RJM

A decent video on it. I was kinda surprised at the outcome and take it with a grain of salt but my experience is that aero wheels do offer an advantage. (November Rail 52s for me that cost $1350 new)

rpenmanparker 

You don't need a wind tunnel. The real world testing can be made applicable just by better experimental design. Multiple experimental runs, multiple riders randomly placed on the different wheels for the different runs, different wind conditions allowed for the different runs, and so on. And management of the error. You just need a good statistician to design and oversee the experiment.

jtaylor996

Do you honestly think that's practical for a wheel designer? Go through all of that for each and every design iteration, of which there could be hundreds or thousands? You can get scientifically accurate data in an hour in the wind tunnel and keep refining until you get it perfect...

goenrdoug

Saw a set of 808s in the wild this weekend on the club ride. He's my entirely unscientific take on them:

The ride regrouped at the top of a hill where we had all hit it pretty hard. The requisite bikes-all-lined-up photo was taken with the view behind us and we were finally ready to head down a bit. The next section of the ride began with a semi-technical 2-mile descent at about 5% followed by generally downhill rollers for another ~4 miles. It's a fast section.

I departed first here because I'm usually one of the fastest in the group down the hills and I didn't want to end up running up behind someone the whole way down. This time was no different.

About two thirds of the way down the technical part, I could see in my fred mirror that someone had mostly caught me and was maintaining his distance to avoid having to overtake on the technical section. I recognized him as 'the new guy who said he'd just moved here'.

Once I got to the rollers, I pushed, hoping to make it to the regroup without being caught (for the fun of it and all.)

Now that the road had mostly straightened out, the guy behind me had come up and was sitting on my wheel for a minute. He came around and took a pull as we hammered along. This is when I got a decent look at his bike. Full-on FELT aero tri-bike with 808s and dura ace. He slowed a bit and I went back to the front. The grade went down a bit more (knowing the road, I knew this was coming and figured I'd make the most of it and take my pull right then) and I spun out and tucked. After about 20 seconds, I felt like I was really flying and snuck a peek in the fred mirror, expecting to see him gapped off in the distance. To my surprise, nope, he was not only not gapped off, but he was coming around (pedaling) on my left just as I peeked. DOH! He pulled around and I could see that he stopped pedaling a moment to give me a chance to latch onto his wheel. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to (I was as tucked as I was gonna get and not getting there.) Pedaling didn't help either as I was way spun out at this speed (despite my 52-11 top gear), so I just watched him roll away, pedaling again. I yelled quick regroup point info and he nodded and zipped away.

At the regroup, we all gawked at his bike, wheels, specs, etc. 55 tooth big chainring on the dura-ace cranks, pioneer power meter thing in one of the holes there, zipp 808s, ridiculously gorgeous sculpted aero carbon (in black, of course) bike...

So, anyway, yea, my unscientific examination of the Zipp 808s is that they're fast as hell.

milkbaby

2.02 watts less normalized power per 10 mm rim depth beyond 24 mm averaged over all weather conditions and route terrain. But only with 23 mm tires.

69chevy

So you were "way spun out" in 52-11 yet he pedaled away?

Because of his Zipp wheels?

I'm lost.

topslop1

I'm just happy to now own a set of wheels that are durable and semi lightweight. I'm not a strong enough rider to justify really high end wheels.. I'd love to of course, but I'm just not.

rpenmanparker 

Yes exactly, and then you appease the marketplace with some real world data.

woodcraft

Because of his 55 tooth chainring on a full time trial rig.

goenrdoug

Exactly -- the wheels were, indeed, part of the bigger picture of the whole bike. I hesitate to credit them, entirely, with the performance I observed, but I do believe they play their part in that bike's performance.

It didn't hurt that the rider was quite strong -- definitely stronger than me both up and down hills.

mooder

All you need is an electric motor that output a fixed amount of work... very easy and cheap to do.

I completely understand why anybody would gripe on lab result. Since you can control the condition you can also influence the result very easily. I would love to see a serious outdoor testing methodology. It's not that hard to record wind speed and direction and I think this is pretty much the most basic thing any experimenter should do ESPECIALLY when testing aerodynamic wheels.

I am pretty sure aero wheels are well optimized to be the most aerodynamic possible. However, I would like to see the real world benefit of such wheel with a bit more data to back it up than what we got here (before I drop 2k+$ for a wheelset).

woodcraft

You've got some rippin' top speeds,

so it's unlikely that he got away for lack of effort or technique on your part...

