Philly215

Wheels are pretty much generally considered the best bang for the buck upgrade. Only on bikeforums.net will you get everyone saying it's a waste of money.

Get some good wheels, latex tubes, and good tires and you'll notice a difference.

Hunterdog

I am interested in upgrade of wheels and now I'm totally confused. I have Mavik Elites with Specialized Turbo Pros tires (recently changed from Armadillos and noticeable improvement) and was considering a wheel upgrade. But now I'm confused. I was considering moving to carbon wheels but it doesn't sound like I will get any improvement; why go to carbon? Just a look?

asgelle

No, depending on what you choose you will get a greater or lesser degree of improvement; though none will make a transformative difference. A little effort will let you figure out for your riding how much difference a particular choice will make. Whether or not that's worth it is a decision only you can make.

RJM

Personally, I think you move to carbon if you are really wanting a deep section wheel for aero benefits...like you are a doing tris or time trials. I think the sweet spot in wheel upgrades is a good aluminum wheel with a solid high quality hub (white industry or chris king, ect.) and a rim like the Hed Belgium C2 or similar. You get a smooth rolling, high quality, wide rim with excellent braking and all at a good weight and it doesn't cost you an arm and a leg like a set of carbon Zipps.

I know these guys are wheel builders so there might be a little bias written into their blog, but it is worth reading. Lots of good information going on. November Bicycles: Race smart. - November Bicycles Blog

I've personally have owned Rolf Vigors, Industry Nine I25s, November 52 Rails, a set of Hed/White Industry T11/CX Ray spokes, and have ridden Zipp 404s from a friend (with a powertap). My preference is for the aluminum rim models over stock.

Speaking of stock wheels, I've always found them to be fine for like a season and then they start going out of true and needing care...they are also a bit heavier than a quality made set of wheels, so I generally upgrade wheelsets on bikes.

rubiksoval

By who or what? Carbon wheels generally start at $1500 and go up quite quickly and add little to tangible performance.

Tires/tubes, clothes, helmet, fit/position can all lead to substantially larger improvements for substantially less money.

58mm carbon wheels were the very last performance upgrade I made after all of the above, and even after aero carbon bars with increased reach (another position aspect).

canklecat

Switching to better tires was good for a consistent 1 mph improvement for me. But I'm a slug. Averaging 16 mph over distance is a good day for me.

My wheels were already reasonably light, older non-aero Araya CTL-370 and Suntour rims. My engine would need to be much stronger to gain anything from better wheels.

I rode Vittoria Zaffiros for five weeks with a new-to-me road bike. Long enough to consistently gain 1 mph over my hybrid wearing 700x42 Conti Speed Rides. But the road bike felt sluggish, especially climbing hills.

Last week I switched to Schwalbe One V-Guards. Focused on hill climbs for the next few rides. Same effort, not trying to prove the tires are faster. Good for another 1 mph boost, definitely faster rolling uphill. I don't feel like I'm fighting the tires to maintain momentum.

No felt improvement on flat chipseal, which always feels like riding in hardened crap.

Philly215

GCN for one.

Abe_Froman

Note the important points in the video - bottom line, going from stock to most aero wheels could save 2-3 % of aero drag.

If you save 20 watts from tires, that's 10% of the TOTAL power for a 200 watt rider.

bonz50

guy i work with claims his deep carbon rims are worth 2mph easy. (Bonty Aeolus 5)

I try very hard not to laugh, he's just one of those guys though that I want to laugh at a little but I just bite my tongue.

trekmogul 

I think possible gain of about 1/4 of a minute on a 40 mile ride with a set of MEILENSTEIN LIGHTWEIGHT OBERMAYER The Schwarz Edition.. Trying to figure out my bang for buck on them still..


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datlas 

Speaking of having to bite my tongue...

trekmogul 

The new Reynolds RZR 92's netted me no gain over my stock cheap bontrager wheels that comes with my trek Emonda SLR8..


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trekmogul 

Lost some speed with a set of Zipp 454 NSW's


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wphamilton

This is kind of a key point. At slower speeds, ie from the amount of power that most bike riders are doing most of the time, the impact of rolling resistance looms larger. Well, rolling resistance is the same regardless of your speed, and the power needed to overcome it is proportional to our speed so it doesn't literally "loom larger", but it does represent a higher portion of our power the slower we're going.

That 20 watts, albeit a generous estimate, represents a bigger speed gain for the average rider than for the race-fit one. We just need to keep it all in context.

f4rrest

That's because they appear to be rolling downhill.

redfooj

and the other ones arent attached to bikes

last week i was browsing a site about my other main hobby.

it has a few subforums that is barely tangential to the main topic.
saw something about cameras... clicked on it... a little surprise to find our fellow forumite there.

posting about and only about the same exact 3 topics: bikes, luggages, cameras.
in about the same exact manner: mainly, self-promotional with no dialogue.

a bunch of threads of his has 0 replies. they start off like this

Doge

There is more to nice stuff than going faster.

