Halo’s Skelta wheelset is built for a range of mountain bike disciplines. From trail centres to Hardline, they’re designed to be durable and uncompromising. With that, it brings bang-on trail performance, decent comfort, and a great freehub for the cash. However, as it’s built to cover so many bases, it is on the weighty side.
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Halo Skelta wheelset – Technical details
Halo claims that with its rim design, the brand has managed to build a wheelset that’s even plenty strong enough but without ‘excessive weight’. To do so, the brand has utilised 6069-T6 heat-treated aluminium and has finished it off with an invisible welded joint, and invisible, it certainly is. New for Halo is a Renthal-like shot-peened finish, which is said to boost corrosion and fatigue resistance.
As for dimensions, the rims use a 30mm internal width with a hooked rim profile that’s shaped for tyre security. Touching back on that internal width, it’s been chosen to best suit 2.25 to 2.8in rubber, which is a mighty wide range.
At the heart of the Skelta wheelset is Halo’s MT Supadrive freehub, which is laced to the rim via 32 triple-butted and readily available J-bend spokes. That freehub uses a somewhat different design that can be likened to a car’s drum brakes. It uses three large ‘wedge pawls’ that have 12 teeth per pawl. The brand says that the more force that’s transmitted through the pawls, the more secure engagement they deliver.
This design means that Halo has managed to stuff more teeth into the system for a faster engagement, as they don’t need to be as deep as conventional designs. As a result, there’s a 120-point engagement with a maximum of three degrees of rotation before the pawls engage, which is fairly quick. The freehub then uses a Cr-Mo body to fend off cassette bite.
As a wheelset that’s built to perform through many different riding disciplines, the Skelta wheels are available in a huge range of sizes, from 24in through to 29, including 650b and 26in options. Of course, there are mullet wheelsets too, as well as ‘micro mullet’, so that’s a 26 and 24in pair.
The wheelset can be picked up with Halo’s MatraDrive freehub for slopeduro setups and in Superboost and regular Boost spacings. All wheels come in six-bolt rotor mounts only, but they can be built with XD, Microspine and HD freehubs, so all mountain bike bases are certainly covered.
Halo says that it’s been able to deliver a bunch of performance without compromising on weight. However, I disagree as I’ve weighed the 29in, XD freehub-equipped, Boost-spaced wheelset at 2,150g, which is a little too far over the two-kilo mark for my liking.
Halo Skelta wheelset – Performance
But if we put weight aside for a second, Halo has managed to bring excellent performance with the Skelta wheels. To start, the setup is super straightforward. Out of the box, the wheels come with a top-notch tape job. The rim tape installed by the folks who put these hoops together is bang-on perfection. All that’s required is a pair of valves to be popped through the tape. Unfortunately, Halo doesn’t supply valves with the wheels, and it would be nice if they were included, but if you’re upgrading your wheels to the Skeltas, it’s likely you’ve got a set already. If you don’t, it makes for an excellent excuse to upgrade to the burgeoning crop of high-flow valves.
Thanks to that excellent taping and the rim’s internal profile, seating tubeless tyres is as simple as it gets. I fitted Specialized’s latest Butcher and Eliminator duo with no issues at all, using my trusty Topeak Mountain EX pump.
Once seated, that 30mm internal width resulted in a positive tyre profile. It’s clear that the rims support large volume tyres, where mine sat proud and middling between square and round. This brings balanced performance between pedalling efficiency and traction, but enough about tyres.
This is one durable wheelset. I’ve ridden the Skeltas primarily through natural trails and even through the roughest stuff I could find, the rims are yet to bat an eyelid. They run as true as they did when I pulled them out of the box, and the freehub’s sealing is rather good too, only showing a little bit of blackening of the grease where some dust has ingressed. The internal teeth in the hub shell are still squeaky clean after three to four months of hammering. The shot-peened finish helps keep the wheels looking fresh, too.
Speaking of the freehub, the Supadrive has made its name for a reason. It’s a solid unit that does an excellent job of translating leg power into forward momentum. It’s never skipped or made any kind of fuss while riding. The engagement is snappy too, and really, it’s excellent to see such performance on a wheelset of this price. I must note that the end caps did come loose, and it’s likely that they weren’t torqued to spec, but it took a quick tightening for the wheelset to return to shape.
What’s really impressive about the Skelta wheels is that Halo has managed to find an excellent balance between compliance and durability. This is an alloy wheelset, and it provides the ride you can expect from such a build. Throughout all of my riding on them, I’ve not found them harsh or distracting. They dispatch rough and chattery sections by damping high-frequency vibrations. Combine that with the present level of durability, and it’s a wheelset that’s happy to be pushed where others may crumble.
While they have picked up the odd scratch, there’s little to moan about with the Skeltas. But they are weighty, and that’s likely due to Halo’s pursuit of strength, and through creating one rim to tackle such a wide variety of riding. That weight did add a hint of sluggishness to my ride when climbing and accelerating, but the increased durability makes for a worthy compromise, especially if you’re a heavy or hard rider, although the extra grams won’t please everyone, myself included.
Halo Skelta wheelset – Verdict
We can’t talk about alloy rims at this price point without talking about Hunt, and with its Enduro V3 29 wheelset, the brand has Halo pipped when it comes to weight, but only marginally. Hunt’s offering claims to weigh 2,096g, but the rim isn’t designed to run as narrow tyres as the Skelta can. The Enduro V3 uses 6061 rims and the brand’s own H_Ratchet XL freehub as well as front and rear-specific designs. That freehub, however, doesn’t look to be a fast-engaging as Hunt says it provides a nine-degree engagement, against the Skelta’s three. It also isn’t available in the breadth of options.
Silt’s Enduro Alloy wheelset brings serious heat at £380. It’s lighter at 1,890g, but I ran into minor issues with quality control, the rim tape isn’t as great, and the freehub wasn’t that well sealed, which led to creaking deeper into the test. It is strong, however, and they provide a great ride.
If you’re looking around the £500 mark, it’s likely you’ll be considering Hope’s Fortus 30 SC Pro 5 wheels, and if it were my money, I would go for the Skeltas. They’re of a similar weight, but the rims aren’t taped from the factory, and I found the freehub to get rather creaky, requiring regular maintenance to keep it silent. I also prefer the Supadrive hub over the Pro 5, though it only comes in black.
Halo’s Skelta wheelset is one set for many bikes. Whether you ride enduro, downhill, dirt jump or trail, there’s a lot to like and a wheel size for you. While weighty in its 29in Boost guise, it’s been flawless throughout its test, apart from the nipping up of a pair of end caps. The ride they provide is comfortable, too, and I reckon you’ll have a hard time wrecking them. It’s not a light setup, but the durability will be worth the compromise for heavier and harder riders.
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