Open Pro to Shamal - worth it?
Comments
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Jeez. You sound like my father in law!
I have 32h Open Pros and also have 'Bling wheels'. The bling wheels aren't harsh at all, and as they come out for races or nice weather rides the durability isn't an issue.
It's nice to ride on nice wheels and it's nice to have things that look good.
A crap looking sweater from Primark does the job for cheaper and may be more durable but isn't as nice to wear or look as good as a Mulberry...
I take it you ride on a cro mo frame with Sora groupset?0 -
NapoleonD wrote:Jeez. You sound like my father in law!
I have 32h Open Pros and also have 'Bling wheels'. The bling wheels aren't harsh at all, and as they come out for races or nice weather rides the durability isn't an issue.
It's nice to ride on nice wheels and it's nice to have things that look good.
A crap looking sweater from Primark does the job for cheaper and may be more durable but isn't as nice to wear or look as good as a Mulberry...
I take it you ride on a cro mo frame with Sora groupset?
Well, then that's what is all about... the look! If it is for the look, I get the point... the Cosmic are tacky, but someone likes that kind of stuff... but the Shamal aren't a looker, I'm afraid... they look pretty average and not at all dissimilar to the cheaper Scirocco...
I do ride Cro Mo, but with Centaur... Shimano is not very durable in my experience (chainrings, cassette, chain, pads... etc... ), plus I'm Italian and an Italian is expected to ride Campagnolo round here, or club mates will be disappointed...
left the forum March 20230 -
You ssem to get pretty wound up by this stuff mr (signore?) Ugo. Don't know why you bother coming on the site to be honest. Progress is usually in small steps and you can say that 200 or 300g is nothing but if we all took that attitude we'd still be riding boneshakers.
Each to their own I guess.0 -
Thanks very much to all for your replies and it's really interesting to hear your POVs but for the avoidance of doubt the reason I originally asked the question about changing wheels was not about the look of the wheels but performance.
Having only ever ridden on traditional spoked wheels I was after knowing whether there would be noticable performance benefits from adding another wheelet into my armoury in particular Shamals or Cosmic Carbone Sl's. A bit of bling on the bike is always welcome but would be a nice side-effect rather than the primary reason for a change. In addition I have no intention of retiring my OP's with record hubs - great wheels I just wondered if other wheels would offer anything significantly different and worth buying.
I guess for some it's about just getting out and riding and others of us (me included) love bikes and the gear too.
It seems like the Shamals would be stiffer than my current wheels and offer the bike a bit more 'zip' and while I love the thought (and look) of some deep section wheels I think on balance I would get more out of the Shamals.0 -
inseine wrote:You ssem to get pretty wound up by this stuff mr (signore?) Ugo. Don't know why you bother coming on the site to be honest. Progress is usually in small steps and you can say that 200 or 300g is nothing but if we all took that attitude we'd still be riding boneshakers.
Each to their own I guess.
Wouldn'it be terrible if we all had the same opinion?
Progress is a good thing when it leads to a better product, but in the case of the bike industry, this is not always the case. It's getting impossible to find a QR skewer which actually does the job properly... is this progress?
A 10 speed chain wears 4 times faster than an 8 speed one (and more importantly, breaks much more often), is it worth having those two extra sprockets? We had 12-27 cassettes even before.
All these allegedly faster bikes... well, if I look at the average speed in PRO races, with the exception of the EPO bonanza period, they go pretty much as fast as they did in the 1970-80s... so you can spend 6K in a full carbon machine with all the spoilers, but you'll end up being pretty much as fast as you were 20 years ago with the Open PRO and the steel frames.
The industry has gone cosmetic, really...
On the other hand, modern tyres are way better than those of 20 years ago... less punctures, to start with.left the forum March 20230 -
Raising spoke tension doesn't increase wheel rigidity (It does permit the wheel to bear higher loads before collapse). In any case, a normal wheel is practically perfectly rigid, vertically. The maximum vertical deflection a normal spoked wheel experiences is in the order of the thickness of a sheet of copy paper (and that is two orders of magnitude smaller than tyre deflection – more dwarfed than the princess's pea). There's no room for "ride quality" in wheels, along the lines you suggest.ugo.santalucia wrote:Stiff, yes, but why? Some wheels feel stiff because the spokes are tensioned to 1.3-1.5 KN. This is necssary to compensate for the lack of spokes (20 instead of 32 is the norm these days). Stiff doesn't mean better performing... it normally mean they're harsh and on a long ride just unpleasant. A bit like doing 1000 miles in a Mercedes saloon or in a Morgan... which one would you go for?0 -
I've been using a set of Eurus (very similar to the shamals) solidly for the past 2 or 3 years and they are brilliant wheels. I guess the difference compared to open pros on record hubs must be largely down to the spoking - the spokes are sturdy, bladed, and there are less of them than on a traditional wheel. The front wheel is radially spoked while the rear has twice as many (crossed) spokes on the drive side to balance out the reduced dishing, which means that the spoke tension can be more equal on left and right. This is based on perfectly sound theory and clearly works very well, as most people who have used these wheels will tell you that they rarely if ever need truing, are generally bomb proof and are very responsive and nice to ride.
I guess you could argue for ever about theoretical properties of many thin spokes vs. a smaller number of thick spokes, radial vs. crossed on the front and symmetrical vs. asymmetric / G3 on the rear, but the empirical evidence (based on lots of people's experience over many years now) is that these wheels work extremely well.
