Originally Posted by
diabloridr
We've been using the 2017 version of the Rolf carbon wheelset for about a year.
So far performance has been flawless with no trueing required or evidence other problems.
Only issue noted is the tall rim profile may have contibuted to a high-speed wobble we experienced under some conditions, but sensitivity to this issue and some adjustment in stoker positioning has largely eliminated the problem.
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Let me know if you have further questions.
I'm curious why you think a tall rim profile would cause high-speed wobble? There's a great - and technical - discussion about high speed wobble on Lennard Zinn's blog on VeloNews. Every bicycle will exhibit high-speed wobble if high enough velocity is reached. And since higher velocities are often reached on tandems, its occurrence would be more common. I also understand that more mass in the front wheel tends to prevent onset at lower speeds. So if your tall rim profile were lighter than another front wheel that didn't exhibit the problem, I'd assume mass is the issue. But usually deeper v rims are heavier and should result in less high speed wobble issues.
Here's a technical take:
Technical FAQ: Bifurcation and high-speed shimmy | VeloNews.com
Scroll to the bottom for the discussion. Specifically, high speed wobble comes down to this:
"For the bicycle scenario, the parameter in the engineering phase could be increasing the stiffness build of the bike — a stiffer bike will be more resistant. The several design parameters could all be “nondimensionalized” to a single, non-dimensional parameter as is necessary to explain with Hopf since it is a one-parameter phenomena (this concept is called co-dimension-1 bifurcation). Or once the bike is designed and built, then the parameter is speed. Each bike has a critical speed at which it will cross the Hopf bifurcation value, and then steady state becomes unstable and wobble becomes the stable state. This, by the way, is why it is very, very dangerous to try those 150 mph downhill bicycle attempts!"
I rode and raced with Erik in college, only to come home to listen to him and my other roommate discuss math and physics at a level far above my pay grade!
Anyway, I thought I'd share.