I9 700c UL250c TRA Carbon

Overview

Built on the burlierst drop bar chassis we offer, our fully customizable Torch Road Alloy "TRA," the UL250c TRA is the secret ingredient to any drop bar build where stiffness and weight are crucial to the recipe. Updated with a generous 25mm carbon rim for modern gravel tires, our TRA chassis brings renowned ride quality established with our system mountain wheels, but reimagined for drop bar use.

Specs

Bearings

Industry Nine is sourcing an improved bearing from ENDURO. The ENDURO LLU bearings are equipped with a full contact, dual lip seal. These are properly installed with the light grey seal side toward the outboard side of the component you are installing them into. This provides additional protection towards the side most exposed to the elements.

Enduro LLU Type Seals:

Enduro LLU is a full contact, dual lip seal riding in a groove on the inner race. With more sealing pressure, these are ideal for pivots or headsets that continually come in contact with dirt, sweat, and dust. The increased seal pressure and 2 lips help retain the 90% grease fill we use on these bearings to better displace any moisture and continually lubricate the balls and races.

Our bearing seals are designed and tested in house for maximum performance. We never use any “off the shelf” parts, every component of our bearings is considered for performance, weight, and durability, and this includes the seals.
All of our seals can be removed for service by gently prying from the inside with a small blade and carefully lifting the seals from the inner and outer grooves.

Lama Cycle Industry 9 Enduro LLU Bearings

Customization

Like all of our System Wheels, you can customize your hubs and spoke colors in any combination for an additional fee. We offer 11 custom anodized colors: Orange, Purple, Turquoise, Lime, Gold, Green, Blue, Red, Pink, Silver and Black.

ANODIZING MATCH?

We have a very small, purpose built anodizing lab made specifically to anodize the parts we make for your wheels and hubs. Anodizing is an electro-chemical process that has many variables the operator has to react to and adjust daily. While we try to keep our color parameters close, there can be variations from batch to batch, between various alloys and from morning to afternoon. Due to these circumstances we can not guarantee that your Industry Nine hubs or spokes will match any one else's paint, anodizing, colors you see on screen, your sunglasses...etc.

Please note - all anodization is subject to fade in direct UV exposure such as sunlight and tanning booths. Please don't tan with your bike - or leave it on your car or at the trailhead if you want your i9's to remain their most brilliant. Certain cleaners may also affect the finish of your anodized parts. Please use warm soapy water to clean your wheels and hubs.

Warranty

CARBON PRODUCT LIFETIME WARRANTY

Industry Nine has gone the extra mile to ensure we offer the best carbon wheels available. We are so confident in our wheels that we are now offering a limited lifetime warranty on all wheelsets sold after January 1, 2018.

The limited lifetime warranty applies to all Industry Nine branded complete carbon wheelsets. Under the limited lifetime warranty, Industry Nine certifies all wheels to be free from defects in materials and workmanship* and applies to the original owner.**

Industry Nine carbon wheel systems are engineered to be ridden every day and are designed and tested to ensure the strength of the wheels far exceed the loads incurred during their intended use.*** You can rest assured that if you are on an Industry Nine Carbon wheelset, we have you covered.

*The warranty applies to all original owners who purchase their wheels from an Industry Nine Authorized Dealer or directly from Industry Nine; wheels purchased through third-party sites are excluded from the warranty.

**Keep in mind that wheels (as with most moving parts) require periodic maintenance and service. Bearings are considered a wear item and if properly serviced, should last several years, but are not covered under the lifetime warranty. The exception is our Enduro XD-15 Hybrid Ceramic bearings (which are an upgrade option). Any wheel that has been altered, improperly maintained or installed, or modified from its original build will not be eligible for this warranty.

***If you are riding the wheels within the scope of their designated use, we have you covered. If you hit a tree at 30mph or come up short on a double while riding your road bike at the bike park and break a wheel - we have a great crash replacement program.

FAQ

ALUMINUM SPOKES?

By starting with a 20-25% larger cross-sectional area, our machined 7075-T651 aluminum is equal in tensile strength to any 14-gauge or 14/15 DB spoke available. In many ways, the Industry Nine spoke is much stronger, because we have removed all the weak points (known as stress risers) inherent in the design of a traditional hooked steel spoke. First, the spoke has no bend. This is nothing new, but remains an intelligent design. Most steel spokes fail either at the middle of the bend, or the first thread at the nipple end. By eliminating the bend altogether, the spoke is instantly less prone to fatigue stress failure. Second, the root diameter of the Industry Nine one-piece spoke thread is actually larger than the diameter of the length of the spoke. Other spokes fail at the first thread because the root diameter (the bottom of the thread's “V”) is actually the smallest diameter of the spoke, just where slight relative motions of the nipple apply additional bending forces.

STAY TRUE?

Actually not any more than a traditional spoke. The larger cross-section allows the spoke to act like a very long screw. By using similar very hard alloys in the spoke and hub, and lubrication during assembly, the spokes remain free of corrosion – which is the true cause of frozen nipples, along with metal-to-metal galling that happens with multiple-piece designs. We've also eliminated the need for special tools of any kind. A standard Park Tool SW-0 spoke wrench (.126” /15 ga) fits perfectly. While very similar in practice to truing traditional wheels, the larger thread pitch of our spokes requires a small adjustment in practice, because less rotation is needed to effect the same increase in tension (which is really a measurement of elongation in the case of a spoke). Once the mechanic learns to think in quarter-turns, even 1/8-turns, truing the wheels becomes second nature. We do recommend that the spoke tension be remeasured after an initial break-in period of 4-6 hours.

