FlashBazbo

I've seen HED's Vanquish 6 wheels advertised for some time, but I've never seen them in person or heard from anyone who rides them. Has anyone here ridden the Vanquish 6? What did you think? What's the workmanship like? How easy is it to mount Conti 5000TL tires on them, if you know? I'm assuming they have hooked rims -- hence my interest rather than going with ENVE. What are your experiences with these wheels?

haggiszero

I have a pair of Ardennes which are alloy and great. However, I think this was HEDs first fully carbon wheel? Before they would put alloy brake tracks on carbon, i believe. When I saw these come out, i thought wow they are really late to the full carbon game. Because of that they wouldn't be my first choice.

Minion1

Good grief. Hed have made full carbon tubulars for years - the Vanquish are their first full carbon clincher, they sit alongside the Jets (alloy brake track, carbon fairing) and the Stinger range (full carbon tubulars). Have owned 2 sets of Hed Stingers, they are phenomenal. The reason the vanquish was so long coming into the market place was (from memory) Hed not being happy with the performance of the brake tracks under heat - a situation I suppose they have resolved since the wheels are now available to buy. A lot of Bontrager wheels are also (or have been) made by Hed.
The great thing about Hed wheels is the toroidal profile which gives them good stability for deep rims. No reason to think the Vanquish wheels would not be as good as the stingers and Jets in this regard.

November Dave

HED's quality has always been outstanding. They charge premium prices, although Vanquish rims are relatively sane in comparison to some others. HED stuck to their guns on not liking carbon brake tracks, and that's noble as hell. Carbon was never that good a solution for rim brake clinchers - it worked under certain conditions but you can't restrain a mass market product to just those conditions. Also as you work toward solving one problem (heat), you create another (brittleness). Vanquish rims are disc only, so the only thing they "solved" was removing the parameter of heat resistance. The dynamics of carbon clinchers for disc brakes allow you to avoid brittleness thanks to no need for heat resistance. When you see a disc brake wheel/rim advertised as being built with heat resistant resins, that's a bad thing. You want resilient rims, heat resistance is more or less mutually exclusive with that. If you are looking for disc brake wheels/rims from a front line name brand and don't mind paying that premium, Vanquish are a good choice.

Sy Reene

Interesting wheel description, but I have trouble figuring out the rationale behind them. 30mm ext rim width, 23-28mm tires recommended, 60-80mm depths. Only offered in disc because of braking heat issues with rim brakes.
Is there a major market for 6-8cm deep aero wheels, where heavy braking is needed, while adding the weight associated with both deep wheels and disc brakes? Sounds purpose built for racing down a mountain but not having to go up it?

November Dave

TT/Tri bikes, which are a big market for HED. Tri bikes come with disc brakes bc getting an aerodynamically clean brake cable run with actual operative brakes means hydraulic brakes. TT bikes were the motive for hydro rim brakes but now so much development in disc brakes they’ve all headed there.

Not here to argue or or discuss whether the above makes sense or serves customers, just here to state that this is a healthy market segment for this kind of wheel. We see a fair bit of demand for ‘something deeper’ than our current disc wheel lineup.

Sy Reene

Thanks for the explanation. I guess this implies that brake rotors and weight penalty (small now) etc are more benefit than the cabling needed for rim setup. Also sounds like the HED explanation of heat dissipation issue with rim/carbon shouldn't really be a thing if we're talking about TT/Tri use cases.

November Dave

All the development is around disc brakes. Like it or not, the future is not bright for rim brakes. In any case, all the while that HED's made rim brake rims/wheels, you could get two flavors - full carbon tubular or mixed material clincher. Even their deepest rim brake rims were never full carbon clinchers. I take my hat off to them for having known full well all along that people are going to use things in unforeseen ways. By the time we were close to saying "enough" with carbon clinchers, we'd ask the few melts we got per year to send us the Strava of the ride where it had happened, and it was always like everything you absolutely warned people about - crazy grades, hairpin turns, etc. You can't ask people to limit their use of wheels (or likely anything else) to only those activities where they make sense or are recommended.

More and more carbon wheel makers/brands are getting out of carbon clincher for rim brakes. Curve isn't a huge brand but they've quietly turned the lights out on full carbon for rim brakes. I suspect others will follow in fading out these troublesome product lines. Full carbon, executed correctly, makes so much sense in disc brakes simply because the only compromise is cost, and even that converts with alloy wheels over time (for some brands at least).

guadzilla

HED's argument is that aero trumps weight for all except constant climbs of over 6-7% (I forget the exact number). And the disc is a separate argument, as you can make the case that the small weight penalty on the climb is offset by better/later braking on descents as well as generally better braking in inclement weather.

One may or may not agree with these points, but its a fairly logical argument atleast.