What measure of improvement gleaned by a better wheelset ?

JimmyK

A wheel is a wheel isnt it ?

Ive had nice wheels in my hand and been handed considerably more expensive wheels , the weight difference..........not a lot really . Ive read about riders paying circa £1000 for a set of wheels and that sends a shiver down my back thinking about it. What advantages will a £1000 wheelset bring with it ? To be honest, if a £1000 wheelset improved my average time by an extra 1 mph , id stick with what I already own .

So what measure(s) of improvement are we talking about here ?

Jimmy

maddog 2

you're right, to some extent.

a decent handbuilt wheelset - say DT rev spokes, prolock nipples, OP rims and say Ultegra hubs would come in less than £200 at a guess and ride very well. Okay the hubs aren't the lightest but everything else is pretty light and so will roll and accelerate well, be practical and so on.

So for normal riding they'll be fine.

The difference is when people want to get a little bit extra, such as if they compete, or if they just want something that looks trick.

In that case money is a purley relative issue. If winning is everything then what's an extra 500 quid?

If bikes are your hobby and you want to treat yourself for all the hard work you do then who are we to judge someone spending £500 on a lovely set of factory wheels.

As for actual measureable benefits, I suspect that it's only in TTs with deep section and disc wheels that it comes into play.

SteveR_100Milers

and stiffness....if you are heavy or super strong you might want a pair of super stiff wheels that dont rub against brakes when climbing or spirinting. You might want them to last, and for the spokes not to keep breaking etc etc Plus, most importantly, if you think they are fast then they will be....

James_London

There are significant differences in the weight and aerodynamic properties of wheels (and lowest weight and best aerodynamics are not entirely correlated with price I hasten to add!). Differences can be of the order of tens of Watts depending on the situation.

A small saving in the power required to sustain a given speed in a TT (or the repeated accelerations required in a mass-start race) can make a big difference to a rider's ability to sprint or make a big effort at the end of a race. Given a sprint (or breakaway) is what wins races, this can be important (and worth paying a significant amount for) if your livelihood depends on it.

You're right that £1,000 wheels are unlikely to be the cheapest source of improvement for recreational riders, but they may be a more pleasurable source of improvement than the hard training required to achieve an equivalent improvement at negligible cost. Or just make riding at the same speed more enjoyable or turn their riding buddies green.

And each to their own, I guess. :-)

All that said, from a performance perspective, you're well into diminishing returns when you get over £500 for low profile alloy wheels.

dennisn

The ad-men rule cycling these days and they seem to have convinced more than a few people that they need this frame, that wheel, this stem, and any number of other items
that, well, you can't even ride a bike without. And, oh my god, you really haven't
upgraded your wheels yet. What's wrong with you? Place that 2000 dollar order now.
If you have the money you can buy ten bikes and 20 sets of high end wheels. I have
known people who can and do spend like that. They are not better cyclist because of it,
but they sure look like they are. It's their hobby and just like everyone else they spend what they can on it. Lots of the guys I know, who race, have a few sets of wheels.
One for strictly racing(usually a set of light tubulars), a daily training set or two(clinchers),
and maybe a TT set. With the exception of the TT set I would say that their racing and training wheels are pretty evenly split between handbuilts and aftermarket stuff with
lots of races won and lost on both kinds. If you do your own work on your bike I would say learn to build your own wheels. If not have the local shop do it and they will be grateful and if you need some truing or maintainence done you'll get good service. If
you buy from a catalog or online and then have problems the bike shop may not look
all that kindly on you for not giving them the business.

Dennis Noward

robbarker

James_London wrote:

There are significant differences in the weight and aerodynamic properties of wheels (and lowest weight and best aerodynamics are not entirely correlated with price I hasten to add!). Differences can be of the order of tens of Watts depending on the situation.

A small saving in the power required to sustain a given speed in a TT (or the repeated accelerations required in a mass-start race) can make a big difference to a rider's ability to sprint or make a big effort at the end of a race. Given a sprint (or breakaway) is what wins races, this can be important (and worth paying a significant amount for) if your livelihood depends on it.

You're right that £1,000 wheels are unlikely to be the cheapest source of improvement for recreational riders, but they may be a more pleasurable source of improvement than the hard training required to achieve an equivalent improvement at negligible cost. Or just make riding at the same speed more enjoyable or turn their riding buddies green.

