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Old 08-22-11, 03:24 PM
  #17  
sstorkel
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Bikes: Cervelo RS, Specialized Stumpjumper FSR Pro, Schwinn Typhoon, Nashbar touring, custom steel MTB

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Originally Posted by RiverHills
Wrong. Not even close. There plenty of wheels on the market weighing more than 100-200 grams less than the SLX - which by the way does not have a rider weight limit either.
If you can find a dozen clincher wheels that are readily available and weigh less than the SLX's 1425g, I'd be surprised. There are a very few readily-available aluminum, clincher wheelsets that weigh 1325g or less and I'm not aware of any that hit your (mythical?) 1225g mark. If you ask Easton about weight limits, which I did when trying to decide between the EA90 SL and SLX, they'll tell you that they don't have weight limits... but that heavier riders may notice additional wheel flex and need to perform more frequent maintenance (read: truing, spoke replacement).

A wheel weighing 800 grams more is almost 2 pounds heavier. Obviously that wheel would be considered bullet proof, but the loss in performance would be huge.
Note that I said wheelset, not wheel. I suspect that if you did back-to-back tests with a power meter and different wheelsets that you'd be surprised how little difference weight makes. In my experience, the performance difference is mostly mental. My Garmin certainly can't tell the difference between my 1550g and 1900g wheels over my standard 30-mile training loop, and not much of a difference with my significantly heavier touring wheels... Data from the PowerTap wheelset would seem to back this up: weight differences of a few hundred grams simply don't make much of a difference.

If you want to go faster, focus on aerodynamics not weight...
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