69chevy

My point was... in your story, he was faster than you when you ran out of gears.

I don't see how the wheels had anything to do with that.

Bah Humbug

Yes, it would be much more meaningful to compare to some HED Belgiums or the like.

spdracr39

As an average rider I do not find anywhere near that kind of difference. They easier to ride at faster speeds (20-25 mph) but not 6-8% maybe 2%

Campag4life

I hope your post was tongue in cheek.

Doge

OP example neglected spokes. Thick spoke and thin spoke Mavics and they are different and I ride both, but steel blades are hard to beat. the number of spokes matter too. I would ignore the box test in the OP video link due to spokes.

Like most things on BF ... it depends. I agree some aero profile is always better than box, but I think the 50mm profile is about the best all around as aero benefits beyond that do not seem to make up for the weight increases. Sure - nice flat smooth roads, things are different. But most riding I/son do is not like that.
We believe there is an increase in energy to handle larger profile wheels in any wind condition.

StanSeven

Too many variables still. Different wind angles need tested because manufacturer wheels vary greatly by yaw. Tire size affects performance differently among various wheels. If you used the same tire with everybody, you introduce biases. Inflation and resulting shape tires also does as well. This is why wind tunnel testing is used.

rpenmanparker 

No disagreement. But we are talking about two different things. You are talking about the detailed behavior of the wheels. I am talking about representative case studies. What can you expect when you take the wheels out for a normal ride. Most folks want to know how fast one wheels would be on a real road compared to another, not what the yaw angle vs. drag graph looks like.

StanSeven

The CGN video pretty much does this but the deep wheels are not what people use for normal rides.

chrisjur

I find Steve from In the Know's reviews to be unbiased and chocked full of good info. His latest updated review on all-around Aero wheels goes into some good bits about the benefits of aero, why it matters, when it matters, etc.:

https://intheknowcycling.com/2015/07...d-bike-wheels/

Worth the read if you haven't checked it out. He also has other similar articles on climbing wheels, etc.

Doge

So I just posted this in another place. Anyway at the start you see a white kit LUX guy. He is on 30mm profile wheels (stinger 3s - a teammate). Behind him, 4th in this video, is a guy on 80ish. Later KHS guy in blue, works for a shop and has options and is on a pretty decent Cat1 team is also riding lower profiles. Superman pos dude is my kid on 50s.
LUX on 30s smokes cat 1 guy on 80s (4th rider in vid) for 1st in 3 person break. LUX guy and as light as 30s, but 50s , my kid, dumps pack for 4th. Besides they are both just better than the P12s that day (one P, 10+ 1s and filler) , they also chose lower profile for handling and acceleration over higher profile that they had. That is not science. Just what the winners for that race on that day prefer. However I don't see much benefit for much over 50mm in most situations.

Inpd

Maybe if you tack into them life you do sailing?

I also live in a windy area and I have no idea how those wheels would behave in a strong side wind and have no desire to find out!

smarkinson

Like wphamilton I want some aero wheels, I just don't want to buy them.

I just checked the price of a set of Enve 4.5 here in Australia. A mere $4,199 which is close enough to twice the price I paid for my whole Giant TCR bike ($2,200).

I'm not sure where the money goes in a set of wheels that costs that much. Or if I could justify spending that amount of money for 2kmh.

There are cheaper aero wheels out there but how much of a gain do you get with those? Sure would suck to spend $2,000 on some aero wheels and see no noticeable gain in speed.

I did just respoke my Giant wheels (low profile alloy rims) with some CX-ray spokes. I had put those wheels away due to constant spoke assplosions. I've now put those rebuilt wheels on my TT bike replacing some 10 year old cheap Shimano wheels. Are these new (refurbished old) Giant wheels faster than the Shimano wheels? Maybe, maybe not. I did set a couple of Strava PRs with them (only 7 secs off a 3min 25sec flat segment although Strava says that's 1.4kmh faster).

I think if I did buy some aero wheels I would want to buy a power meter first and do some of my own testing on the various wheels I already have to see exactly what sort of differences I could expect.

chrisjur

Can you get your hands on a set of wheels to try out? There are many good shops that have sets that they'll let you try. At least that will give you an idea as to what these types of wheels feel like.

For example, Reynolds - who makes a selection of great wheels - has a "Ride to Decide" program (Reynolds Cycling). I know they are sold in Australia, but not sure how extensive their dealer network is there.