It has been about 8 weeks since the 1st installment of the HED Stinger 60 review. I had originally called the title HED Stinger 6 – and I was confused by HED’s website only listing the Stinger 6 model. The Stinger 60 is its own model indeed and differs slightly from the Stinger 6 model only in that the rim and braking surface profile is different by shape. The Stinger 6’s apparently have a more voluminous rim profile and braking surface with the same rim size (23mm). Why the difference? – for increased performance in aerodynamics. Thankfully – I don’t care about the aerodynamics necessarily for this review.

…all things look like its only me holding myself back because these wheels are definitely meant to kill cross races

So how is my blingtastic journey of deep dish heaven faring for me? Well, the wheels definitely catch the stares of many on the race circuit and practice and give my overall bike the pro-quality that far exceeds my actual racing talent. They are, by and far, the most attractive part of the bike with a $300 set of Dugasts glued to each set. They don’t just look pretty but I have found they performed incredibly well in just about every condition I have put them through and I have yet to come up with a complaint about how they react in the rain, the mud, the sand, and straight up rocks, yes, I said rocks. I have now raced these sets of wheels at 7 races and 4 practices. I have been merciless and purposely have not thought about being particularly careful with the wheelsets as I preferred to concentrate on racing and not any possible fragility with this lightweight wheelset. HED claims that they’d perform on or above par with their competitors, and given that I don’t give obvious abuse to the carbon rims and spokes, I have ridden them as any racer would expect to race them.

I am now at race weight – approximately 161 lbs. on a good race day. I believe weight is an incredibly important factor for wheelset reviews to get a true impression of what abuse they are facing when being pushed to their limits. Weight is also an indicator of what tire pressure will be run, in turn dictating what protection, if any, is the tire providing the rim over various terrains. The Dugast Rhino sets are being run at 31PSI front and 32PSI rear; the Dugast Flying Doctor sets are being run at 32PSI front and 33PSI rear. The cotton tubulars are very sensitive to pressure changes and is an artform in of itself to find the right pressure. I find the pressures I’m running on the HED wheelsets are considerably higher than what I ran the same Dugast tires on my old Mavic Kysrium ES, which was about 28PSI front and 30PSI rear. Yes, pressures do change depending on course conditions – and these are averages based on what I raced on so far this year. This is an item to note because I realized that I can run a higher pressure on these sets of wheels with the same tire most likely due to the rim profile. The HED wheels have a wider rim profile than the Mavic’s by 1-2 mm depending on which specs you read from Mavic. This makes a difference in contact patch with the tubular tire and its placement on the rim. The wider rim also allows for a wider displacement of that volume of the tire on the rim – meaning, higher pressure in a tubular will yield a similar footprint as a lower pressure in the same tubular on the smaller rim profile because its stretched out by that extra 1-2 mm in width.

I am a mountain biker through and through, so I tend to corner in an exaggerated fashion really leaning on my tires to take me through the turn. I am a fan of low pressure to achieve the best amount of tire contact with the ground, especially on leaning turns to avoid braking and carrying through on a nice apex of a turn. With the HED wheels, I was able to particularly carve this style with aplomb and really trust that the wheel remained stable under front weight load carving into a corner, when it matters the most. The tire did its job to claw into the terrain, but the wheel’s job is to maintain that rhythm and stability through the effort – especially when out of the turn when a quick few pedal strokes demand extra speed and torque off the rear end. I had taken turns on several occasions (DeKalb and Madison come to mind) where my line threw me into the path of tree roots and I blasted right over the roots and definitely felt the thud of the rear wheel as it landed squarely on the top of the roots. It spun through fine and continued its performance. On one occasion, in a typically tired moment of racing, I had neglected to lift the front tire well enough to fly over a barrier, and I clocked it square on feeling a vibrating thud emanate through the front end of my bike and yet, I still managed to leap on and continue the race without issues.

