best wheels for the price

ugo.santalucia

danowat wrote:

Nothing, no difference, which was suprising, infact, I mananged a "PB" on the way home (17miles in 50mins).

I am not saying the Eastons aren't "better", they are IMO, and I would certainly use them in a race / TT / Crit over the stock ones.

The point is, don't expect them to MAKE you any quicker.

(FTR, my route is pretty flat, biggest climb is only 3.5%, so "better" wheels may provide more of a difference on hillier rides)

I am not surprised at all.

ugo.santalucia

Extralight wrote:

I'm phasing out some old but beautiful and extremely reliable light weight tubular hand builts (Fir 28/32 rims on Hope Ti hubs with Corsa CXs) and replacing these with the Pro-Lite Bracciannos. The reason for the change is that the rims were wearing thin on the handbuilts after many thousands of miles (never ever needed truing). I can no longer justify the expensive indulgence of running tubs given that I don't ride a huge amount, and with a family can no longer afford decent tubs every time I puncture (there's little point in running cheap tubs as good quality clinchers will be much better).

The Pro-Lites arrived yesterday, and won't get their first spin for a few weeks yet, but I'll let you know how they ride when I do use them. First impressions out of the box are very good though. They're seriously light for the money, and true and smooth, and look pretty cool (a bit aero, but nothing too extreme, so should be good for all conditions). They seem too good for the money to be true to be honest, so time will tell. They've had very good reviews though, and although 'factory' wheels, they are handbuilt in the UK I think.

http://www.pro-lite.net/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=58

They're hand built in the far east, but that is irrelevant

unixnerd

The Pro-Lites arrived yesterday

Mine arrived this morning, can't wait to try them out. First impressions are very favourable.

ugo.santalucia

unixnerd wrote:

The Pro-Lites arrived yesterday

Mine arrived this morning, can't wait to try them out. First impressions are very favourable.

What impressions? You haven't tried them yet... that's what I call bias...

BTW: careful with the skewers, if you don't fasten them properly they come loose

pastey_boy

ugo.santalucia wrote:

unixnerd wrote:

The Pro-Lites arrived yesterday

Mine arrived this morning, can't wait to try them out. First impressions are very favourable.

What impressions? You haven't tried them yet... that's what I call bias...

BTW: careful with the skewers, if you don't fasten them properly they come loose

read the reviews
http://road.cc/content/review/6577-pro- ... o-wheelset

unixnerd

What impressions? You haven't tried them yet... that's what I call bias...

First impressions would be that they do indeed seem light, well finished and well made.

pastey_boy

the above review is based on them costing £349 so for half the price they are pretty much untouchable, also lighter wheels do make a difference, i regularly swap wheels and 200 grams of wheel weight makes a huge difference to the effort it takes to get up to speed and maintain it

Extralight

Sorry, you're right - not built in the UK!
http://www.pro-lite.net/index.php?optio ... id=5&id=37

ugo.santalucia

pastey_boy wrote:

ugo.santalucia wrote:

unixnerd wrote:

The Pro-Lites arrived yesterday

Mine arrived this morning, can't wait to try them out. First impressions are very favourable.

What impressions? You haven't tried them yet... that's what I call bias...

BTW: careful with the skewers, if you don't fasten them properly they come loose

read the reviews
http://road.cc/content/review/6577-pro- ... o-wheelset

These reviews are worthless... they ride them (if they do) for 50 miles and give feedback on durability and reliability...

Plus, to be honest, have you ever read a negative review, where they give a 4/10?

The only reviews taht matter are those of people like me and you, after extensive use. When I review a product, I try to outline the possible problems/defects, as the manufatureres themselves are very committed in outlining what is good and marvellous

pastey_boy

ive read many negative reviews in my time, ive also read many positive reviews and in the past ive based purchasing decisions on the basis of said reviews. i purchased a set of xero xr-210,s based on positive reviews and the wheels turned out to be as promised and a lot more, i only got rid due to aesthetic reasons. if we went off your reasoning then it would be pot luck if we purchase a worthy component as all options would have to be considered, good and bad before we could make a final decision. some parts are down to personal choice such as saddles, and most other contact points but other parts such as wheels must tick the same boxes in many peoples opinions such as weight, strength and longevity. i would much rather listen to an informed opinion than having to spend an absolute fortune hoping i find the right set up for me.

ugo.santalucia

I have never read a negative review and most of them contain two key words: "stiff" and "light", which I normally associate with ignorance.

"Light", well that's easy to measure (although nothing ever weights as little as declared) and for some means a lot for others means less.

"Stiff" means nothing, as no reviewer has seriously stretched the material to the point of seeing it bending or showing any appreciable elastic deformation, so it just fills the mouth of hot air.

