Fulcrumwheels Reviews 8

Fulcrum is a company to avoid! The company is not able to provide spare parts through their dealers and when contacting them about the issue, they just respond: Thank you, please contact a dealer to order spare parts. The wheels they are selling have unique spoke nipples that one has to use, because the standard ones are too small for the rim drillings. But the nipples are nearly impossible to get. I tried now for the month and I give up.

I own a set of Fulcrum Racing Zero DB wheels for a couple of years now, they were on a bike I purchased. From past experience with the rim brake version I wouldn't have purchased these.

For me, they perform adequately. I really like the freehub isn't loud like many other wheels are these days. That's where the good points cease.

The spokes and nipples are alloy which corrode together making it impossible to true the wheels. Using wd40 or mild acid doesn't work. If you want to risk the carbon rims, heat is the only way I've had any success.

The sticker advising they have ceramic bearings is very misleading. One would expect the bearings in the freehub would be ceramic too, but they aren't.

Speaking of the freehub bearings, the fail regularly. Due to the shape of the access to the inner bearing,one can't extract it easily. Even using a punch is difficult to get to it. The inner bearing is retained with a circlip. This is beyond the reach of most pliers and the holes in it are smaller than most pliers anyway.

The spokes are unique to these wheels. Third party spokes aren't available. The supplier in Australia doesn't normally hold a stock of them, so you'll have to order them and wait. Therefore it's wise to have a spare set of wheels or at least one of each size spoke these wheels take. Given you can only get replacements from Fulcrum the price is rather high at $aud20 plus each.

In the past I was unable to get these from anywhere in the world so had to resort to modifying one's I removed from the rim brake wheels which I removed with heat. I didn't mind the rims were destroyed by doing this since I managed t wear out 2 sets in a year.

When I complained mant times to
Fulcrum they finally got onto the local importer. They only did this because I reported the wheels to Fair trading.
The supplier called me, spoke over the Top of me and said I was making things hard for other cyclists. In the end I hung up on him as he wasn't interested in sorting out a solution.

The reason it has taken so long for me to write this review is I couldn't be bothered until a freehub bearing failed again a few days ago.

I purchased Fulcrum Sport CX wheels in April 2020. Since then, I've had to replace the rear wheel's cassette body twice, once at the start of every bike season, as they were completely rusted each time. I take good care of my bike, clean it and service it at the end of every season, so there is no reason the cassette body won't last over a year.

When I flagged the issue to Fulcrum asking for a replacement, here was their response:
"The Racing Sport CX was an entry level OEM wheel. We madethese wheels based on the asks from our OEMs to meet a certain weight and an extremely low price point. Because of this there are certain concessions made to serviceability and therefore longevity of the wheel. Most OEMs use this wheel as a place holder, assuming most customers will replace it. [..] I can easily see how you may go through a free hub per year. These use a one-piece freehub body that is sealed and non-serviceable so if a bearing goes becomes corroded due to moisture and mud during the season, it must be replaced entirely. To give you perspective, the freehub body probably costs more to replace that it costs to make the entire set. We stopped using this wheelset design in 2019 in favor of a more serviceable option. I know this isn't a great answer but it is the reality with this wheel."

It is a disappointing answer that reflects poorly on Fulcrum's brand, to say the least. They're essentially telling me that Fulcrum made the conscious decision to design a low-quality wheel for it to be quickly obsolete in order to meet financial criteria...I understand that the fact that OEMs "assume most customers will replace it" (which in itself is dishonest) is out of your control, but to me, Fulcrum is not holding itself accountable to its mission. Is this wheelset really "the absolute benchmark"? Do these results "make Fulcrum proud"?

I never got a follow-up from them past their initial answer.

Terrible customer service. I have a bent axle. They don't sell spare parts and I was basically told to go kick rocks.

I would rate their wheels as avarage. The problem is that there are no spares and horrible customer service. If you intend to use your wheels beyond a first service where you might need to replace bearings/hub/rim etc you really should look elsewhere

I have a pair of Fulcrum Red Zones 500 and I have done on them less than 500km in 3-4 months of riding. It only took a 30km rainy ride for the hubs to catch water inside and for the bearings to start to seize up.

Worst sealed wheels I have ever seen and Fulcrum is playing dumb and telling me bearings have no warranty. This combination makes their wheels single use if you live in a wet area or have the misfortune to catch a rain.

Gave 2 stars because before this, these wheels where rolling very fast and are a decent weight.