wsuhoops1000

I made a somewhat spur of the moment decision and ordered flo 60s yesterday. Would these be good for road races and crits? Anyone have experience or seen others on them? Thanks.

Silvercivic27

They'll be great. Except when there's hills and wind.

rkwaki

Terrible choice. Sell them to me. $600, pay you in 5 minutes...

Number400

I road race on 60mm aero's and unless the wind is howling (and even when it is), it is not a real problem. You will have to pay more attention to the wind though, so no zoning out. I just had a windy race where there was a barn just after a long bend with a chicane at the end. There were enough direction changes to forget which way the wind was blowing so once past the barn, I was hit with a 20mph side wind that pushed me a little. Caught me off guard more than anything and I was able to tighten up and compensate quickly and the bike did not move much. I was ready for it there every lap after that and it was no problem.

One thing you will also notice with 60's is that when things are calm, it feels like someone is pushing you along.

wsuhoops1000

Luckily for hills I live in kansas. It's windy thougj

MDcatV

i dont know what a flo 60 is, but i assume it's a 60mm deep section rim. i race on am classic 58s all the time and find them a little better for RRs and crits that you can rail through all the corners than for technical crits that require slowing for cornering and accelerating (i know bf.net braintrust wont believe that such a corner exists but they do). i find the 58s require a little more input to transition through corners on such a course. i'm a smallish rider at 150#s and dont find the cross wind aspect of these rims to be significant except in really windy or really windy with really gusty winds.

Andy STi

Make sure you post on Slowtwitch to tell them you're using them for a pack race and not a TT. You'll get their panties all in a bunch.

Since you we're able to get some flows you may as well race them. Aren't they kinda heavy though?

Monkeyclaw

Same depth as Zipp 404's aren't they? I see tons of those in races. I race Jet 50's and am very happy with them.

echappist

ding ding ding ding; we have a winner

here's some food for thought for the OP. Guess how much extra watts it takes to move a 400g item at 10mph at 8%

jsutkeepspining

i race on 808's, they are my lightest wheels, i dont notice cross winds even in 20-30 mph winds (im a fatty). i''ll use them for any important race

shovelhd

404's (at least mine) are 58mm. Close enough. How well they will handle for you depends on a lot of factors. Your size and weight. Weight balance fore/aft. Stem length. Bar width. Tire size. And on and on.

I have a set of Psimet 50mm clinchers and a set of 404 tubulars. The 50mm are heavier and less deep but they are harder for me to control in wind than the lighter, deeper 404's. There is a big difference in rim shape.

David Broon 

My race wheels are 60mm Hed tubs. They're an awesome balance for the 2 day, three event TT, crit, RR combo.

mattm

Dude.. you're probably not on Strava either.

MDcatV

correct!

Fat Boy

I'm not on Strava, but I have been looking at the Flo's. They're a wider rim and probably better in cross-winds that the older narrow Zipps, etc. They are relatively heavy at 1900+ grams/set. The aluminum braking surface is a good thing compared to most carbon rims. The price is definitely right. I think you've made a good choice. If it's really windy, then just ride the rear 60 and use a shallow front. Make sure your brake is set up so you can deal with both wide and narrow rims if all your rims aren't 24+mm.

burnsce

I won on a set on Saturday. Hilly crit course with maybe 90ft of 'climbing' per lap. Weight of wheels is NOT a factor unless you race one way, uphill. It's science. Also, as far as handling goes, the wide profile rim design (firecrest style) makes it a non-issue for me, and I'm a lightweight.

Hope that helps

wens

Weight matters when you're going uphill or when you're accelerating. In a bike race the critical moments are frequently when you're accelerating uphill. The tipping point for weight vs aero is quite different for mass start races than for tt's.

echappist

effect of weight still way overly exaggerated. the answer to the question i posted is at 8% (or 4.6 degrees), which you plug into m * g * sin (4.6) * speed in (m/s), you get 1.4W. That's 1.4W for every 400g at 8%, moving at 10mph (or 1.6W per pound). Rather negligible. Even at 12%, this is barely 2W.

