Hunt wheel problems

Anyone also have reliability and service problems with Hunt wheels? Wish I'd never bought this cheap Chinese brand instead of a recognised brand with proper warranty. Doing some background digging to see what's truly behind this startup - Doesn't look good so far. Fortunately work in the industry and have many friends working in China. Hope to report again soon. Be safe and ride like your life was at stake every time you helmet up.

 

After a bit of basic research through friends working in Taiwan bike industry turns out Hunt is just a marketing name for the Taiwanese Chen family that own pillar spoke brand. Through their network they buy the cheapest Chinese rims and hubs, use a small local wheel assembler and leave the rest to the marketing people back in the UK. So as many people suspect, it's all smoke and mirrors, just pure hype. Forget about any R&D or proper testing. When the limitless wheels had a total recall the Chen's wanted to fold the company. That's the word from a direct source. Stay safe and helmet up.

 

Well you know what they say? you get what you pay for. Well that's sort of true. When you buy the cheapest set of lightweight wheels made you're going to have to expect issues on both sides, but the biggest problem isn't whether their cheap it's what country makes them and what country of origin are they from. I have a set of cheap Shimano RS500 wheels, they've held up amazingly well plus I haven't had to true them and I ride on rough streets! Sure the RS500's aren't as light as the Hunts but they're extremely durable. One thing about the RS500, I have the older version in silver that came with 105 hubs, Shimano has kept the name but moved them up with an Ultegra hub and lightened them up by about 400 grams total.

Personally, and I've been saying this for a very long time to folks and now I think maybe some people are beginning to see the light due what's been reviewed during this virus thing; but I will never buy anything directly from China, even if I see a name brand item and it says made in China I try to find another item that isn't. Of course I know if you buy a cell phone or a computer, toys for kids, etc, that's going to be impossible, but anytime it's possible I avoid Chinese made junk. Problem is companies have grown wise to some of us who refuse to buy Chinese made junk, and they've changed their packaging labels to say stuff like "engineered in America, made from parts worldwide" so we just gloss right over it.

If you want a reasonably light wheelset that won't set you back a fortune, a wheelset you should consider as a possibility is the Soul brand, made in Soul Korea...get it? Anyway their aluminum aero wheelset called the S4.0 is only $670 for the pair including shipping to the US. Of course a wheelset sent from another country means you would have to send it back if there was an issue, but I have never heard anything bad about Soul wheels. http://2013.bikesoul.com/aboutus2/

Shimano's new RS500 Ultegra is not an expensive wheelset but it's extremely durable. In fact that RS500 is the old Dura Ace aluminum wheelset that sold for 3 times it's current price! and all they did was change the hub from a DA to an Ultegra? yup. While it's not light at 1650 grams it is a slightly aero design, and durable like I said earlier.

 

Froze - You're 100% right - You get the quality you pay for in most things. What annoys me and many others most is the complete fiction that is the Hunt brand. Several people I know have tried commenting negatively about their rubbish on bikeradar and bikerumor but had their comments removed. Presumably such websites prefer getting the cash income from Hunt rather than providing the truth to their readers. I believe it's called Pay-to-Play in the advertising industry. If I can find out what's behind Hunt in a couple of days you'd think a proper journalist could do the same?

 

• Right Christiano, Bike Rumor and Bike Radar has their agenda, to make money pushing their sponsors stuff as being the best, when sometimes their not even close to being the best. I went off on Bike Radar once for doing a review on titanium bikes, I think there were around 6 different brands they yakked about, and not ONE WORD about Lynskey, and Lynskey is the family that founded and owned Litespeed, that created the innovations to make TI tubings and the welding process that ALL other TI makers now use; I also told them that Lynskey should have been their number one mentioned TI bike builder. I never checked to see if they kept my post.

