm via caps – or Boost with 15mm caps.

Whilst the end caps have rubber seals, and internal rubber o-rings to keep them in place, we did knock ours off the front hub a few times – and lost one of the o-rings, which made one of the caps a repeat performer. Keep an eye on them!

Internally they have all new bearings – which come with a 1 year no quibble warranty.

Note the internals of the e13 TRS Race Carbon rear hub. The brass washer on the end is easy to drop if you pull the hubs apart for maintenance – make sure you don’t lose this washer!

Freehub design is e13’s own 660 offering, which comes in both Shimano and SRAM XD versions. There are three sets of pawls each with double contact, offering a 60 point engagement with just 6 degrees between engagement points.

The rims are a hookless carbon design, and although not the widest out there offer a 27mm internal width – which seems to be a great compromise that offers low weight, stiffness and great tyre support.

They also have wide sidewalls – just over over 3mm – offering high impact resistance, which combined with the 5year warranty on the wheels makes for a very attractive package.

In the box was an included tubeless conversion kit – rim tape; tyre sealant and valves, plus a couple of spare spokes. Total weight was just under 1700grams with the tubeless tape and valves installed.

Out on the Trail

Setting the e13 TRS Race Carbon wheels up tubeless was a no fuss affair – and worked excellently with all the tyres we tried from Continental, Maxxis, WTB, Mavic and e13.

With the supplied tubeless kit in place, mounting tyres to the rims was a cinch. Everything we tried went up first time – Mavic; Continental; Maxxis; WTB and of course the e13 TRS Enduro tyres. All tyres from 2.2 up to about 2.5 held excellent shape – lots of support from the 33mm rim, but without squaring the tyre off too much. Though we love a rim up to 30mm internal, 27mm does seem to offer the best of both worlds.

With an extremely loud freehub – possibly the loudest out there – you certainly don’t need a bell when riding e13 TRS Race Carbon wheels! Although some riders like quiet hubs to run stealth, we love hubs loud – especially for reminding riding friends that we’re coasting behind them!

Eight months down the line and our e13 TRS Race Carbon wheels are performing flawlessly.

Hub pick up is incredibly fast, and with powerful springs pushing those pawls in to place we had total trust in the freehub system. It’s a very easy system to maintain too – we pulled the hubs apart for routine maintenance during testing but didn’t really find any excessive gunk build up inside – they are well sealed. One thing to note – when stripping down, make sure you don’t lose the brass coloured washer that sits on the end of the axle – without it the freehub has additional friction.

The overall strength and feel of the wheels is very impressive. They are certainly stiff, but not harsh – which is what we look for in a carbon wheel set.

Being light, they pick up speed rapidly, and have that dampened feel that quality carbon rims offer. And they are bloody strong too – the same track that destroyed another carbon rim during testing did it’s best to crack the e13 TRS Race Carbon rim – but the best it could do was leave the rims with battle scars (photo of the scars here) 

We’ve had these on various bikes since January – and they have been subjected to foul weather, punishing rock gardens; natures finest grinding paste and of course the dreaded jet wash.

And still they live – no bearing issues to date. We are genuinely impressed – we tried some e13 wheels a few years back and had some bearing niggles, but these new wheels are properly sorted.

Plus, the warranty on both the wheels and bearings is a reassuring extra.

We Say

Decent wheels are one of the best ways of improving the handling of your bike – and these lightweight wheels from e13 have performed flawlessly to date. Though scratched and scuffed, the rims run perfectly true, and the hubs are spinning smoothly and have had no bearing issues.

Offering plenty of tyre support; a tubeless set up included in the box and an excellent tyre support for large volume tyres – they will suit racers and tough trail riders out there looking for a performance upgrade.

Our wheels are still trucking, and are about to go on their forth bike!

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