Thread: New Track Disks
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Old 07-25-19, 11:10 AM
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Morelock
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A lot of the iO's prevalence is owed to Mavic basically handing them out to potential high end riders over the years. Then there is the "bling" factor, which is hard to compare with any other wheel... nothing looks as cool as an iO. The trifecta is the stiffness... the iO is a stiff wheel, if you're a monster sprinter you want a stiff wheel. On the "small benefits" side, you also have a wheel that is pretty bombproof (many being 10-20 years old still in use) and holds it's resell value like no other. (also corner case'ish but you can run an iO in any race and some races don't allow front discs)

All that said... yeah, probably not the fastest wheel you can buy. Although the original is a narrow rim and with a good tire is likely on par with most "fast" wheels at the kind of yaw you're going to see on the track...generally... (no idea about the Rio) It's probably a little behind a Zipp808/Hed3 (although the H3 is a pretty flimsy wheel... not stiff enough for a sprinter)

When it comes to open mould wheels it's really a crapshoot, and doubly so with 3/4/5 spoke wheels. Some of the "good" ones can test pretty quick (I've got an iO clone that tests pretty close to my other aero wheels - H3, Jet9, etc) but when they are bad they are often very bad. It's hard to guess which is which, but some things to look at/for are rim width (in general the old "narrow is aero" is where you want to be with wheels you're gambling on) and whether the "spokes" are foils or not. (and whether the foils look intelligently made) - Specifically to the WBHi5 - 20mm rim width (pretty narrow, a little wider than the old iO, but in general tires are a little wider than they were when the iO was designed) and from the one picture I can find, it looks like the spokes are foil shaped.

Keep in mind with a 20mm width rim, you really limit yourself in tire choice if you actually want the wheel to be fast. A big tire/narrow rim combo is almost always worse than just running your training wheel with a tire that fits.

Last edited by Morelock; 07-25-19 at 11:13 AM.
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