DT Swiss GR 1600 Front Wheel [Rider Review]

Our "Rider Review" article series features the honest reviews from verified purchasers of Worldwide Cyclery. They contain the photos, thoughts, feedback & overall review you are looking for.

Whether it's a mountain, road, gravel , or city bike new components are always welcome. One of the biggest impacts on how your bike rides as well as reliability is getting some fresh wheels on your ride. Our friend Mike gives us the rundown on his new DT Swiss GR 1600 front wheel. Check it out!

Overview

I spent countless hours over several weeks trying to find what I thought would be a simple task, a new wheel to fit my new suspension fork on my 2015 Specialized Turbo X e-bike (700c). Trying to find a wheel with the exact combination of rim / hub / brake type / rim width / diameter / axel type, axel length, axel width/ spoke count / spoke type / weight capacity / tire type etc. The combination is endless and the specifics resulted in zero results everywhere I searched. I thought I would have to go custom, until finally in the dark corners of the web a tiny light seemed to show a shadowy figure...no way...um wait a sec.....could it be? The DT Swiss GR1600 front wheel is a welded rim - that not only checked all of the boxes - it's SPLINE 350 hub has the compatibility of a Swiss Army knife!

It's been 2 months and a few hundred miles on and off-pavement and I love this wheel. The 24mm wide rim allows me to run larger 2.0, 29" tires which are perfect for pavement and gravel adventures. This wheel included multiple axel adapters for the 350 SPLINE hub so out of the box, I was able to convert it to my seemingly rare combination of 100mm 15x through axel. The good people at DT Swiss also include a center-lock disk brake adapter so I could keep my existing 6-bolt HAYES rotors in place. I'm a function than form kind of guy, but this wheel has both! The SPLINE hub looks like it's from the future and I sometimes catch myself staring at it while I ride. Not safe for sure, but there's something memorizing about the silver and grey hub that seems to rotate in reverse when rolling at the right speed....heads up!

Reasonably priced around $300, it was also within the budget.

The only complaint I have about this wheel is the 6-bolt disk adapter that's included has a 160mm disc diameter maximum specification. For a newly released wheel - the 160mm maximum front disk rotor seems a bit out of date to me. This was not mentioned anywhere that I could find - and in fact - the only disc adapter that pops up on the DT Swiss website shows 203mm max. I'm not sure if it's a limitation of the hub or the included adapter, so I'm hoping I can get that figured out soon as I prefer to run 180 rotors upfront.

Final Thoughts 

Finally, a good note about our friends at WWC. First, I received and used a 20% coupon which I applied to the purchase. Second, they offered free shipping. Third - USPS lost my order but a quick call to WWC and they quickly shipped out another - no questions asked. I sincerely appreciate that kind of old-school customer-first service. And of course, the next day USPS found and delivered the original wheel.