Philly Bike Expo – Rolf Prima

We were looking forward to meeting with Rolf Prima when we saw they were added to the exhibitor list for the 2017 Philly Bike Expo. The Eugene, Oregon based wheel brand had recently launched their new rim brand, Astral, and they continue to put out the visually unique paired spoke wheels we know them for. We had a chance to chat with owner Brian Roddy to catch up on the brand.

To give you a quick history, the Rolf brand started in 1997 as a partnership between Rolf Dietrich and Trek. The launch of the paired spoke design began with the Rolf Vector Pro and within two years, the brand saw their wheels on the biggest stage in cycling, the Tour de France, with the U.S. Postal Service Team. In 2001, the license with Trek ended, and Dietrich and three former Trek employees, including Roddy, partnered to create the Rolf Prima brand in 2002. That same year, the Vigor wheel was created and continues on in updated form into 2018. The Elan was created the following year, and also continues on in the current line up. Rolf Prima began working with White Industries to produce their hubs in 2004 and in 2006, they launch their first carbon tubulars.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 hit Rolf Prima hard, and with Dietrich’s retirement, we almost saw the end. In 2009 though, the brand saw new life with three employees and continue to grow in the years to come. By 2011, new wheels were launched, and testing was brought in-house. Soon, aluminum rim production was brought in-house as well, and Delta Rim Technology was created, along with the brand’s first carbon mountain bike wheel. That takes us to today, and the launch of the Astral rim brand.

For the show, Roddy had a small sample of the brand’s line up. Though they have a broad line of wheels to cover road, triathlon, cyclocross, mountain biking, track, tandem, and just about any riding style in between, they do a lot of custom work. Depending on the model, you can choose between rim and disc brake options, ceramic bearing upgrades, and custom colors on the hubs, rims, and decals. All of this customization can be done on their website. Because of all of the custom options they do, many of their wheels are made to order, with inventories of what they consider standard builds.

Along with the Astral rims, the hot item in the Rolf Prima booth was the Hyalite family of wheels.

“With road moving to disc and the whole idea of gravel and adventure, there is a lot of merging, a lot of cross over wheels,” explained Roddy. “To me, the Hyalite is the ultimate. I know mountain biking is expensive, cross is expensive. If you can have one wheel set that is used across various bikes, I think that is a good thing. It’s what I would want. I like being able to move wheels between bikes.”

The Hyalite is at home with anything from road and cross to gravel and mountain bikes. Available in 700c and 650b sizes, the rims are 23mm deep with an external width of 25mm and internal of 22mm. The carbon version expands even further to 29mm external, 23mm internal.

“If you want to put 25’s or 28’s with higher pressure, go for it,” said Roddy. “If you want to move it to your gravel bike or your cross bike, and put 35’s or 40’s on there, go for it. You can actually put up to a 2.25” if you want to, so it is great for someone with a bunch of different bikes and want a great crossover wheel.”

The bottom of the range starts with the Hyalite ES. The 1575g 700c wheel set comes with 24 paired spokes front and back, and their XR hubs. The next step up is the Hyalite, with 20 paired spokes front and rear, and the XST hubs. Finally, the Hyalite ES Carbon brings weights down to 1455g with carbon rims, 24 paired spokes front and rear, and the XR hubs. Aluminum or carbon, all are disc brake only, and tubeless ready. We’ll dig deeper into the details on the Hyalite family in our upcoming review.

For us, the other big item from the show from Rolf Prima was the Astral rims.

https://youtu.be/9b9pBZNyZrA

“Astral is rims for traditional lacing, but based on our Rolf Prima design,” adds Roddy. “We’ve learned a lot over the last 20 years doing paired spokes, and we believe firmly that that is the way to build a wheel, but at the same time, we know there are people that don’t want a prebuilt wheel system and want to build it their own way. We have pretty much a full line, because it is based on the engineering and testing we do at Rolf Prima. By doing the testing in house, we have a lot of flexibility to validate drill patterns on each rim. ”

Depending on your choice of rim, Astral offers drillings for traditional hubs for 20, 24, 28, and 32 spokes. Rims that are more road oriented, like the light weight carbon Prevail, have options for 20, 24, and 28 spokes, while the workhorse Leviathan is 32 hole only. Throughout the 8 model range, you also have options for rim and disc brake specific rims for most, and all are Tubeless Easy, which means you should be able to set them up tubeless with a regular floor pump.

Additionally, like Rolf Prima wheel sets, you have the option to customize the rim color and decal. Pricing runs from $135 for the aluminum rims to $600 and $950 for the top end carbon options. Customization will run you an additional $40 for the decal color, $150 for decal and rim colors.

“Whether it is customized hubs or customized rims, we have what we call a Ballistic Armor Coating, Roddy explains. “It’s a ceramic based coating, tough like a powder coat, but light like a paint, so it is really thin. It was designed for firearms originally, so it was designed for outdoor use where it is going to be used hard. If you are buying a nice wheel set, and you have a nice bike and it has, say, red highlights on it, why not go a little further and do red highlights on the wheels? And since we are building it in house, we do all of it locally and it doesn’t add much time.”

We should be getting a set of Astral rims in as well, and will be building them up for a future review as well. In the meantime, click on the links to learn more about Rolf Prima and Astral.