Forge+Bond Shift AM Wheels

Backstory

Utah based CSS Composites quietly snuck a new way of manufacturing carbon fiber rims into the world sometime back in 2020. Dubbed FusionFiber, this new process involved taking nylon-impregnated carbon fiber and laying it up into rims via a proprietary process using heat and pressure, but no resins or curing agents like traditional carbon fiber layups. It's a thermoplastic, but done with some secret technique that CSS doesn't want to spill the beans about. The short version is that this highly automated process uses less material, involves less environmentally toxic material, cures rapidly, arrives at its final shape with no sanding or extra finishing steps, and is a more flexible, less brittle final product than traditional carbon fiber rims. FusionFiber first debuted on Revel wheels, followed by Chris King.

In addition to claiming lower toxicity and less waste during manufacturing, FusionFiber is also recyclable. Sort of. A mangled rim can't get melted down and turned back into another new rim, but it can get chopped up and turned into something a little smaller, like tire levers. Or, as co-founder Joe Stanish proudly showed me at Sea Otter a couple years back, an assault rifle barrel shroud with in-molded picatinny rails. Basically, FusionFiber can get repurposed into smaller, less structurally critical items.

Forge+Bond, meanwhile, sprang to life last year in Gunnison, Utah. This is the bicycle wheel-shaped, public facing branch of CSS Composites. Pairing their rims with I9 hubs, Forge+Bond joined a very exclusive club alongside Enve and We Are One in offering a wheelset designed and manufactured almost entirely on this continent (Belgian Sapim spokes being the "almost" fly in the ointment here). Uncle Dave went pretty deep on the initial Forge+Bond release last year here, and also did a better job than I am likely to do of discussing the recyclability angle.

Paradigm Shift

US made is something we can applaud. Yet another $2,500 carbon fiber wheelset, well, that's a little harder to get jazzed about. This is where we roll around to the subject at hand: the very recently released Forge+Bond Shift wheels. A new line of wheels, featuring the same rims as the wheels that debuted last year, but with F+B branded Bitex hubs, and a retail price of, drumroll please: 1250 USD per set. For the purposes of direct comparison, the F+B Shift AM wheels here undercut WAO's Revolution Union wheelset (admittedly with an I9 1/1 hubset) by 150 USD, and similarly outprice Enve's AM30 by the same amount.

Yes, you can absolutely find carbon fiber wheelsets for less. But they won't be made on this continent. And yes, you can find aluminum wheelsets with similar weight and width and shape and maybe even ride quality for even less still, but at that point we are no longer really engaging in apples to apples comparison.

There are three models of wheel in the Shift family: the Shift XC, the Shift AM, and the Shift EM. The Shift XC features 25mm inner width, 28-spoke, 385-gram rims front and rear in a 1,600-gram wheelset. The AMs have a 30mm inner width, 28-spoke rims, with the front rim featuring a lighter construction than the rear, weighing 480 grams and 530 grams respectively, in a 1,823-gram wheelset. The EMs are enduro-oriented, and feature the 530-gram rims front and rear, with option for 32-spoke builds, and a slightly more chonky 1920-gram full set weight. And in each case, you can get any rim diameter you want so long as it's 29". Okay, fine; so long as it is 594mm ERD, just in case someone wants to get pedantic in the comments.

Aside from being exclusively 29 inches, the Shift wheels are also only available in Boost spacing and 6-bolt rotor configurations. You can choose between SRAM XD and Shimano Microspline drivers, but that's about the extent of it.

All Shift wheels come with 60-day no questions asked return policy, lifetime warranty, and no rider weight limit. To clarify, the lifetime warranty is defined as: "In the event you crack one of our rims during normal intended use, we’ll replace it for free. We process all warranty claims through our production lab in Utah, that’s how we reclaim our FUSIONFIBER® material and create something new from it." The warranty does not cover labour, nor does it cover running your own wheels over with your car, but there is a reduced-cost crash replacement program for scenarios like that. Not mentioned in any of this - the hubs.

The Devil In The Details

So, purchasing F+B AM rims by themselves would set you back $850 US per pair. If you were going to have your local wheelbuilder twist you up a set of these, you'd be looking at another $100 for spokes, at least, and $100-200 labor. You would still need hubs, and valve stems, and rim tape. From a value proposition standpoint, these Shift wheels look pretty good. They come with some modern, insert-friendly, hi-volume valve stems, sturdy tubeless-ready rim tape, and this pair mounted up very easily with a floor pump and a pair of Specialized Purgatory T7 tires.

The Bitex hubs are sourced from Taiwan and are a relatively known quantity, although my personal experience with them is about zero. The general consensus around the interwebs is: "pretty light, inexpensive, relatively reliable." TPI cartridge bearings should be easy enough to replace with something nicer if they get crunchy, and the rear hub design - axle supported by two bearings in the hub, two in the freehub, ring ratchet in hubshell engaged by six-pawls on the freehub - is common and easily understood. I counted 54 points of engagement in a rotation, so that'd work out to somewhere around 6.6 degrees. That's tighter than a DT 36t ratchet and on par with a DT 54t, but fans of super tight engagement may find something to gripe about since they are not I9 hubs...

J-bend Sapim CX-Ray spokes span between rims and hubs; these are becoming downright ubiquitous in wheel world these days and are generally regarded as one of the more solid go-to options. I am a big fan of J-bend spokes, and am glad that F+B didn't try to do anything fancy by courting perceived straight pull bling factor while also hitting a budget target. I freely acknowledge that my bias there may be due to emotional scarring caused by some truly shitty straight pull hubs back in the dark ages. I am similarly leery of black spokes, but since those things are unavoidable these days, I just keep my mouth shut and try not think about it too much.

Putting The PRE In Preview

I received these wheels very recently - the embargo just came off a couple weeks ago -and am currently ass-deep in riding an XC bike that has featherlight wheels on it. I do not want to taint that experience any more than I already have (by wearing baggy clothes and a helmet with a visor), so this is a preview. Therefore, in terms of ride characteristic, I can't speak to that just yet. Similarly, wheels with zero miles on them tend to stay true. So I can't speak to how they are holding up, either. Yet. These wheels will spend the summer getting long-termed on a more suitable bike, with about 150mm of travel, and I will endeavor to hit things as hard as possible. That isn't anything to write home about, though. It has been a real long time since I have broken a rim, and that severely inhibits my ability to deliver solid F.S.U reportage.

BUT, I have rolled several hundred miles on a pair of hoops I built up myself with some prototype FusionFiber rims. I like them. As to reports that they feel "damped" or "quiet" compared to similarly profiled carbon fiber wheels, can confirm. I noticed a definite reduction in chatter compared to the Roval Traverses they replaced; not the squirmy or flexy sensation that some super lightweight wheels can transmit, but less sharp and a little more planted feeling on chundery ground. By way of analogy, swapping over to the FusionFiber wheels felt like I was rolling very slightly bigger tires. I need to spend a LOT more time to determine if this is f'reals feels, or if I am experiencing confirmation bias. For the record, those proto wheels were built up with XTR hubs and DT Revolution spokes, and they weigh pretty close to the same as these.

Time will tell. Let's check back on these things in August.