Originally Posted by
venturi95
^ Cool looking wheels, and mighty light! I'm not trying to start an argument, but do any pro tour teams ride Berd spokes?
I am not aware of any team or racer specifically that uses Berd spokes. But thats a function of my dis-interest in racing or competitive sports of any kind in general.
I'll refer you to here:
https://berdspokes.com/pages/technology
They are UCI legal however. Here is a quote from the BERD FAQ page:
Can I race with Berd Spokes?
Yes! Berd spokes are legal for racing. In fact, the UCI, which regulates professional cycling, has specifically approved Berd spokes, so you can race Berd spokes from local crits to the Tour de France. Send us a postcard!
As to the rest of this:
The big advantage for sew ups, beside modest weight savings, seems to me to be:
--Smooth pavement. I don't follow professional road cycling, but what little of it I see looks like it likes place on really smooth roads. Skinny, high-pressure tires would be fastest here, as proven by the same experiments as the argument for wide and soft on the rough stuff, no?
It's the right pressure for the surface that matters. A polished hardwood velodrome will have a different hysteresis breakpoint than chip seal.
--If it is rough, you can imagine being stuck in the middle of the peloton getting dragged over crap pavement at 30 plus m.p.h. I raced in the 1990s and saw clincher flats frequently in that situation. Do modern tubeless rims carrying low pressure tires get beat to failure? I have no idea.
IME rims beat & abused from crashing in to rocks is more common with tubeless running low pressure than tubed with high pressure. But just because a pince flat happened doesn't necessarily mean the rim got damaged. Abuse is abuse, afterall. I'd take 28-32mm of clearance between the road surface and the rim edge over 19mm any day.
--Want to go aero? Make my deep aero wheels sew-up.
I like my dirt road and MTB tubless set-ups just fine, love them, they're fabulous. I would like to try a modern road tubless set-up, maybe a Go Fund Me account is in order? JK!
$850-ish for the Berd build service. Depending on how you account for the shipping. Neither of my Berd wheel sets exceeded $2500 in total with judicious selection of parts. There are, of course many road tubeless rims available at a variety of price points that can be built with whatever spokes & hubs suit your fancy. I say go for it!