And each to their own, I guess. :-)

All that said, from a performance perspective, you're well into diminishing returns when you get over £500 for low profile alloy wheels.

The difference in power to keep different manufacturer's wheels spinning, even at 50 Km/h, seems only to be about 3-4 W at most. (see www.bikephysics.com)

The weight difference between different wheels is very small too compared to the overall wieght of the bike plus the rider. Moment of inertia can be influenced more by changing your tyres and tubes than by buying a new wheel.

I agree that very small changes can add up into merely small changes, and these might offer a competitive advantage to riders at the very highest level. For mere mortals though they would appear to be a waste of time. For most of us, losing 2Kg of fat would be a lot cheaper than losing 2Kg off our bikes. Those 3-4 watts buying Aksiums instead of Zipps cost you can easily be remedied by a bit more training.

It strikes me that reliability is the single most important thing for recreational riders to look for. You won't get a gold on a sportive if you have to repair two punctures and replace a broken spoke.

James_London

robbarker wrote:

The difference in power to keep different manufacturer's wheels spinning, even at 50 Km/h, seems only to be about 3-4 W at most. (see www.bikephysics.com)

Seems a bit low.

~10W for accelerations - eg Crits:
http://www.rouesartisanales.com/article-15988284.html

~15W at constant 50km/h for front wheel only:
http://www.rouesartisanales.com/article-15505311.html

If you want proper savings, try riding in the drops for a free 140W! Still, the odd Grand Tour stage has been won on the hoods :-)
http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech.php?id= ... ndtunnel08

robbarker wrote:

The weight difference between different wheels is very small too compared to the overall wieght of the bike plus the rider. Moment of inertia can be influenced more by changing your tyres and tubes than by buying a new wheel.

I agree that very small changes can add up into merely small changes, and these might offer a competitive advantage to riders at the very highest level. For mere mortals though they would appear to be a waste of time. For most of us, losing 2Kg of fat would be a lot cheaper than losing 2Kg off our bikes. Those 3-4 watts buying Aksiums instead of Zipps cost you can easily be remedied by a bit more training.

It strikes me that reliability is the single most important thing for recreational riders to look for. You won't get a gold on a sportive if you have to repair two punctures and replace a broken spoke.

Agreed - £1,000 spent on wheels is not efficient if your other choices are poor and if you think it will solve all your problems. In the case of wheels, better tyres are absolutely a much cheaper source of improvement. And yes, with no team car, reliability and good maintenance are more important than blinging wheels for sportives and most amateur racing. :-)

That said I race on both light carbon tubs and heavier alloy clinchers and there is a noticeable difference.

robbarker

The results of those tests don't tally with Swanson's findings:

http://www.bikephysics.com/rails/wheel/list

Perhaps that's because he's not trying to sell anything?

James_London

Errr.... At the risk of going down a rabbit hole, Adrien at RouesArtisanales did it in a wind tunnel and Swanson didn't. From a quick read of methodology I think that's why their watts to maintain a given speed are so different (and therefore the delta is smaller for Swanson).

Adrien recently started selling a few handbuilt wheels but the wheels in the test are mainly factory wheels so I don't think it's a commercial agenda at work.

Either way it's somewhere between 3 and 15 watts and strictly, £1,000 wheels is not the cheapest way to get this kind of an improvement for the majority of non-professional riders so amateurs must be buying them for some other irrational reasons... So we're not disagreeing! Over and out! :-)

robbarker

James_London wrote:

So we're not disagreeing!

Indeed we're not.

simbil1

The bike physics drag equation looks at head on wind only. Usually, aero tests look at various yaw angles and it is actually at angles that an aero wheel come into its own when compared to a standard wheel.

For example from the HED data for the Jet60:

Wind Drag In grams, measured at:
Density .0023755(slug/ft3) temp 61 f, 22mm tire
Wind Angle.................0° 5° 10° 15° 20°
Jet 60.........................195 179 189 214 216
28 Spoke low profile..221 229 273 283 292

So head on aero improvement is around 10% whereas 20* improvement is around 25%.

The overall effect of course is quite small, especially when compared to the big factors such as fitness, position and tyre choice, but once those are optimised I can see why people look at deep section wheels.
If a deep section could have knocked 1% off my last race time it would have changed me from 23rd to 18th - once I am fit enough I'll be getting some