Enve SES 3.4 wheels: Tech Q+A with Ken Bloomer

The other weekend I travelled to Girona, Spain to ride Enve's newly updated SES 3.4 carbon fibre clincher wheels, and you can read my first ride impressions here. Whilst there I took the opportunity to chat with Enve European Brand Manager Ken Bloomer about the new wheels and we covered subjects from the growing trend for wide tyres to tubeless and disc brakes. 

- First Ride: Enve SES 3.4 carbon fibre clincher wheels

road.cc: Let’s start with the new SES 3.4 wheelset you’ve launched today. Can you give a quick overview of it?

Ken Bloomer: So we just launched a 3.4. The 3.4 has been our best selling SES road wheel and as the road cycling market grows and advances it was time to update it. So we’ve updated it with tubeless technology, optimised it around a 25mm tyre, we were actually able to make a lighter wheel in the process, it incorporates our new laminate technology so our wheels are very durable and offer superior braking performance, 30% better than our previous generation wheel and are very heat resistant, so they don’t build up heat on the descent. 

Enve has a wide range of wheels now, where does the SES 3.4 fit into the range and why should they choose this one?

Our philosophy is that we build products for where people ride, how they ride and the type of bike that they ride. The 3.4 is a wheel that falls into the spectrum of road wheel towards the climbing wheels that offer a little bit of an aero advantage and I think that is why this wheel appeals to so many people because it does tick off a lot of those boxes. And in selecting a wheel, we definitely not only talk about the technical aspects of our wheels but also the benefits and who is it best suited to.

We’ve done a journal entry on our website that people can refer to and they can see “oh this is my sort of profile that I typically ride my bike in and this is how I like to ride my bike,” and that gives some guidance. Obviously, we keep on launching this new wheels and we’ve got to update that, but it’s a good starting point that people can refer to and they can see “oh this is my sort of profile that I typically ride my bike in and this is how I like to ride my bike,” and that gives some guidance. Obviously, we keep on launching this new wheels and we’ve got to update that, but it’s a good starting point. 

Carbon fibre wheels have come a long way in a short space of time and the price has come down a lot, the entry level is now more affordable and obtainable than ever before. Where do you see the future of carbon wheels?

Well, I think you have to be careful about the lower end carbon stuff, it’s not a matter of scaling it to where you get the economies of scale, the more you produce the cheaper it becomes. Enve invests a lot of money into the tooling that we use, the moulds we use to produce the wheels, and the finished product is the result of that. The wheels that people buy, that’s how they look when they come out of the mould. There’s no finishing work.

That’s because we spend so much time and effort and money on the front end to produce these wheels that look so beautiful, Other manufacturers cut costs by using cheaper or less expensive steel moulds that can be used over a longer period of time, but on the backside, they require a lot of finishing work. A lot of sanding, filling, painting. I still believe there’s a point, we see this in other carbon products in the market, it becomes a hazard to go below a certain level. 

- The pros and cons of carbon fibre wheels

So the acquisition by Mavic's parent company doesn’t mean we’ll see more affordable Enve wheels anytime soon?

No. It’s not that we don’t want to make a more affordable wheel, the price you pay for an Enve, you’re paying for the quality of the wheel. It’s the best quality carbon fibre wheel we believe we can produce through the process we use, the type of carbon we use, and all the engineering that goes into it.

And on top of that, you’re getting a five year guarantee, it’s the industry’s leading guarantee, and a lifetime crash replacement policy. We’re very confident in the durability of our wheels so a person that puts out €3,000 for these wheels, it’s an investment but it’s also an insurance program. 

How important is having a pro team on your product? Pro teams have been a shop window for manufacturers for a long time, do you still see that being the case today?

Yes, it’s vital. Because Dimension-Data and Cervelo Bigla are valuable technical partners for us. Yes, it is a marketing exercise, yes it’s a great way to get the advertisement for the brand, but both teams are vital in the development of the product. The 4.5 AR was a direct result of our partnership with Dimension-Data in developing an aero wheel optimised around a 30mm tyre for the spring classics. The riders give us a lot of valuable feedback on our product. They make us better. And in turn, we can also help them and assist them, and make them better. So it’s a very important relationship. 

So part marketing and part valuable product development?

