Educate me on Disc Wheels
 

I just got my first disc bike, CAAD13 105 disc. I am not a fan of the wheelset and that would be the first upgrade I am looking at. I see center lock and center bolt wheels. My bike has 6 bolts on the disc but is it using some sort of adapter? I saw a Mavic Pro Carbon UST new takeoff locally for a good price but don't want to buy something that won't work on my bike.

I will more than likely keep the current set for the trainer/winter wheels keeping the disc and cassette in place and get new for the new wheelset.

I would also like some suggestions for wheels. I don't care if they are alloy of CF although I do want quality hubs and of course they need to look good!

There’s center lock, which I think started as Shimano’s proprietary design but now is duplicated by others. If has the splined interface where the disc slips onto the hub. And there’s six bolt, the design of which is explained in its name.

You can put a six bolt disc on a center lock hub with a simple adapter. It sounds like that’s what you have. You can’t put a center lock disc on a six bolt hub, as far as I know. There is not enough space for the kind of adapter that would require.

There are tons of good wheels available, in both hub styles. I don’t have any specific recommendations.

I figured out that I do have center lock hubs. I think I will wait to see if there are any fall sales on wheelsets.

Center Lock and 6-bolt will both work on your bike, it's just a matter of matching your hub to your rotors. The type of hub that you have on your current wheels is irrelevant unless you want to carry over your existing brake rotors. As mentioned CL is more versatile.

Thank you. I am new to Disc and through bolt hubs so trying to learn as much as possible. I have good Park tool set and bike stand so I want to learn the maintenance and repair for these items, like brake pads etc.

I suggest Pro Wheel Builder. Great website to have custom wheels made.

Adapters (either way) are about 20 bucks, so the entire question need not concern you.

You can go from CL hub to a 6-bolt rotor, but not from a 6-bolt hub to a CL rotor. The only real downside to this is that those with 6-bolt hubs can't use Shimano's snazziest rotors, which are all CL.

Oops, you're right.

I have my choices (at the moment) narrowed down to Fulcrum Zero or Hunt 34. I am leaning toward the Fulcrum since I have 3's on my Ridley and they have been a great wheelset.

Big thing now is the decision to go tubeless or not.

The vast majority of halfway decent wheelsets are going to be tubeless ready/compatible, so this likely doesn't impact the wheel decision. A couple of Specialized/Rovals are notable exceptions in that they're tubed only and, on the flipside, there are a small handful of wheels that are tubeless only (from the likes of Zipp, ENVE, etc).

The wheels on my short list are both. It seems with tubeless, it's either love or hate so I have been trying to read up on Pros and Cons of tubeless.

I'm aware - I'm just saying that "tubeless or not?" is a question that can be saved for later and isn't really a factor in the current decision.

My advice on tubed vs tubeless would be: get your new wheels. Run them tubed. Revisit when and if flat frequency become an issue.

Great minds think alike. lol. I have never really had a flat issue running Conti 4000/5000 with Conti tubes so it would be hard for me to switch to tubeless unless there is real advantage.