Roval Traverse SL Fattie 29

All-mountain wheels often fall into two categories—they’re either heavy and durable or light and flexy. And because of this a lightweight wide-profile and enduro-ready carbon wheel seems like something only found in a fairytale but lucky for you we made it a reality. The Traverse SL Fattie brings all the features you need in an all-mountain wheel into one package and it has the results to prove it.

During our prototype phase the rims spent two seasons of abuse on the Enduro World Series circuit under Curtis Keene and have since been proven by Jared Graves and host of other riders around the world. But don’t be quick to label the Traverse SL Fattie as merely some indestructible heavy carbon wheels—there’s far much more to the story.

Beginning with its big-boned name the Traverse SL Fatties may be wide but with a 30mm inner rim width they’re far from the girth of a fat bike rim. But why so wide? Well you've probably noticed that mountain bike rim widths have hovered between 19 and 23 millimeters for decades and they've been long overdue for a change. In the search for a better wheel design our engineers began testing 2.3 to 2.5-inch tires on 45-millimeter-wide fat bike rims to see what if any benefits could be found. It only took them a few rides to realize that the wider rims offered a variety of advantages like adding additional tire volume which better supports the tires in hard cornering greatly improves traction because of the ability to run lower pressures and noticeably increases rim stiffness. They did note that there is an occurrence of diminishing returns with increasing width however and after testing everything from 25mm to 45mm determined that a 30mm inner width gave us the optimal width.

After determining the width we began designing the rim using knowledge that we gained when developing the Control SL. With this we started with our Zero Bead Hook technology that gets rid of the weak spot found in a traditional wheel and combined it with the wider profile making for a carbon rim that effectively dissipates forces. This way you can dish out abuse from rocks and without the worry of cracks or dents.

Ok so they’re strong impact-resistant and tire supporting—they must be heavy right? Wrong. Even though “fattie” is in their name they're far from fat. During the development of the Control SL we learned the importance of using high modulus carbon fiber to reduce weight and we embedded this technology into the Traverse SL Fattie rim resulting in an all-mountain wheel that at 1600 grams is as light as many wheels in the XC category. To achieve this weight we hand-build our rims to our own alloy hubs using only the highest quality DT Swiss Revolution spokes. Inside our hubs you'll find sealed cartridge bearings with a quick engaging 54t DT Swiss star ratchet system in the rear that allows you to power over rocks and roots without delay. And while machines do a pretty good job of building wheels we choose professionally trained humans because they do so with an artistic touch that makes for minimal flaws. You may have noticed the low 24-front / 28-rear spoke count but during testing we discovered that this not only reduced weight but when built up with 32 spokes the wheels were actually too stiff.

To further reduce overall system weight we include our tubeless plug system that saves an additional 60 grams when compared to a rim strip. And whether you need a lightweight carbon wheelset to get you through an enduro stage as quickly as possible or one to shred your local rock garden the Traverse SL Fattie has you covered.