A lot of cycling rags are the same way, they'll never come out and say some product is junk, they say cute stuff like, "this is a great bike here are the pros, the cons are if you're a racing type you may want more stiffness"; then they'll flip it around on the next bike, "this is a great bike here are the pros, the con is if you're not a racer you may want a more compliant bike"; or they'll say that the placement of some item should be moved 1/2 an inch, something mundane and stupid, but nothing bad is ever said.

You always have to mindful of when reading websites about what is their bottom line, and usually it's money. This is the reason why too you never read anything bad about carbon fiber, or the superiority of disk brakes vs rim brakes when the fact is that rim brakes are disk brakes!

I saw those two British racing guys on You Tube, I think the channel is called GBU? I don't remember, but anyways they were testing disk brakes vs rim brakes, and the disk brakes stopped in shorter distance every time...except the guy on the disk brake bike would slide his butt a bit rearward putting a bit more weight on the rear tire! also they were testing both using a carbon fiber rim and brake track, and pads don't do well on that that type of braking track surface. I tested my rim brakes vs and friends disk brakes, he had better tires than I had, we ran the test in 3 sets, each set was increasing the speed by 5 mph, and we both always stopped within a few inches of each other, sometimes I stopped faster and sometimes he did which was probably due to reaction time, and we had to stay firmly seated in our seat. The last set we did at 25 mph my rim brake bike was actually stopping faster as that test progressed, we figured out that the disk brake was fading from repeated full on stops.

 

Well said and totally accurate. Take a look at this recently blog from Paul Lew, recognised globally for several decades as the #1 authority on wheel design and bike aerodynamics https://tarmacandirt.com/blogs/insi...-industry/do-you-trust-your-cycling-equipment
He doesn't specifically refer to Hunt but it's pretty clear to me that they are one of these cheap Alibaba brands that he's so concerned about.

 

I have a lot of sites bookmarked about the dangerers of CF, but whenever I posted them I get hammered.

Another problem is, like the guy that crashed in Calif due to a wheel failure as described in your post website, is that the wheel, or fork or whatever, is so utterly destroyed you cannot prove it was the manufacturer's fault. In cases of failed handlebars and frames they always blame inaccurate torque specs were used, well how convenient for the manufacturer's so they don't get sued.

I could post all of my sites but most readers won't care...in fact I had to not care when I bought my Lynskey because all these type of bikes come with carbon forks. HOWEVER, I knew that there are risks involved, and Lynskey wouldn't tell me who made their Lynskey branded fork, so I opted to replace the fork before delivery with a Enve 2.0, and the reason I chose the 2.0 was because it was the only fork on the market designed for tandem bikes, it had a weight limit of 350 pounds, while I weigh 175 pounds and could have gotten away with a lessor fork, I felt more secure knowing that I was riding a fork that is over engineered for my weight, and Enve has some really good research and development abilities; but even Enve now has most of their CF stuff built in China!

I have a friend who's frame snapped while riding for no known reason, but he had the bike for over 5 years and the warranty was no good after 5 years, he got hurt pretty bad and took him 3 months to get back to riding. I watched a guy riding toward me on a bike path when suddenly he veered into bushes, at the moment I wasn't paying to close attention till he went crashing into the bushes, I stopped to see if was ok, the bushes cushioned his fall so all he had was a lot small minor cuts and scrapes, but come to find out his high end CF handlebar snapped in two. Even a bike mechanic at a local bike shop told me that he can buy any bike he wants at wholesale cost, but he won't buy a CF bike, he seen too many failures vs other materials they've sold.

This website is in line with the one you posted: https://www.newsomelaw.com/2013/05/22/carbon-fiber-bikes-may-be-susceptible-sudden-failure/

There's a bike shop in the state of Washington that won't even sell a CF bike! http://rideyourbike.com/carbonfiber.shtml

Interesting read especially what Deda said: https://bikeretrogrouch.blogspot.com/2013/10/carbon-forks-no-way.html

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/ot...frame-for-rising-number-of-injuries-1.1879653

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/...der.html?auth=login-email&login=email&mcubz=0

I have a lot more sites about CF but those go more in hand with what you were saying.