I flated my latex and I sure notice the difference. I didn't measure, or have a clock - I just notice.
If someone provedmy speed was the same (and it may be), I would still notice the difference. They sound different and feel different.

rubiksoval

You've got to listen to the context of that video, and then consider the gains to be made available elsewhere, and then divide that by dollars spent, and you'll see that your video is not a very solid defense for the erroneous assertion that wheels are a good "bang for the buck" upgrade.

DrIsotope

Yesterday, did the 7.7 mile descent back down from Onyx Summit into Big Bear, California. Me, 6'2" and 205lbs on a Ritchey Swiss Cross with 700x35 Panaracer Gravelking SKs (which mount to precisely 38mm wide.) Immediately behind me, a gentleman about 5'7" and 140lbs on a Canyon Endurace CF SLX on some skinny-ass Mavic tires-- probably 25mm.

I finished the segment in 16min20sec at an average of 29.7mph.
He finished the segment in 16min17sec at an average of 29.8mph.

And that seems to be about what you can readily expect. So like... one tenth. Give or take. Ignoring the fact he was on a lighter, more aero bike on more aero wheels. He did go up the hills faster. But I think that has a little to do with me outweighing him and his bike combined by 50 pounds.

asgelle

Just as the yaw angle also depends on the particular rider's speed. All of which is why it's worth the effort for someone who's investing what to them is significant time or money to research the performance characteristics of the equipment their interested in and apply one of the on-line modeling tools such as analyticcycling.com to model the performance and estimate the benefit.

Doge

On this tire and rubber thing.
I have a formula I use for tires and rubber depending on what they are used for. Below is bald/tread-less tire . The case (not that one, but same type) has had 3 different treads depending on purpose (bad pic - smashed my phone camera). Wheels are the same. Some are best for hanging on the wall, some for some types of riding and some for others.
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@ 30 mph, 150# rider an optimal setup of tire/rubber and wheels vs a stock set is good for 2-3 mph.
But the reality is much less when comparing optimal to really good. Besides mph and constant speed, differences can be felt in acceleration and handling, that are very hard to measure. Those differences are often calculated, and I'm not a big fan of calculations over testing.
It tends to come down much more to feel and preference.

Doge

I thought we agreed threads and posts ago those were not for riding.

trekmogul 

Sony P&S with built in popup flash...

99Klein 

We've been playing with tires this year. We've compared the 4000's, Turbo Pro's and S-Works. Three of us riding together, same routes, and ONE person changing tires (switching between the three above tires.) I've been on Turbo Pro's, another friend on Michelin Pro4 and Turbo Pro's. I am a huge fan of the Turbo Pro's as they are fast and hold up well. Our tests are all downhill as not everyone has a power meter, but we can all cost down hill together. (We are all similar weight and have tried sitting up and tucked but NO drafting.) This is what we've found:

The three of us were dead even on the same tires.

The Pro4's and the Turbo Pro's are very close in speed, we'd give the edge though to the Michelin's, but not by much.

The S-Works are about 1/2 mph faster than the standard Turbo Pro's

The 4000's are FAST. We're talking about 2 mph faster than the Turbo Pro's.

That's all going downhill, and consistent over weeks of riding together. We have no real way of measuring uphill or even flats as we don't all have power meters. Is it scientific? No.

Just throwing this out here for those who may find it interesting. I don't mean to insult anyone's tire of choice. As I said, I'm a big fan of the slowest tire in the bunch. When I run out of stock I MAY switch. Problem is, I have such good luck with the Turbo's for flats, handling and wear and have not had the best of luck with Conti's in general. I can say if I was to race a TT or any race for that matter, it would be on the 4000's.

Seattle Forrest

There are two things going on here. There’s advice for the OP, who is new to road cycling, and also the OP is a person not a theoretical construct. But there’s a second thing, people in this thread are making declarative statements about reality as seen through the lens of a cyclist.

Going fast is one reason people buy expensive, aerodynamic wheels. But it’s only one of many. You pointed out a few others: to look good, because they’re freaking crazy, etc. There are a few more that aren’t quite as uncharitable. High end wheels are built very well. They improve the way a bike handles, can make it feel like a new bike. This is especially obvious when cornering. Really good aero wheels don’t get blown around much in cross winds, making them easy to control on twisty mountain roads. Finally, deeper wheels tend to be very strong – which is why it’s kind of ironic that you chose Zipp as an example, they crack at the nipple hole, and the hubs fail. Look at Enve instead, they come with a 5 year warranty, and they’re strong enough to use on your car.

Plus, a lot of cyclists already use great tires, and either good tubes, or better yet none at all.