I have very rarely read useful reviews, sometimes from people like you and me, occasionally on forums like these, where you can even get sensible advice which doesn't contain the two magic words.

Let's face it, these reviewers are people who have never stripped a hub down to service it and they've got no idea what is quality and what is rubbish... they read the brochure, ride a few miles and write something that sounds sensible and flattering enough, but pretty worthless.

Rather than a spotty bloke who's done a few miles, I'd prefer the opinion of a well respected builder/mechanic, but that's never the case

huuregeil

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Finally, the lateral flex: unlike commonly believed, this is not due to the rim, but rather to how much tension there is in the spokes. High tension means low lateral flex, hence this sense of "stiffness".

This is not actually correct - look up Rinard's wheel stiffness tests. You're right in general concept though, that stiffness comes from the spokes first and foremost, but also rim section plays a role too, both in the bracing angle and torsional stiffness. If you want a stiffer wheel:

- increase the spoke count
- increase the bracing angle, either by higher flange hubs or deeper section rims, or lower-cross/radial bracing
- get a chunkier (e.g. heavier and deeper) rim.

However, I'm totally with you with on hub quality first and screw the overall weight! Cheap factory wheels acheive their performance tradeoff by compromising hub quality and increasing rim weight to control sitffness, while offering low spoke counts.

Barteos

pastey_boy wrote:

i regularly swap wheels and 200 grams of wheel weight makes a huge difference to the effort it takes to get up to speed and maintain it

I can't argue with how you perceive the difference between your wheels (! assuming same tyres, same pressure, same course, same rider + bike + gear weight) but, 200g doesn't make a HUGE difference to accelerate unless perhaps you weigh 10st (incl bike and gear) and race crits on a high level for a place on the podium.

At a constant speed it practically makes no difference at all and it doesn't even matter where the extra weight is.

It'd be very interesting to verify all those "huge difference" claims from various forums in a series of repeated random BLIND tests with a powermeter

dodgy

Well, I'm another that can testify to feeling the difference in 'only' 200g of wheel weight. It shouldn't be this way, it's only 1/2 a pound after all, but I can definitely feel it.

pastey_boy

Barteos wrote:

pastey_boy wrote:

i regularly swap wheels and 200 grams of wheel weight makes a huge difference to the effort it takes to get up to speed and maintain it

I can't argue with how you perceive the difference between your wheels (! assuming same tyres, same pressure, same course, same rider + bike + gear weight) but, 200g doesn't make a HUGE difference to accelerate unless perhaps you weigh 10st (incl bike and gear) and race crits on a high level for a place on the podium.

At a constant speed it practically makes no difference at all and it doesn't even matter where the extra weight is.

It'd be very interesting to verify all those "huge difference" claims from various forums in a series of repeated random BLIND tests with a powermeter

i ride my bike everyday so i am best qualified to report on the feel of it. and yes i use the same tyre and tubes. with the lighter wheels the bike gets up to speed quicker and feels lighter to ride, its more noticeable on the shorter 25 milers i do in the morning than the longer more relaxed rides i do at the weekends. i tried a pair of fulcrum 7,s which i weighed in at 1978grams minus skewers which made my bike feel horrible over the 1597gram xero xr-210,s i had been using. it wasnt in my head the bike just felt leaden under my feet

pastey_boy

a better comparison would be to stick a pair of dh wheels on a mtb then swap them for a pair of superlight xc wheels, i dont think you would need a blindfold for that test unless you dont believe in light wheels

unixnerd

Well I'm just back from a quick 20 miler on the Pro-Lites. For the record I'm 10.5 stone, Cannondale CAAD5, quite a hilly route with very little wind.

Firstly, when I fitted them I found they ran perfectly true but were slightly out of round. Back wheel was worst, I'd say one section was maybe 1mm or less out (guess, I don't have a dial gauge). This was checked before I put tyres on so was defo the wheels. Only info I can find about tolerances for such things was Park Tools website which says anything under 0.5mm is acceptable. They seemed to run OK even on the very few sections of almost smooth road I could check them on. I'd be interested to hear opinions about whether such an amount is normal or whether I should think about raising it as an issue with Ribble.

Before these I had bought a used set of Mavic Ksyrium Elite's on ebay, for the same price as the new Pro-Lites (which I didn't find out about until a bit later). I had to return them as despite asking the vendor before purchase they were Campagnolo instead of Shimano. Now if money were no option I'd have new Elites. They're the same weight but feel a bit more solidly built and the bearings are better. By better I mean a lot larger. A larger bearing will generally last longer and offer less resistance. I'd also say the spokes were made of a higher tensile steel. They're over double the price let's not forget.