As others have pointed out, better question (as i got to experience this first hand), is how well the wheels handle when you come down a monster hill? Crosswind at 45mph going down a 2-3 mile long descent is going to be more significant than crosswind you'll see in a crit, and i was getting somewhat buffeted by the wind even at 69kg. Certainly rather scary as i didn't want to stay close to others for fear that i may take out myself and/or others, and then had to spend extra energy catching back on. Now, my Stinger may handle differently, but i doubt it'll be too much different. All the sudden a Stinger 3 or Zipp 202 is looking like a better option for climbing, with a Stinger 6 in the back.

FWIW, my 404 aluminum clinchers were fine in crits.

Fat Boy

I was going to write that the extra wheel weight matters about the same amount as carrying an extra bottle. Someone will mention that wheels are rotating, which is true, but the rotational speed (and therefore the change in rotational speed due to acceleration) is low enough on a bike where it essentially acts like static weight.

I think probably the biggest deal with wheels is getting something deep enough that it becomes a problem with handling in a cross wind. No doubt that really light wheels *feel* great. The bike really seems to come alive, but the numbers of the matter are what they are.

carpediemracing 

I don't buy the "weight doesn't make a difference" argument. This is only from my experience. I spent a lot of money after deciding to "listen to the experts" instead of going with my gut instinct and the result is a pair of wheels I rarely use.

I have similar weight wheels to the Flo 60s - a Jet 6 front, Jet 9 rear. The front is about 800g, the rear is a bit over 1000g, without tires and such. I bought them to train on as well as race in the rain or in training races. I bought a bunch of wheels with specific plans. Initially, with racing in mind, I had Krylions on them - I've raced on those fine and they work well in the rain. After a summer of trying to make them work I gave up and put some heavier tires on (Maxxis Refuse training tires).


The Bastognes (aka Ardennes rims) are on the bike, that's what I train on now. I brought the Jets (center and off to the right) in case I felt that Cape Cod was somehow different than Connecticut (I train on flatter terrain so the pancake flat terrain of Cape Cod wasn't a factor - I ended up not using them at all). I brought the Stingers (two loose wheels to the left) because we went to Cape Cod from a race.

Here's the thing - the rear Jet 9 is 600g heavier than my Stinger 6 rear (same year, same hub, virtually the same spokes except in length, similar weight cassettes with all steel cogs by Miche - 11-25 Jet9 and BBB - 11-23 Stinger6). The difference was in the rim and tire/tube/etc.

I desperately wanted the heavy aero clincher wheels to work. I wanted to train on the tallest wheels I thought would work. I wanted speed. I wanted to do our local training crit without worrying about my tubulars (wear and tear, cutting on the gravel that is everywhere around the course, the occasional glass, etc). I wanted to use the aerodynamics of the wheels to kill it when it came time to move up hard while at speed. I never had a 90 mm tall rear wheel until that point so I hoped it would be like using a disk wheel (which I had almost 20 years ago). Instead of buying a Stinger 4 front and a Stinger 9 rear (which would give me an ideal complement of the HED tubulars for racing) I bought the Jet 6 front and Jet 9 rear.

I chose aero over weight in a big, big way.

The year I got the wheels I was riding about as well as I have in the recent past. I was lean, I didn't get sick in my base mile preparation, and I was flying on the bike. The Missus supported an all out racing season - we focused mostly on racing and training until September of 2010. I was racing so well I stopped racing for myself because I was afraid of getting forcibly upgraded. Eventually I upgraded at the end of the year. It was the first and only time I'd ever upgraded to Cat 2 in 27 seasons of racing. I point this out to illustrate that my fitness/legs were as good as ever. If there was ever a year I could use aero wheels that was the year.

