I never seem to have written a post about it, but at some point in mid 2023 I upgraded the wheels on my cross bike to a nice set of Vision Team 30 Discs. These were a great deal, 120 for the pair, shiny silver spokes, nicely deep, and much better than the stock wheels which were heavy, and the rear hub was dying (I did many posts trying to fix that shit.)

Queue the end of 2024, where I find my rear hub bearings to be wearing out. So in Jan 2025 I got them replaced. That was a fairly painless thing, I couldn't do it myself because of a few tools needed and it not being worth buying those, so I took it to a shop. It didn't cost much, and I had some fabulously smooth bearings with great sealing from the elements.

Nearly bang on a year later, and the freehub has started to make some complaints. I resolved to try and take it off and grease it, but before I got around to that it gave out on me entirely. From the first skipped pedal rev at the start of the ride, less than 30km later and I was getting pushed along by the group I was with to the cafe (fortunately it packed in at the top of a hill and near the cafe we were going to!). I managed to get a PB on the segment down there too, cheers Lou and Carl!

The next day was the Sunday I picked to fix all my punctures
The Monday was when I went to watch A Sunday in Hell
The Tuesday after it was "pls dad take me to the bike shop", so we dropped it off at Pedal Power (after calling another shop who said they didn't have a supplier to get the part) and they said they'd look into it and get back to me.

Before dropping it off I'd managed to clean the hub body and get most of a code, but not enough to web crawler it and bring up the correct part. Realistically it was going to a shop anyway, because I believe I need a tool to get the freehub off, and one mistake in buying the wrong part costs more than the labour cost (~30-40 quid for the part, where the service will be ~30)

Bad news and a rant

A few hours later I get the call with the bad news, the supplier has none of the freehubs, and nobody makes them anymore... A 2018(ish) wheel from a major brand... What's the point of buying these good quality parts and products when they're unsupported and you can't find parts when they wear out (a freehub is a wearing part of a bike) a few years later? The whole argument about not buying from quasi no-name Chinese brands is that the support isn't there, but I've seen people able to get freehubs from Aliexpress wheels many years later. Nobody puts any info out there for how long you'll be able to find parts for their products for. I take good care of my bikes, and it fucking sucks to have a 60-70 quid repair turn into possibly upwards of 200 quid for a wheel now, and there's a lump of maybe recyclable aluminium paperweight sitting around (because at almost all price ranges below 1000 quid for a pair the rims aren't worth enough to have a wheel rebuilt. The cost of a hub, spokes, and labour is more than an equal quality prebuilt wheel)

Well, onwards I guess. The shop showed me a few options in the ~80 quid price point, some needing me to get centrelock rotors (more on that later). I ended up saying I'd think about it, but since they were only ordering offline I was pretty sure I'd go second hand since I'd seen a few good options. It sucks too because I'd like to have given money to the local bike shop to fix my bike, but I couldn't (they wouldn't have made anything on the parts)

In the end the choice was between Mavic Aksium Discs, or Shimano RX010s. The Shimanos are gravel wheels, a little wider, a little more heavily built, but with loose bearings (which as an all weather rider scare me, though I've never had good quality loose ball hubs). Their advantage in the mindset I was in was that I could buy the pair or just the rear from SJS, brand new, will work, and the freehubs Shimano uses are pretty well available for a very long time.

The other option, the Aksium Discs, were an ebay find. Originally I found a rear wheel only, with QR adater (finding a QR set of wheels is hard, and since it was the rear I needed, where thru axle is 142mm wide, and QR 135mm wide, you need manufacturer supported adpaters. Front wheel adapters can be bought pretty easily). Then I found a good deal for the pair, at £230, and then somehow, with some extra looking, £140 for the pair, brand new, with both adapters... Absolutely incredible, so much so I had to get my Dad to do a sanity check. A great thanks to my late Aunt Lena who left some money to my Dad, which he shared some with me to buy these wheels and get me back out without thought for trying to find the cheapest option that works. He gave the same to my sister, and she got an ereader she's had her eyes on for a while.

Once the wheels arrived I had the lovely task of swapping the hub ends over. This would probably be one sentence, but funny things happened! The front wheel was easy, just drop the pegs in, ezpz done. They felt like they might fall out, but with a skewer they're not going to drop out if you take the wheel out the bike, and now they've sat in for a few rides they're solidly in there (can easily be poked out with the skewer, but that's fine).

On the rear there's two end caps you have to pull off to reduce the width from 142mm to 135mm wide. Neither felt like they were coming off easiy, so I popped onto YouTube to find the answers. Of course there's someone saying "it's way easy, just boop and off it comes" from an official Mavic guide. Now, that's all well and good if this is the 5th time these have come off for the video, but for me, they're pretty well had on. I did find a bit of advice somewhere that said (and I'm going to bold this)

To remove the endcap on the freehub side, pull on the freehub

That should make it easier to find when I come back to this post in a years time trying to get the cap off and remove the freehub for re-greasing.
Anyway, that advice worked well, and somehow the non-drive side (which I found no guides on) fell off in the box when I pulled the wheel out again, so all's well that ends well.

