new wheels

radiation man

ive always had shimano r500 wheels on my trek 1.5 they cost about 110.00 a pair, would a wheel upgrade make the bike go faster or not.

Bobbinogs

This will be interesting...

geoff_ss

The main thing that makes a bike go faster is the nut that holds the handlebars ... or, more accurately, the nut's legs and lungs. A simple rule is if you're looking for minutes then train harder; if you're looking for seconds then start refining the equipment.

Obviously the above only applies once you've got a reasonably decent bike with true, round wheels with properly maintained components.in the bike itself. My first bike had steel rims and so I built a pair with alloy rims on better quality hubs (I was naive at the time and assumed all 'proper' cyclists built their own wheels so I taught myself ). They made quite a big difference (particularly to the braking) but the main improvement came because I did a lot of miles.

My current bike has a pair of Shimano 105 32 hole hubs on Mavic Open Pro rims with DT spokes. I think they cost me about £150 3 years ago. Having always had 36 spoke wheels I thought I was being a bit daring opting for 32 but they've been totally reliable so far. I doubt I'd go much faster or farther on more expensive ones.

Of course, if you're racing it's totally different but all I ever did was touring and commuting. I built a pair of sprints for racing but they were on a stripped down Mercian touring bike.

skyd0g

...it depends on what cc motor you fit to them.

night_porter

Maybe a tyre upgrade would help but of course that depends on which tyres you currently have.

Plenty of people upgrade their wheels and truly believe it makes a difference so if you have the money and hanker after new wheels then go for it.

I suppose it really begs the question why do you need to go faster?

flateric

i discovered for me a quck way of increasing my speed was learning about cadence and how to pedal correctly. Made a huge difference.

personnally, i go with the policy of "if it aint broke, dont fix it" A decent set of wheels (i have been looking for a set for my second bike) is at least 140 quid, if not more, for a small saving in weight. I could spend a couple of thousand on a carbon pair but i doubt i would see a huge speed increase!

MountainMonster

flateric wrote:

i discovered for me a quck way of increasing my speed was learning about cadence and how to pedal correctly. Made a huge difference.

personnally, i go with the policy of "if it aint broke, dont fix it" A decent set of wheels (i have been looking for a set for my second bike) is at least 140 quid, if not more, for a small saving in weight. I could spend a couple of thousand on a carbon pair but i doubt i would see a huge speed increase!

What you need to realise is, that even though 100g may not be a huge number difference, the difference in feel and acceleration on wheels from a 100g savings can be quite drastic! Now say you shed 400-500 grams off your wheels, and you've got a very good set of wheels that spin much faster.

That said though, the best improvement that can be made is to the rider. If speed really is that much of a factor, and you want to throw cash at the problem, spend the cash on just healthy food, and train alot. That will make 5million times more difference to the ride and speed than any wheelset will make.