Incidentally, although the rear spoking on the Fulcrum racing zeros/ones superficially looks more conventional than the G3 on the shamals and eurus, it is actually almost exactly the same, with the same left/right asymmetry in spoke number. It's just that the spokes on the drive side are very slightly less severely crossed - on the shamals & eurus the pushing and pulling spokes are crossed just the right amount so that each pulling spoke is exactly parallel to the next-but-one pushing spoke. I'm sure this is done mainly for visual effect, which makes me wonder if it is very slightly sub-optimal compared with the fulcrum pattern... (possibly it doesn't make a blind bit of difference!)0 -
ugo.santalucia wrote:It's getting impossible to find a QR skewer which actually does the job properly... is this progress?
A 10 speed chain wears 4 times faster than an 8 speed one (and more importantly, breaks much more often),
Yeah, my wheels keep falling out and I've broken, oh, hang on, actually my wheels do stay in place and I haven't broken a chain since, well, never!
Reassuring to know that an 8 speed chain will last at least 30 years then.0 -
NapoleonD wrote:ugo.santalucia wrote:It's getting impossible to find a QR skewer which actually does the job properly... is this progress?
A 10 speed chain wears 4 times faster than an 8 speed one (and more importantly, breaks much more often),
Yeah, my wheels keep falling out and I've broken, oh, hang on, actually my wheels do stay in place and I haven't broken a chain since, well, never!
Reassuring to know that an 8 speed chain will last at least 30 years then.
A few facts for young cyclists and those with short memory, who think there has been a massive technological advance in bike materials:
In the early eighties (before EPO, at the time of the Badger) the average speed at the Tour de France was 38.5 Kmh. The average speed of the 2010 Tour (the first EPO free in my opinion) has been 39.5 Kmh... I can go as far as conceding that the 1 Km/h difference is down to better materials only (although I'm sure there are other factors).
My 1984 Super Record rear derailleur has titanium bolts. How far up the Campagnolo range you have to go in 2010 to find titanium bolts? It is a genuine question, as I don't know...
The same 1984 gear shifter system (derailleurs + levers) weighs less than my 2008 Centaur system.
In 1998 Pantani was using a downtube shifter for the front derailleur, to save weight over the ergo levers (I've seen the bike).
My best time up the climb to Oropa (featured in various Giro d'Italia, 750 mt altitude difference in 12 Km) is 45.45 with my old 1984 bike and 45.15 with my 2008 bike... I can go as far as conceding that the 30 seconds are solely down to materials
It seems to me that if I take a 1984 Ford Fiesta in pristine conditions and compare with a 2010 one... well, the difference is massive in all areas, from performance to safety... but with bikes.. there is very little advance I'm afraidleft the forum March 20230 -
@ ugo.santalucia in 1984 how many clean riders (As in no drugs) were there then and how many this year??? :shock: :?
Don't think you can compare weight now as in 84 there was only a max of 6/7 gears and now there are 11 which has got to weigh more, but if there was only 6/7 now then there would be a difference.
In 1984 Campag riders used Super/Nuevo Record, so lets compare like with like as in the same number of gears and the top of the range gear.
You also need to look at reliability now as opposed to then, there is a far bigger picture than what you are making out.0 -
I remember reading an article in Cycling Weekly where some riders did a hilly tt on a mid 80s top of the range Pinarello and on a modern bike albeit both had SRM cranks. The modern bike was not only quicker for the same power but all the riders reported that the modern bike felt far more controlled when descending, the turn in and braking was far better...0
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NapoleonD wrote:I remember reading an article in Cycling Weekly where some riders did a hilly tt on a mid 80s top of the range Pinarello and on a modern bike albeit both had SRM cranks. The modern bike was not only quicker for the same power but all the riders reported that the modern bike felt far more controlled when descending, the turn in and braking was far better...
Don't get me wrong... today's bikes are a bit better than they were 25-30 years ago... but this is the point... they're only just a bit better than they were. We can quantify saying they're 5-10% better.
While cars have improved massively, bikes haven't.
I think the reason is electronics... electronics have been prevented from going onto the bikes, hence the progress is very slow, as the main advances had already been done in the 60s.
In addition, there's a price to pay: the industry has gone "disposable": parts and components are designed to last one-two years, while in the past they were designed to last.
Being a retro person, I kind of like this slow progress, but we cannot fool ourselves believing that there is a lot of progress... there simply isn'tleft the forum March 20230 -
Slow-N-Old wrote:@ ugo.santalucia in 1984 how many clean riders (As in no drugs) were there then and how many this year??? :shock: :?
Don't think you can compare weight now as in 84 there was only a max of 6/7 gears and now there are 11 which has got to weigh more, but if there was only 6/7 now then there would be a difference.
In 1984 Campag riders used Super/Nuevo Record, so lets compare like with like as in the same number of gears and the top of the range gear.
You also need to look at reliability now as opposed to then, there is a far bigger picture than what you are making out.
1984... I don't think anybody was clean... but it was before blood doping, so the difference doping could make was little. You can see how the average performance rocketed when EPO got into the peloton.
Actually an 11 speed cassette is way lighter than a 7 speed of the 80s... the lighter parts were the shifters, as opposed to the Ergos... interesting that the ergos are probalby the only noticeable advance from those days...
Reliability? It was better then, than it is now, pound for poundleft the forum March 20230
