Pro-Lite Antero AM Wheelset – First Look
Pro-Lite are the biggest wheel manufacturer in the world, so we fitted some on our trail bike and took them for a thrash.
Pro-Lite caught our eye back in the autumn at Eurobike. Over a few beers we had a great chat with Steve the boss and his passion for bike business was infectious. A team of ex-pats living out in Taiwan, the heart of bike manufacture, to ensure that the quality and finish of the wheels is exceptionally high. We are running a set of the 275 sized Antero AM wheels with XE hubs on our long term test bike, so they are sure to suffer a winter of heavy landings, twisty ruts and sharp Welsh rocks.
One of the things that turned our heads in the cirus of Eurobike was the oversized bearing by the freehub, dubbed the “massively oversized bearing” it is designed to help add a bit extra lateral stiffness to the hub. In addition to that, the oversized hub body houses a freehub containing a 6 pawl system, with each pawl having two points of engagement, meaning a greater surface area in contact with the teeth, and hopefully less chance of damage under heavy loads. With 84 points of engagement the pickup is quick, and the hub makes a great purr. Not a rowdy click, not a stealthy whir, but somewhere inbetween. Important? It seems to be to some people – we’ll get a recording of the sound for you!
A neat system on all of the XE hubs allows you to switch between QR and x12mm on the rear and QR,15mm and 20mm bolt through on the front. Not outrageous or out of the ordinary, but getting all of the options with your wheelset makes things super convenient. Switching is straightforward using a secure pressfit on the front and a threaded rear axle. The wheels are built up with 28 double butted spokes by hand, before being stressed, checked, tweaked and tightened again and again. There are videos on the Pro-Lite site that show the process their wheels go through that are worth a few minutes of watching, the skill that goes into the hand laying of the carbon road wheels is worth a look in itself.
The rims themselves use an “I-Beam” around the radius to add stiffness without adding a great deal of extra weight. They are welded and are described as “Tubeless Ready” which we all know means you have to get some rim-strips stuck in. It took us a couple of goes to get rim strips to stick properly, but once in they have worked faultlessly ever since. The tyres seated easily once shown a bit of compressor and the rim gripped well even when hanging up on rocks and burping most of the air. After over 100km of off road thrashing including some laps on DH tracks like Nant G and plenty of punishing riding they are still running straight and true.
On the scales they tip the balance at 828g(F) and 905g(R) which is extremely respectable for wheels designed to take the strain of burly trail riding. We also had a set of wheels for a 29er turn up as well, but unfortunately they had been “tuned” by the company dispatching them on top of the usual Pro-Lite stressing. One neat feature of this is that each individual spoke tension, in each wheel, is recorded so the boys were able to tell us exactly what state they had left in and rectified things dead quickly. As well as great service from over the sea the new UK distributor NRG4 will be carrying spare parts and will be on hand to deal with any issues that might arise.
Antero AM 275 Wheelset – RRP £549.99
