Customer Review: DT Swiss BR2250 Big Ride Fat Bike 26" Rear Wheel

This review was written by Mason Jones who was looking to upgrade his fat bike rear wheel in time for a fat bike event - lets take a look at this thoughts and opinions on the DT Swiss BR2250 Big Ride Fat Bike 26" Rear Wheel.

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I ride a 2015 Rocky Mountain Blizzard and while the bike is overall very good, the rear hub is notorious for failure. Specifically the pawls can wear out and then "slip" and the hub basically spins in place on the axle rendering the bike without a drivetrain. Rocky is aware of the failure but does not replace the hub, they merely repair it when it fails, and then it just fails again. The 2016/17 version of the bike has a DT Swiss hub. I was lucky to be able to maintain and repair my OEM hub and use it for over a full season but after mine was repaired, the local dealer told me it would just fail again at some point, and it was wise to start saving for a new wheel. To buy the DT Swiss hub and rebuild my wheel was going to cost almost as much as buying a whole new wheel and being mid-season, this was a much faster solution as no local dealers had the parts in stock; and I was going to a fat bike event very soon.

There are several replacement fat bike wheels out there with pawl designs and many of those have reports of failing but the star-rachet design of the DT Swiss wheel appears to be much more bomb proof. The wheel was delivered quickly and installed in minutes without issue. The directions from the manufacturer are useless but it is very easy to figure it out. The bike needed very minor adjustment to the derailleur once the new wheel was on and I had to reset the brake centering. Inside the box were all the parts listed on the site for the various drivers but it came set up for Shimano 10 speed which my bike has.

In the description of the wheel, the manufacturer says "tubeless kit in development" so my friend emailed them to ask if this would work tubeless as-is. DT Swiss replied right away but told him it would not work. I found several internet reports of it working for lots of people so I tried it. I used the extra wide Orange tape and cold weather sealant to set this up tubeless. The tape does not stick quite as well to this rim strip DT Swiss uses on this wheel but it does work. The rim strip is a thinner material and is a kind of soft nylon, instead of the much thicker strips that come standard on many wheels. This material is lighter and while the tape does not stick as well as I hoped it does work and the tire mounted tubeless with a Lou 4.8. The wheel/tire combination works very well and has been used for several weeks in all kinds of snow conditions, including barely rideable soft snow down to about 1.5 PSI with no burping or leaking.

I am not sure about all the reasons why but many OEM fat bike wheels are known to fail, a local dealer told me it was because much more torque is put on these fat bike wheels. Whatever the reason investing in a good star-rachet hub is a good investment. The wheel looks great and it is lighter than my OEM wheel, though I cannot say I notice that weight difference. Overall it is still a lot of money to spend on a rear wheel for something that is not my primary bike but I am very happy with it and I have great confidence it will last much longer.