You may be familiar with Novatec, but for the most part the brand flies under the gravity market radar. Now they're sponsoring the KHS DH team and have a few more things on the go, and the Diablo V2s are worth a look. Read Anthony's thoughts here and see if the Diablo could be your next spinners.
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Novatec Diablo V2 Wheels - Price: $740
Words: Anthony Smith
Photos: Van Swae
My time on the Novatec Diablo wheels started innocently enough. While snooping around the Bike magazine shop I came across this wheelset that none of the staff were scheduled to test yet, from a company that I really didn’t know a whole lot about, Novatec. The wheels looked good, sounded great, and rolled smooth. I asked around too see if I could throw these on the Banshee spitfire that I was testing at the time. The answer came back “Sure…ride ‘em, but you’ll have to write the review.” Sounded like a fair plan. After all, I just needed to get a couple of weekends out of the wheels before I had to send back that test bike, so I figured I would give them a shot. But here we are, a year, and a half later, and I have these wheels on my third test bike to date.
The Diablo wheels are dubbed as Novatec’s do-it-all freeride, enduro, 4x wheelset. That may sound like a big brush stoke of categories for any one wheelset to cover, but given all the Diablo’s adjustability and compatibility, it turns out to be an accurate description.
The front wheel weighs in at 872 grams and its hub boasts Novatec’s 4-in-1 range of adjustability. The standard 9-millimeter QR and through QR are perhaps unnecessary given the aggressive type riders that these wheels are targeted towards. The 15-millimeter and 20-millimeter through-axle modes are the only way that I ran these wheels for the duration of the test. Changing these wheels from 15 to 20 millimeter is as easy as popping out the inserts you don’t need, and putting in the ones you do. Little mechanical aptitude, or intelligence required.
Check out Anthony's complete thoughts and more photos of the Novatec Diablo on Bikemag.com.
"Given the one-and-only issue that I had with the wheels (since putting on my bike a year and a half ago) was a catastrophic one, the question begs to be asked: Would I want to trust another set to do my bidding on every blown turn, bad line and jump I short? Hell, yeah! Literally, until the day the rear freehub body exploded, I did not have a single issue with these wheels. They ran smooth and true, and were up to any challenge I threw their way. Besides, the one glitch (albeit a major, ride-ending one) I ran into has, according to Novatec, already been corrected on the latest version of the Diablos. For a reasonably priced and high performance wheelset capable of being mounted on a huge range of bikes, I would say that Novatec’s Diablos are a fantastic value." -- Anthony Smith
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