Absolutely. You know, the team mechanics love us, at the end of the day when they bring the bikes back from the stage of a Tour, Klaus the lead mechanic  said to me on numerous occasions, he knows when the bikes come back that the wheels are the one thing he doesn’t have to worry about, it’s everything else he’s got to deal with. He knows he can put the bikes in the truck knowing that the wheels are tip top. 

Talking of the 4.5 AR, you mentioned previously how you have designed it to provide a smoother ride on cobbles? Is that down to the carbon fibre layup, you can tune the layup to provide the desired level of stiffness in a rim?

Absolutely. There are different types of carbon. We are using a unidirectional carbon fibre on all our wheels, and it’s a much more difficult carbon to work with, but done properly with the proper layup schedule and everything, you can create a wheel that has that lateral and torsional stiffness you’re looking for, but not at the sacrifice of vertical stiffness, and that’s what we’re talking about, the vertical stiffness. We go through hundreds of iterations of wheels before we reach an end product, and that includes massive laboratory testing as well as riding testing. It has to pass both, otherwise, we won’t put it put there. So yeah, there’s a lot that goes into it. 

Rims have been getting wider over the past few years, where do you see rim width going in the future? Wider and wider, especially with the advent of gravel bikes? Is there a limit to how wide we can go?

We’re kind of seeing that happen already. If we just look at the mountain bike side, the trend over the past few years has been wider is better, and we’ve gone out over 40mm internal width. And if you look at the Plus segment where the 3.0in tyre was standard, and now they’re coming back down, 2.8in and 2.6in which seems to be the happy medium. So I think on the roadside we’re still experimenting, I see it has been validated that a 25mm and 28mm tyre has a lower rolling resistance than a 23mm tyre, so I think we still have a little bit to learn there on the tyre technology.

Tyre manufacturers need to catch up, and obviously with gravel that just opens the door for even more standards and widths and such, so I think we’re on the cusp of some new products and technologies as far as rim width goes, but we need to do some learning and figure out what that all looks like. It’s going to be fun, it’s going to be interesting times. 

- Trend spotting: Why you need to switch to wider tyres

​Disc brakes are the other big trend in road cycling tomorrow of course. What’s the split between rim and disc brake wheel sales?

It depends. That’s regional. In the US we see the phenomenon that all the sportives and gravel events are not sanctioned by the UCI, and that just opens the door for disc brakes. So in the US we actually see disc brakes outpacing the rim brakes. But Europe is a little more traditional, it’s governed by the UCI, there are very few events that aren’t governed by the UCI, so that becomes a barrier to disc brakes being sold into the marketplace because a lot of dealers are reluctant to invest into disc brakes as well as the consumers. But I think once we see the UCI get behind disc brakes, it’s going to open up the door.

And going back to the gravel thing, I think that will also open the door more to disc brakes, there are obvious advantages to it. Tubeless works really well with disc brakes because you don’t have to worry about heat management on the rim anymore, and also for aerodynamics it’s quicker because you can create a more aero rim profile on a disc brake rim than you can on a rim brake, and that transition from tyre to rim is more efficient. So it actually makes for a faster wheel. 

Is there any potential to save weight without the need for a brake track?

Absolutely. The weight you can save on a disc wheel is immense, it’s a lot. For instance, the normal 4.5 road rim brake is about 100g heavier a set than the 5.6 even though the 5.6 is deeper than the 4.5 wheel, that’s just a function of getting rid of the brake track.

The new moulded brake track you’ve developed, how long was that in development for?

A couple of years. That was also something we had been working on, that’s the holy grail of carbon clinchers or carbon wheels in general, the braking performance has historically been suboptimal. Every carbon manufacturer has tried all kinds of tricks and technologies to improve the braking performance. We’ve definitely been chasing that as well. With the new diamond profile that we have on the rim brake track, along with the new laminates we’re using, we haven’t seen any failure in the brake track, any sort of deformation or delamination. The braking performance is improved by 30%. 

So the new brake track is moulded into the rim?

All of our technologies are patented, including the moulded spoke holes. Anything we do to carbon, be it wheels or components, we do it in the mould. Because that makes for a more durable product. It’s a big investment but it makes the finishing a lot easier. 

Read the Enve SES 3.4 first ride here.

Photos © Augustus Farmer