STICKS AND STONES

Obviously, the aluminum spoke is not going to hold up to abrasion as well as steel. We feel the benefits far outweigh the weaknesses. We challenged our test riders to break stuff. In many cases, we have seen spokes chewed nearly in half by maladjusted drivetrains continue to hold tension without adverse affects. We have also seen wheels with half the spokes obviously bent by a foreign object show no loss of trueness. We have even seen wheels with four spokes missing from a derailler failure off the first drop complete a day of downhill runs (after which it did require a new rim). We recommend replacement of nicked or chewed up spokes at the earliest convenience. In short, an Industry Nine wheel will hold up as well, if not better then a traditional steel spoked wheel or other system wheels available to riders today.

DIFFERENT RIMS

We believe that our own in-house designed Torch Series rims, including our 2015 PillarCarbon by Reynolds Cycling, as well as Stan's No-Tubes rims to be unparalleled in quality and consistency. We also understand that everybody has an opinion about their favorite rim, and we don't know everything all the time. We can mate our Torch series hub and spoke chassis to your 32 hole rim of choice. We will machine spokes to any length imaginable, accommodating almost all 32 hole rims on the market, including those by DT Swiss, WTB, Spank, Derby, NOX, Ibis, Atomik, Whisky Parts Co, Specialized, etc. All we need is the ERD (effective rim diameter) of the rim in question. We may have suggestions or cautionary advice about using certain rims with our hubs and spokes, and our body of experience is continually growing. Due to the mould process and nipple requirements ENVE specifies, we can not build our Torch system chassis to ENVE hoops.

Please work with your LBS to order your Torch System Chassis. For the sake of accountability and quality control we are currently performing the assembly of all Industry Nine wheels in-house.

We DO NOT accept Light Bicycle or Nextie and we reserve the right to decline building on a rim we are unfamiliar with.

LOUD AND PROUD

The pawl mechanism of our hubs has a distinctive buzz that gets quieter with break-in time. It has the sound of nothing more than the highest-quality sprung pawl system. Most riders report that the noise is inaudible over the wind at higher speeds. It is loud enough to be heard, yet not so loud as to detract from the experience you are trying to enjoy.

SERVICEABLE? WELL OF COURSE.

Our near-instant engagement mechanism is not magic, but rather built on solid mechanical principles. Having said this, it is assembled in our facility under highly controlled conditions by persons intimately familiar with its operation. Disassembly by the end user is possible, and fairly easy with the proper tools. To a skilled and versatile mechanic, it will present no problems, especially once we have published an exploded view and service instructions. In the immediate meantime, we recommend contacting Factory Technical Assistance for rear hub service. Hubs that experience failure after unauthorized service can of course be repaired, just not under warranty.

LEFTY?

Industry Nine does supply an extraction cap and/or bolt for our Lefty hubs, or wheelsets built with Lefty hubs. The bolt will also work with our MatchStix multi-tool handle.

BUILD YOUR OWN

Sorry, but we don't offer our straight pull system hubs/spokes by themselves, for mountain or road/road disc. We want to ensure all of our wheels built with our proprietary chassis be done to our exact specifications for QC and warranty qualification and accountability. The only way to ensure the processes are to our standards is to limit assembly to our approved dealers and distributors.

120 POINTS BABY

Holy 120 engagement points! How strong is your drive mechanism?
The Industry Nine drive mechanism is a fairly simple, tried-and-true pawl arrangement. When engaged, each of the three driving pawls itself has three points, providing nine points of contact to the hardened A2 drive ring. The drive ring has 60 teeth, which would normally allow a 6-degree engagement – among the fastest in the industry. Our proprietary mechanism allows for a second set of three pawls, phased three degrees from the first. This feature cuts engagement time in half, to a mind-blowing three degrees! Our lightning quick take-up has become highly desirable on singlespeeds, twenty-niners, and disciplines with gate starts. We have tested our drive system beyond 700 ft-lbs of torque, which amounts roughly to a super-chipped Ford Power Stroke turbo diesel engine. In over two years of prototyping and testing, we have had zero drive mechanism failures.

Service Guide

PDF Library

Industry Nine Spoke Tension Specification

Indusrty Nine Spoke Tension Specification

These instructions assume a fundamental knowledge of bicycle wheel construction. If you do not understand the terms or possess familiarity with lacing and tensioning spoked bicycle wheels, please take them to a local bicycle shop and have them professionally built.

BUILD/TENSION/LACING INSTRUCTIONS FOR TORCH MOUNTAIN WHEELS

TORCH HUB SERVICE GUIDE

The Industry Nine Torch generation hubs are designed to be simple to service. They can be serviced with basic tools readily available to the home or shop mechanic – no proprietary tools are required for regular maintenance. The hubs can be easily serviced by an experienced bike mechanic or home mechanic with basic technical knowledge and the required tools. In order to properly service Industry Nine Torch Series hubs, we suggest you follow the steps in this guide.

I9 700c UL250c TRA Carbon

I9 700c UL250c TRA Carbon