Of particular note, I recently read up on CX Magazine on their article of riding through sand and was interested in their conclusions about the deep rim mythology and its performance in sand. I have to add to their assessment. I believe that the analysis is probably true for what they reviewed, a CX bike running at 15mph coasting into a sand section. I tested this theory at speeds of 18-25mph into a sand section and including mud sections. I firmly believe that deep dish rims offer a ‘control’ advantage that is not felt with a box rim. At the US Gran Prix in Louisville, I was faced with a morning full of deep mud – 6”-8” of mud in many sections and these sections were sometimes immediately following a straightaway where speed could be wound up quickly. With the HED profile, I could slice through the mud quickly and maintain my trajectory far better than I would’ve with box rim profiles – this also meant carrying through momentum better and increasing the speed out of the sand pit or mud pit. This is definitely an advantage. If you are going 15mph ‘coasting’ into mud or sand – then perhaps yes, its negligible, but the speed variable has a definite effect, the faster you roll through it, the more chance your trajectory will be carried through cleanly allowing the rim to do what can do best in a mucky condition. The advantage lays in the amount of speed you not only carry through the mud or sand, but how much momentum you keep going – so you’re hauling through these sections applying some torque to keep the groove going. The control factor is when the front rim slices through the mess and the rear does the same while giving you the ability to apply a steady cadence and momentum through it. If the wheels wander – which they did on a couple of occasions, regaining trajectory was not hindered (so long as there was a clear space on either side of me). What about all that mud weight? Even with the amount of mud that the rims accumulated at several races, the braking surface was still usable and easily managed through the toughest conditions. This was a very welcome observation – my brakes weren’t useless on an incredibly wet and dirty carbon rim. The pads I use are the SRAM labeled Swiss Stop Yellow pads. I had also used the salmon colored TRP pads previously, and though they worked relatively well, they squealed something awful on the HED rims, they did stop squealing as much after a day of breaking in but still were too noisy for my tastes. The Swiss Stop pads appear to function very nicely with the HED rims. Mud did not stick to the rims and add pile-on mud at the rims surface or even at the minimal surface where the spoke meets the rim. This was a welcome feeling as carrying as little mud as possible in an hour sufferfest is a very nice thing.

Justin McCormick has been reviewing the wheelsets carefully after every race – analyzing stress points, spoke tension, tire mounting, everything that should be carefully reviewed after a stressful day of laying it on the course. The great news is that, after all these races so far, in both wheelsets combined, a total of 1.5-2mm of adjustment was made to spoke tension. They keep their true incredibly well. They’ve been rolled through thick mud which is a tension sapper for any wheel due to the amount of stress you place on a wheel to navigate through the muck. They’ve hit tree roots and an occasional rock on the course – at times when I hit them I winced after hearing the carbon rim ding against the rough surface. They’ve traveled in a car trunk with a half dozen other wheelsets, in a truck bed, and on roof racks in the rainy road trips. They clean up easily and the last inspection after the most recent race even had the hubs opened up for a simple regrease, and they weren’t entirely in need of it and the shells were clean and incredibly great condition despite all the grit they’ve endured recently.

These wheels, as I repeat my self-deprecating observation, are definitely made to hammer beyond my ability. They spin up very fast, maintain speed easily, and I haven’t found an aero benefit to them on a cross course. I have found a great sense of control taking corners hard, climbing, and torquing them as any racer would do in a hard cross scenario. They are bonafide stiff carbon wheels that definitely transfer power to revolutions and are surprisingly quiet compared to other carbon deep dish rims I’ve heard whiz around the course. There isn’t a sense to baby them in the least – and I have crashed on them on the rare occasion, and they’ve survived just fine taking a sideways slide on a grassy course. I even dared to bunny hop over several trail obstacles at practice and landed squarely on both wheels – no worries at all, not a singular creak or squeak were complained from the set. I have at least 5 more races to go before Montrose in the Chicago Cross Cup. The weather is turning foul, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens to the rims when the weather gets cold and the ice comes out. The final segment of this review will be had after that time – a full season’s analysis of what they did and didn’t do, and so far – all things look like its only me holding myself back because these wheels are definitely meant to kill cross races.