I was crushed. With the Jets I couldn't finish a single training race. Not a single one. In fact I got shelled so quickly I wasn't sure if something was wrong with me. On training rides I quickly ditched the Jet 6, hoping to keep things a bit lighter, and later ditched the Jet 9, opting for the Bastognes/Ardennes instead. I couldn't catch trucks on my training rides - I usually go truck hunting on my rides but there are no appreciable downgrades so all my truck hunting is done on flat roads at home. I "downgraded" to the Bastognes and could get drafts fine.

On the Bastognes I won a rain shorted training race, same course, virtually the same opponents. Due to the short length I don't count it as a win per se but it was wildly different than hanging on for dear life for a few laps and then getting shelled.

On the Stinger 6 tubulars I managed to get a second in the same training race series and I was a factor in other weeks, helping a teammate hold position, etc.

Even on the Monday non-racer group ride I couldn't climb with everyone with the Jets. We're talking absolute non-racers - they considered a Cat 5 to be "very strong" and he would always peel off early to "rest up" for the Tuesday training race (which is where I was racing too, in the A race instead of the Bs, and I would do the 2.5 hour ride with everyone). The Tuesday races aren't "serious" per se so I didn't really alter my schedule for them.

When I put the Bastognes on I could be generous with my efforts, almost playing with them. I compromised and used the Jet 9 rear - this way I'd have to work really hard to stay with them.

I can't prove anything. I can just point out that my aero clincher wheels are probably about 1000g heavier than my aero tubulars. Weight doesn't matter, right? So whether it's 250g, 500g, or 1000g, it doesn't matter, according to the experts.

In my book it is super significant.

I theorize that accelerating heavy wheels hard is more fatiguing. A rider absolutely has to stay in the draft to be competitive. It's a rare rider like Rebecca Twigg that could ride next to or behind a field all day and then outsprint them. Well if you're working harder to respond to surges then you're going to pay the price. It's not the incrementally higher power you need to accelerate up to speed - it's doing so at the same time as the light wheel riders so that you can stay in their draft. Suddenly, instead of doing just 600-800 watts out of a corner you might be doing 800-1000 watts. I've seen 1250 watts simply jumping out of a corner near the end of a race, and that's on my Stingers. Imagine if I had to accelerate an extra 1000g of weight at the rim? What's the incremental difference to stay on the wheel? 1350 watts? That's higher than I usually hit in a race. 1400 watts? Never hit that in a race.

In the end I also decided that aero is important. I bought a Stinger 7 front and a Stinger 9 rear. I raced the pair twice, once it was great, once the gusty crosswinds made me sketchy. I raced the rear two more times, with the Bastogne front due to wind (this is where a Stinger 4 would have been handy).

This means now I have really aero race wheels (Stinger 7F & 9R), aero race wheels (Stinger 6 F&R), and training clinchers. I'm still debating what to do with my Jets. I even considered building them down with Ardennes/similar rims because I'd like to have a second pair of Ardennes for my other bike. I still want a Stinger 4 front (or similar, some shallower wide carbon tubular).

I still have the Jets. THe Jet 6 is still pristine, maybe 30-40 rides (I bought them early 2010), sitting in my basement. The Jet 9 is maybe 100 rides old and is sitting, stripped of everything, in my basement near the Jet 6.

MDcatV

it's science!

https://www.xtranormal.com/watch/5710775/online-cycling-debate

wens

I did back of the envelope math. 12.5 watts to accelerate 400g 10 mph in one second on flat ground. Proportional to mass, time is squared I think, but I'm too lazy to do dimensional analysis. I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong.

jsutkeepspining

i just ride my bike...

Fat Boy

I understand your gut feelings CDR, but the numbers are the numbers. The extra weight of the heavier rims _is_ measurable, but it's not large. You're right that it shows up most when accelerations are the highest, but ultimately, it's a math problem.

Having said all this, your anecdotal evidence and others suggests that if you have a choice for a race wheelset, go with the lighter tubular (which will probably be more aero as well).

MDcatV

you and i are on the same wavelength here. #uhoh.

if it's measurable, it matters. would you carry a 1# sack of sugar in your pocket if you didnt have to? of course not. so why would you carry an extra pound of rim weight if you dont have to?