Road Cycling - High Perforamnce road Wheelsets

There's an article about high end wheelsets that (to sum it up) says that expensive wheelsets are no better (overall) than a set of regular open pros/cxp 33s laced to chris king hubs.

Is there any significant advantage that the Nucleons, Ksyriums, Dura-Ace wheelsets have over the regular rims laced to regular hubs?

Because those wheelsets are pretty darn expensive!

They can be more aerodynamic, but that is pretty marginal.
90% of air resistance is the rider. In a 1/2 hr time trial, you might pick up a few seconds. In the turbulent air of a peleton (pack), there is no real advantage.
They have a lot of dissadvantages, including harsher riding rims, un-maintainable spokes, poor failure characteristics.


Outside of competition, esp time trials, they have no advantages to the rider over a quality peair of standard wheels.
Even if you compete on pre-built wheels, you should save them for race day and train on standard rims.

Mavic invented the concept of pre-built wheels, because their sales of fine hubs did not match their sales of fine rims.

Well, they DO make you LOOK like a poseur. They will also sometimes get you home quicker-when a spoke breaks and you have to call a cab. I think the suggestion somebody made about being worth about 2 seconds on a 20 mile race is about right. For the same $xxx, you could buy lighter bars, stem, seatpost, cranks, AND new pedals. You'll save MORE weight, too. At the same time, if you stick with your conventional 32-36 spoke wheel, you will get a better ride, and your hands won't go numb as fast (switching to tubulars will also do this).
Below are the consequences you would expect from breaking a spoke at speed, for different wheels:
36 spoke: slight wobble on wheel, you pull over, maybe adjust a caliper, ride on.
32-spoke wheel: Wheel rubs on brake, you pull over, back off the caliper adjuster, continue on, but slowly.
28-spoke: wheel rubs hard on caliper, you pull over, disconnect caliper, ride home very carefully.
24-spoke wheel: wheel wobbles so badly that you come to a halt quickly, you call a cab to get home.
16-spoke (or less): wheel stops immediately. You go over bars, into ditch. Call ambulance to take you to hospital. Call friend to bring home wreckage of bike. Spend 2-3 weeks recovering, while shopping for new bike.

Wow, I didn't know that you paid dearly for lightweight wheels. I have 36 spoke rims and was actually considering getting 28 spoked ones. Hmmmm, I guess 36 spokes isn't that bad after all!

A good set of aero wheels will provide you with more benefit than some of the posters have suggested. A set of disk or tri-spoke front and rear wheels will gain you close to a minute in a 25-mile time trial at racing speeds.

Nonetheless, I'm not convinced aero wheels are worth the money and the risk of failure for someone who's not racing. I seriously looked into buying a set a while ago, and I decided against it-- for now, at least. For one thing, the price is pretty stiff-- a few hundred bucks for one wheel. That's a lot of money for a half-minute gain over 40km.

I'm also very suspicious of the reduced spoke designs, like Rolf Wheels. Whatever Rolf and the pumped-up bike shop guys claim, wheels like these are not as strong as standard 32 spoke jobs. They just aren't. Furthermore, I ride all the time, and I like to go on longish rides out into the cornfields. If I have a spoke break, and from experience I know I will eventually, I want to be able to stop for a minute and ride home. If you break a spoke on one of those expensive wheel sets, your ride is over. Even if you don't mind standing there for the better part of an hour waiting for a cab, Rolf's not going to pay for it. A 32-spoke wheel, on the other hand, can be trued with a broken spoke so that you don't even have to open the brakes. (I always bring a spoke wrench with me on rides, for spoke breaks as well as just to true the wheels if they get knocked around.) When you get home, you can fix a standard wheel yourself very easily, too. Sometimes you have to mail the aero wheels back to the factory to get them trued.

Things break on bikes. They just do. I'd much rather have the reliability of the older style wheels when things do go wrong and pay the speed penalty.

There are some scary stories about some carbon wheels, like the Spinergy wheels. Full failure at race speed, followed by devastating injuries. Yikes.

The tri-spoke models, like the Specialized wheel, are supposed to be both strong and reliable. That's the sort of wheel I'd consider getting, if I convinced myself it was worth the dough. I just haven't thought it was worth it yet.

