Santa Cruz Reserve 30HD Wheels on Santa Cruz Megatower V2
- Matt Overton
- Jun 17
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 2
When building my son's NICA Race Bike, I ran into a snag when the Roval Carbon wheelset I was going to run, was no longer available. So I started looking for options and did not find many cost effective offerings for lightweight carbon wheels. I did find Santa Cruz Reserve 30HD Wheels on an amazing sale and since I have a 2023 Santa Cruz Megatower V2 for gnarly Pisgah trails and bike park laps, I decided to go that route. I had a set of Roval Traverse Carbon Wheels on this Megatower, which I would swap to my son's race bike. The Roval wheels come in at 1,760 grams which is not as light as I wanted, but is still a light wheelset compared to most aluminum options.
The Santa Cruz Reserve 30HD is known as an insanely tough wheel that can take some serious punishment. If you have never seen this video of the wheels being torture tested, it's worth a watch! The Reserve 30HD is a 30mm wide wheel, that uses a 28H spoke count, that weighs in at 1791g. They come in multiple hub options, but I always run the DT Swiss 350 hub because it is the best hub on the market in my opinion. DT350 is the most reliable and maintenance free hub I have used. I have thousands of miles on multiple sets and have had to perform no maintenance or rebuild tasks. These Reserve wheels are very stout and with 203mm rotors and a Shimano 12 speed cassette, they weighed in at 2700g. The weight to strength factor on these wheels is insane and that is one of the reasons they are so highly rated.
On the trail, these wheels ride great and feel compliant but not harsh. Some carbon wheels can feel overly stiff, but these do not. I feel like they are a good balance between stiffness and compliance. I don't ride my Megatower all the time, but I have really enjoyed the feel of these wheels when I ride gnarly trails. I have put probably 100 miles on these and they are still running true with no issues. These are a great wheel and I would recommend them to anyone. They also pair really nicely if you have a Santa Cruz bike!
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