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Mercury M5 Wheelset Review
images by Nick Salazar
Mar 19, 2012  hits 31,061

The Monica rear hub is a thing of beauty.
The Monica rear hub is a thing of beauty.
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Tags » dash,  kenda,  mercury,  wheels
  • The Mercury M5 wheelset with Dash hubs and Kenda Volare 24mm tires.
  • The M5 is a pretty formidable all-around wheelset for the roadie and triathlete alike. Tri geeks might swap the rear for a M9, which is deeper.
  • Here's the Monica rear hub, by Dash. It's a perfect match for the light weight M5 rims.
  • I predict Mercury will do very well among the weight weenies, who haven't had a wide rim option this light until now.
  • My rims had nice big 24mm Volare tires by Kenda, which rode very well.
  • As a front wheel, the M5 has strengths in a lot of categories: it's stiff, wide, very light, and looks pretty darn snazzy.
  • Blunt inner diameters are a hallmark of the new wide rim trend.
  • The Mercury rims are undeniably well-made and look great to my eyes.
  • The rim-to-tire transition is impressively smooth, especially given that these are 24mm tires.
  • The wide-rim trend gives athletes the ability to get great aerodynamics at shallower depths. I would personally go a bit deeper in back, but the 55mm front is great for all-around use.
  • Mercury Cycling's M5 is an interesting entrant into the wide rim category. Though it wasn't designed by an aero PhD, it's lighter than just about any other wide rim of similar depth.
  • Staring down the barrel of the rear freehub body.
  • The Monica rear hub is a thing of beauty.
  • Here you can see the rim lip's sharper edge as it goes to the tire bed. Bontrager makes the Aeolus D3 series like this. Zipp chooses to use a gentler curve in the Firecrest series. This seems to trade a slightly smoother transition to the tire for a slightly higher chance of flatting against the sidewall.
  • The Dash Nikki-Monica hubset finishes these wheels off in style.
  • The backside of the front hub, showing off the carbon layup.
  • The Nikki front hub has a structural carbon body with rings of aluminum only at the ends to seat the spokes.
  • The nice 3K weave in the tire bed is smooth and flawless.
  • Nice little hole for the valve to sit without knocking the rim.

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