2022 Roval Rapide & Alpinist CLX II (now tubeless capable)

Nothing wrong with your tire (likely).
These wheels are designed with the 26mm Turbo Cotton in mind, those sit much narrower than the rim as well.
I have now put some 6000km on these wheels. Summer, Winter, bad roads, cobbles…
Also, i just recently crashed with them (fast, but I was only sliding so no head on impact).
They have held up very well. There is likely an increased risk of banging up the rim, when hitting a pothole or curb, but I’d advise against doing that in the first place… with any rim.

I’ve had a similar experience with Vittorias, are you sure the bead is fully seated? It took a hell of a lot of pressure (over the hookless max pressure I should have stuck to) and eventually some light lubrication to get the final pops.

They are designed this way, nothing wrong with yours. They are claimed to be more aero. Mine are the same even with 28mm 5000s.

Rear is different then the front. Only the front is designed like this. Don’t listen to that mechanic.

The wheel is designed this way.

To be fair to the mechanic, the recommendation to avoid potholes. Obviously we all try, he just mentioned the seating to me.

I could not get these tires to seat tubeless.

Specialized gets away with shit the same way Apple and Tesla do. Take a complete failure, twist it into a feature, market it as such and then get your devout following to spread it as the gospel

That said, my roval wheels havnt had so much as a spoke wrench on them in over a year of road and cyclocross. Hate that they’re so good!

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Isn’t that just as wrong as what you accuse people of doing (devouring their marketing claims)?

In my opinion, specialized have build two fantastic sets of wheels. The 2020 version was a great, very very light, for clincher wheelset. With the rapide still being among the best in terms of aero and weight, while still being, in my experience, the most stable wheel set in crosswinds.
Now they were updated and improved upon.

I understand your point, but they did the right thing, and did extensive testing before releasing a product and didn’t release it as TL, when it didn’t meet their criteria,
They then had the luck that idiots, like myself, went out, bought the wheels, and were and are still happy with them…

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The right thing would have been to shelf the wheels until they could figure out what the problem was. Instead, they hid the fact that they failed at their ultimate goal of releasing a high end tubeless wheel and said “this is what they pros are doing, you should too!”… Knowing damn well they were going to fix whatever the problem was and sell them as an incremental upgrade after they sold their stock of the old wheels.

They make damn good stuff, but they straight lied to the consumer to save their asses! If Trek pulled this, pitchforks would be flying haha

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Because people love to give Spesh a pass and ignore when it messes up?

I saw more than a mild level of vehement anger towards Spesh when this all went down. Plenty of speculation at the offset when things looked fishy, and more once the reality became public and confirmed at the 2nd release. They sure didn’t get a “wave by” from anything I saw.

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There was certainly anger, yet they sold every single $14k Sworks SL7 they could make. Theres anger, but they know everyone will keep coming back. Hence my Apple analogy.

I dont mean to throw stones…I own 2 sets of Roval wheels. I think they make a great product. I just wish more companies would go to their engineering team instead of their marketing team when they realize they have a problem

They wanted to sell a new wheelset on the new bike, and the Rapide CLX 1, is a huge step up from the Roval CLX64 and CLX50, where fitting tubeless was difficult as hell, the 64 were terribly unstable for their depth, and the tire would unseat when losing air. Don’t think shelving the product for 2 years would have been a good solution for anyone.

which one is better CLX64 or CLX50

You’d be shocked at how few bikes that is……

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64 is faster, 50 is lighter. Rapide is the best of both worlds.

Haha I’d guess either 2000 or 14! At this point, nothing shocks me anymore!

Wanted to update, earlier this week I rode in the windiest conditions yet. On Tuesday I rode 2 hours in very windy conditions, around 25mph / 40kph sustained, with gusts up to 40mph / 64kph. Was riding in some unprotected areas without trees. These wheels are far more stable in crosswinds than my Enve 5.6, they are a little shallower with front at 51mm Rapide vs 54mm Enve 5.6, and rear at 60mm vs 63mm. Since buying these, I’ve also ridden fast descents in crosswinds and same experience.

The Rapide CLX II are very very stable.

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:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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:rofl:

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@WindWarrior what tire width are you running? I’m considering the CL II (ok, just bought a rear wheel that specialized is clearing out and trying to convince myself to get the front), but I’m worried that running wider tires might mess up the wind gust handling.

I was surprised to read they’re optimized for 26c when the front rim is 35mm external. Is that because it’s widest in the middle and then tapers down toward the bead?

I haven’t had any issues with handling in the wind, front tires measuring from 26mm to 35mm. Right now I’ve got 28c front and 32c rear - I think the front measures over 30mm.

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