Black Inc

Eighty Carbon Road Wheelset - Clincher

The speed and stiffness afforded by deep section carbon wheels are pretty addictive and the whooshing sound emanating from them always urges you to click into a higher gear a push a little harder. With Black Inc's Eighty Carbon Road Clincher Wheelset, you get a quality set up that'll add a healthy dose of speed on flatter road races and tri's. Starting with the rims, they're constructed from premium carbon fiber that's lightweight and spin up quickly for rapid accelerations while the 75mm deep profile slices through the wind allowing you to go faster with less effort. The width is on-trend with wider is better and helps plump up the tire's volume so you can run lower pressure helping improve comfort, reduce rolling resistance, and improving cornering letting you descend with speed and confidence and stay off the brakes.

The Eighty Carbon Wheelset is a demon in the flats saving you plenty of watts and calorie expenditure until you decide to launch a race-winning move, but surprisingly for such a deep profile, they don't feel like a slug on the climbs and the aero benefits still have a profound effect on grades under about 8%. External rim width sits at a healthy 27mm which is wider than many current offerings pairing better with the new normal of 25-27mm tires letting you get all of those gains we spoke of above without losing aerodynamic efficiency. One requirement that the pros are adamant about, maybe even more so than weight, is stiffness and the Eighty's unidirectional layup offers up unyielding lateral stiffness and keeps the bike cornering on rails and ensures no watt-sapping wagging on high-speed sprints to the line. The straight pull spokes laced up to high tensions further contribute to this get on the gas experience when stomping on the pedals and once up to speed, the wheels hold an edge over keeping speed relative to lower-profile wheels and will be a huge asset on those race days when the distance and speed will both be on the high side on things.

The icing on the cake with these wheels is the standard issue ceramic bearings which are almost unheard of at this price point and are usually an upgrade option on wheelsets. Rims are typically the focal point of a wheelset, but they don't mean much if they're laced to some ho-hum hubs and Black Inc. reached for greatness and called on the Danish bearing experts at CeramicSpeed to provide the spinning units that are smooth as glass and are a common hop up on the bikes in the World Tour peloton. CeramicSpeed is the leader in bicycle bearing technology and the ceramic construction, with hybrid bearings using top-grade Silicon Nitride ceramic balls, surpass steel bearings in every way. In addition to the reduction in bearing drag, they require less maintenance so you'll be quicker on race day and spend less time working on your hubs. It simply translates to a quicker, smoother, and faster feeling than standard steel bearings. Not just a race day choice anymore, CeramicSpeed bearings are built for everyday use, with superior durability and lasting performance that doesn't require constant upkeep. Black Inc. fabricates its hubs with a precise dedication to these bearings, constructing hub shells and axle tolerances around the tightest of tolerances so the bearings continue to feel the same season after season as they do the first day you pulled them out of the box.