Anyway, the road test ;-) These definitely let me accelerate faster than my old 2kg Gipiemme Tecno 24s. Any sudden effort I put in results in a much faster response and a larger increase in forward motion than before, it's especially noticeable on hills. I found myself making little sprints just to feel the acceleration. I'd say at some points I was certainly climbing in a higher gear than normal. At a steady speed it's hard to say if there was any difference, I didn't expect to find much and I suspect any benefit is minimal.

I set my brakes up with almost zero clearance to see if there was any wheel flex. If I got out of the saddle and hammered it at low speed I could sometimes make the front brake rub very slightly.

One thing that I hadn't thought about was braking. At one point I had to slam the anchors on unexpectedly to avoid some debris on a downhill section, the way the brakes gripped gave me a bit of a shock and I had to let them off slightly. I'm sure most of this is due to a brand new braking surface, but it was very nice!

So the verdict? Well I can certainly tell the difference between a 1500g and 2000g wheelset when climbing or accelerating and it's a fairly big difference. I'm looking forward to climbing Cairngorm on these, maybe at the weekend (side note: two of the guys in my LBS did Mt. Ventoux 3 times in one day recently and have certificates to prove it, hugely jealous). They're certainly worth the money but if cost were no option I'd say the Ksyrium Elites are better made in several respects. Initial impressions are that they're a great way to spend under 200 quid, especially if you see a lot of hills.

Barteos

pastey_boy wrote:

Barteos wrote:

pastey_boy wrote:

i regularly swap wheels and 200 grams of wheel weight makes a huge difference to the effort it takes to get up to speed and maintain it

I can't argue with how you perceive the difference between your wheels (! assuming same tyres, same pressure, same course, same rider + bike + gear weight) but, 200g doesn't make a HUGE difference to accelerate unless perhaps you weigh 10st (incl bike and gear) and race crits on a high level for a place on the podium.

At a constant speed it practically makes no difference at all and it doesn't even matter where the extra weight is.

It'd be very interesting to verify all those "huge difference" claims from various forums in a series of repeated random BLIND tests with a powermeter

i ride my bike everyday so i am best qualified to report on the feel of it. and yes i use the same tyre and tubes. with the lighter wheels the bike gets up to speed quicker and feels lighter to ride, its more noticeable on the shorter 25 milers i do in the morning than the longer more relaxed rides i do at the weekends. i tried a pair of fulcrum 7,s which i weighed in at 1978grams minus skewers which made my bike feel horrible over the 1597gram xero xr-210,s i had been using. it wasnt in my head the bike just felt leaden under my feet

I don't question the existence of perceived or actual performance differences that 200g or 500g can make but the SCALE of it.

As a part of my winter base training, I usually do the same 3h loop at the steady power and I use it for testing various tyres.
For the last few weeks I've been riding my favourite freaky 350g (each) 33mm Rivendell Jack Brown tyres, but this evening, for a change I've been on 25mm folding Contis GP4000 which are roughly 300g lighter for pair than Jack Browns.

During the ride, one thing I've noticed straight away is that they FELT very fast, responsive, light and they accelerated better, most of that being simply to higher pressure (100PSI vs 50PSI) rather than weight. Basically they were brilliant and felt 1-2mph faster.

That's how they felt, but were they actually faster?
When I got back home and uploaded the data, the difference was... 0.3mph for the similar power output (within 3W), although it's too early to say after just one ride.

What I'm getting at is that it may may be very difficult to tell objectively what actual difference a new component makes and that the perceived performance gains are smaller that they are in reality.
The differences are certainly there but they're not massive, otherwise we'd see plenty of "massively" faster riders everywhere.


P.S. Something to bear in mind is that of the total weight difference between different wheels, only a small part will be in the rims, so the effect of rotating mass will be smaller than the nominal weight advantage would suggest.

ugo.santalucia

unixnerd wrote:

Well I'm just back from a quick 20 miler on the Pro-Lites. For the record I'm 10.5 stone, Cannondale CAAD5, quite a hilly route with very little wind.

Firstly, when I fitted them I found they ran perfectly true but were slightly out of round. Back wheel was worst, I'd say one section was maybe 1mm or less out (guess, I don't have a dial gauge). This was checked before I put tyres on so was defo the wheels. Only info I can find about tolerances for such things was Park Tools website which says anything under 0.5mm is acceptable. They seemed to run OK even on the very few sections of almost smooth road I could check them on. I'd be interested to hear opinions about whether such an amount is normal or whether I should think about raising it as an issue with Ribble.

