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.

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.

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.

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.