Here's an interesting page with a lot of information about the aero benefits of various things:

http://www.damonrinard.com/aero/aerodynamics.htm

nothing ever really changes.

Well, they DO make you LOOK like a poseur. They will also sometimes get you home quicker-when a spoke breaks and you have to call a cab. I think the suggestion somebody made about being worth about 2 seconds on a 20 mile race is about right. For the same $xxx, you could buy lighter bars, stem, seatpost, cranks, AND new pedals. You'll save MORE weight, too. At the same time, if you stick with your conventional 32-36 spoke wheel, you will get a better ride, and your hands won't go numb as fast (switching to tubulars will also do this).
Below are the consequences you would expect from breaking a spoke at speed, for different wheels:
36 spoke: slight wobble on wheel, you pull over, maybe adjust a caliper, ride on.
32-spoke wheel: Wheel rubs on brake, you pull over, back off the caliper adjuster, continue on, but slowly.
28-spoke: wheel rubs hard on caliper, you pull over, disconnect caliper, ride home very carefully.
24-spoke wheel: wheel wobbles so badly that you come to a halt quickly, you call a cab to get home.
16-spoke (or less): wheel stops immediately. You go over bars, into ditch. Call ambulance to take you to hospital. Call friend to bring home wreckage of bike. Spend 2-3 weeks recovering, while shopping for new bike.

I broke a spoke on my 24 spoke rear wheel and rode home happily after a quick caliper adjustment. Just sayin

kysriums are high performance wheel sets? THought they were just your avg joe upgrade wheel?

LOL, let me offer a differing view. First let me say that out of my 5 sets of wheels only one has given me problems. It is a CXP-21 Mavic wheels laced with high spoke counts to a set of Shimano hubs. Constantly fighting loose and broken spokes with it. Oh and these may be the "most comfortable" wheels but when you have them mounted on a steel frame with an aluminum fork and ride chipseal the ride is a bit "buzzy" on the hands. So wheels alone are not the save all to comfort.

Now my paired spoke Rolfs have a low count and plenty of negatives according to many here. Yet they have given me several thousand care free miles. I've yet to every even need to service them. I rode them on rough chipseal roads even when my weight was in the 180-190 lb range and they handled it just fine. My fault with them was how the wheels seemed to deal poorly with strong cross winds even though only being 30mm rims.

Now this year I bought my first set of wheels, Williams Systems 30s. Got them with a discount so the price was not too bad. What advantage do they give? For some reason they handle cross winds better than the Rolfs despite having a similar profile. The benefit, for me, is the lighter weight since I ride a lot of hills and mountain climbs. They may no be faster but I certainly expel less energy spinning them. This is most apparent on the rolling hills that I attack at speed. I can carry more rpms and speed up the shorter hills.

Now I have bought an even higher end set for my main bike. This allows me to retire both my Rolfs and the heavy built Bontrager SSRs. Oh and I almost forgot, the Bontragers have needed truing twice also despite the fact that they have the least miles on them of all my wheels.

So maybe the durability of high-end wheels is a bit different than attested to in some of the other posts. I certainly have had no issues with any of my better wheels so far. Now the real question is what price we each put on these "benefits".

I broke a spoke on my 24 spoke rear wheel and rode home happily after a quick caliper adjustment. Just sayin

I on the other hand, broke a spoke on my 24 spoke rear, and the wobble was so pronounced, I felt like I was drinking and driving.................:-(

kysriums are high performance wheel sets? THought they were just your avg joe upgrade wheel?

You may want to look at the dates of the first five posts.

Wow, I didn't know that you paid dearly for lightweight wheels. I have 36 spoke rims and was actually considering getting 28 spoked ones. Hmmmm, I guess 36 spokes isn't that bad after all!

Don't let that blanket statement scare you. I'm 200 pounds riding a 28 spoke rear with 16K miles on it. Never broke anything and it's never been trued. I don't jump crubs but ride on plenty of broken asphalt.

Holy zombie thread Batman. This is a debate on aero wheels from 10 years ago.

Holy zombie thread Batman. This is a debate on aero wheels from 10 years ago.

Seriously.

Is this thread being revived to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11, or what?

Talk to simonaway427