Before these I had bought a used set of Mavic Ksyrium Elite's on ebay, for the same price as the new Pro-Lites (which I didn't find out about until a bit later). I had to return them as despite asking the vendor before purchase they were Campagnolo instead of Shimano. Now if money were no option I'd have new Elites. They're the same weight but feel a bit more solidly built and the bearings are better. By better I mean a lot larger. A larger bearing will generally last longer and offer less resistance. I'd also say the spokes were made of a higher tensile steel. They're over double the price let's not forget.

Anyway, the road test ;-) These definitely let me accelerate faster than my old 2kg Gipiemme Tecno 24s. Any sudden effort I put in results in a much faster response and a larger increase in forward motion than before, it's especially noticeable on hills. I found myself making little sprints just to feel the acceleration. I'd say at some points I was certainly climbing in a higher gear than normal. At a steady speed it's hard to say if there was any difference, I didn't expect to find much and I suspect any benefit is minimal.

I set my brakes up with almost zero clearance to see if there was any wheel flex. If I got out of the saddle and hammered it at low speed I could sometimes make the front brake rub very slightly.

One thing that I hadn't thought about was braking. At one point I had to slam the anchors on unexpectedly to avoid some debris on a downhill section, the way the brakes gripped gave me a bit of a shock and I had to let them off slightly. I'm sure most of this is due to a brand new braking surface, but it was very nice!

So the verdict? Well I can certainly tell the difference between a 1500g and 2000g wheelset when climbing or accelerating and it's a fairly big difference. I'm looking forward to climbing Cairngorm on these, maybe at the weekend (side note: two of the guys in my LBS did Mt. Ventoux 3 times in one day recently and have certificates to prove it, hugely jealous). They're certainly worth the money but if cost were no option I'd say the Ksyrium Elites are better made in several respects. Initial impressions are that they're a great way to spend under 200 quid, especially if you see a lot of hills.

1 mm is a lot... especially as on their website they claim an unrealistic 0.05 mm as tolerance

pastey_boy

but surely it takes more energy to push along a heavier set of wheels, not inc aero hoops.

dmch2

Newston's first law - (requoted a bit) it doesn't take any effort to keep something rolling no matter what it weighs.

When you try to speed it up, slow it down or take it up a hill you'll notice the difference though!

Russ68

Interesting thread as I'm hoping to upgrade the 2007 Aksiums on my Cayo Ultegra, the Bracianos seem well thought of if not always round or in stock! But I'm swaying towards the RS80's, while it shouldn't matter too much, the carbon has a certain wow factor, I like the lower spoke count and the hubs are supposedly good. If I can hammer out a good deal on them I think I'll go this way, I can't really afford to spend more and think they'll be a good match for the rest of the bike

dodgy

I've done 2 rides on the Braccianos now. They were fitted as additionals for some Planet X Model B wheels, I like to have a spare set of wheels ready to go with cassette and tyres fitted in case of problems (don't like to miss out on riding).

Anyway, they're about 120 grams lighter than the Model Bs, look very nice and the white lettering really stands out on them even while spinning, certainly is more eye catching than the Model Bs.

They are exceptionally stiff, which took me by surprise, I'm sure I read that one poster said they could be described as 'whipppy'! They are so stiff, they are actually pretty unforgiving and give a slighlty inferior ride to the Model Bs. They're pretty clattery over rough roads. Though I should add that I also changed to different tyres on the Braccianos, on my Model Bs I have Michelin Pro Race 3s fitted and on the Braccianos I have Schwalbe Stelvio raceguards in an effort to provide some puncture proofing for the oncoming winter.

The stiffness seems to aid climbing/sprinting ability in some way, but possibly not enough to have an effect on actual times.

They are quiet, and once rolling you don't hear the freewheel pawls if you coast. My local cafe has storage for bikes that keeps the front wheel off the ground and the front wheel was still spinning after going in and drinking tea and coming out a few minutes later, so the bearings seem OK (obviously this isn't a good test of bearings, it's an unladen test).

I think they're worth the money, I've been able to go to a much more robust tyre/tube combination for winter and still come under the weight of the old wheels, though I wouldn't necessarily consider the Braccianos an 'upgrade' as such over Model Bs. However, if you're facing the prospect of needing new wheels I would choose them over the Model Bs.

Hope this helps.

Extralight

I'm using the Pro-Lite Braccianos now, and I'm thrilled with them. For the money, they're amazing. On the bike, they feel great - I've no concerns with them whatsoever. The ride is slightly harsher than the non-aero wheels they've replaced, which is to be expected, but they're by no means uncomfortable, even for a very light rider (I'm 55kg). It's still early days, and if they suddenly fall apart or go out of true, then I'll be back to let you all know...

Downward

Did you get any in the end OP ?

ugo.santalucia

Downward wrote:

Did you get any in the end OP ?

The OP has not posted in ages... I don't think he's still around