Hot Centrelock Opinions

When I first realised I was gonna need a centrelock wheel, and either an adapter or new discs it was kinda annoying. What's wrong with 6 bolts? It's fine, it holds them, it uses a tool that fits on my multi tool in case they come loose while out and about. Well, the main reason is for bike shops and pro mechanics that it's 6 bolts (duh) vs just the one. Setting a bottom bracket tool to 40nm is a lot easier than 6x 5nm bolts, especially when torx tools never quite lock in properly. They also allow for more options of cooling fins and the fancy sort of things. Overall, now I've used it, I like centrelock, but I'm glad I can get an adapter and keep buying really cheap CNC brake rotors off Noah and Theo

So, on to setting up the adapter and the chaos that was.
Problem number 1, Dad can't count and only ordered 1 rotor adapter... This isn't the first time this happened, though last time he had the (really not good) excuse that he thought "pair" of brake pads meant front and rear, not left and right... (the single brake disc in that order wasn't great, but I sent him the wrong code for the pads so all in a terrible move from everyone)

When the rotor adapter came I popped over to nab the tools from Dads. A bottom bracket tool, and the smallest Torx bit we have. This is where the problems start. The way the adapter works is effectively you attach the 6 bolt to the adapter as you would normally to a wheel, but with much smaller flat headed bolts (flat as in machined flat tops, not flat head as in uranium bolt). Then a thick shim goes over of the same thickness as the heads, and you clamp that down with a regular lockring. Other than the shim the rotor, adapter, and bolts become one centrelock rotor.

Now, what went wrong? Well, the smallest tool we had was actually a T20. The bolts are T15. T20 fits almost into a T15 slot, due to the oversized entry by a tiny bit, but as soon as the bolts hit the locktite there was no grip. I was pretty sure it was the tool that was the issue, but I didn't know if it was the wrong size, if it was slightly broken, or maybe even if the bolts were wrong. I didn't have another bolt of the same size, or tool to test against. I tried sanding the burrs off the edge of the tool, because that's how close it felt, but nothing. That was pretty shit, since it meant I wasn't getting out for a little longer.

In a stroke of cleverness rarely seen with me, I checked on Screwfix if they had torx sets (after looking on regular delivery sites) and they did! Not in stock at my local that day, but it was ~13:30 on a Sunday so that was fine. Delivered to my local store next day was more than quick enough. It was cheaper than getting them off ebay, and delivered earlier (plus a bike ride). Got the text that it was in store about mid day, rode over, picked it up, ezpz. The final mile is a real difficulty for delivery of stuff, but I think the "just don't do it" of collection from store or postal lockers is the best option (of course with the exception for people who can't get it themselves, or for extra large items)

With the new tools in hand I got everything together pretty quick sharp. Flashy new wheels need clean cassettes and brakes of course. I didn't have proper brake cleaning stuff, so I avoided touching the braking surface and just cleaned the centre before bolting it on. Apparently I only took one picture of all of this, but all in it was pretty easy.

So all up, what's the big difference? Well, the weight is barely down (I measured the front wheel to 50g less, but that was without the centrelock adapter on the new wheel, so probably 0 difference there). The back wheel feels somewhat lighter, but it might be placebo. I can't feel the difference in aero, but I know it's there. There just simply were no options above 24mm deep. The difference 6mm makes is a lot. Looking at this pic with the old front wheel and new rear is wild.

The Aksiums do look good though...

From my Nana for my birthday around the same time I got a pair of King Cage Iris bottle cages. Absolutely lovely and they hold the bottles perfectly. Need a little testing on the real rough sstuff, but I love the way they have a gentle snap into the bottom. There's no visible bottle lip section sticking out, but it's the arms. The bottle slides in like a wonderful hug. It's great, and the noise on a half full steel bottle is beautiful!

Conclusion

All in, it sucks that the wheel broke, and it sucks that it wasn't fixable (fucking capitalism) but I do now have a great pair of wheels on the bike, even if they're probably less aero, and I do miss the silver spokes. The hub engagement feels amazing, and I very much like how they look with this bike. The tiny yellow section goes really well on this bike particularly, and I think the scalloping on the hubs is really nice (though I found it really hard to clean today, the first proper clean with the new wheels on after ~120km ridden in the nice weather we've finally had)

Here's to many happy miles on these wheels, and that I'll be able to find spare parts for them for many years to come. They're even futureproofed to go on a future bike since they're thru axle!