Take this with a grain of salt if you will but it seems a detailed review of the Flashpoint 60s at Competitive Cyclist...ENJOY!
Zipp FlashPoint 60 Wheelset
Wheels. If there's a single component that can give you a big performance improvement, it's those rotating hoops with rubber and cogs. We believe that if you have to choose between spending on a frame and spending on wheels, spend on wheels. A good aluminum frame and fancy wheels will almost certainly outperform a fancy carbon frame and good aluminum wheels. People have said the difficulty with bikes is you can't buy speed. They're wrong; with the right wheel and tire choices, you can.
The Zipp-made Flash Point wheels are about as bargain as you can get when it comes to carbon-fiber deep-dish clinchers. We decided to test out the deeper, faster Flash Point 60 wheelset. Zipp wisely uses older, less-expensive builds of their rims rather than designing something new. These are the 4-piece 303 and 404 rims from the era of pre-dimpled Zipp rims, which are much simpler than the 30 some-odd piece builds of Zipp rims today. The rims start with an ultra-light aluminum rim that is bonded to a structural carbon shape; the two segments work together. Depending on what test data you read, the older rims are either nearly as fast or slightly faster than the new ones. Flash Points aren't the only wheels with these rims; this is the only one that's built by Zipp in Indiana.
There are a few other differences between these rims and the Zipp rims of today. These rims are a bit shallower than newer Zipps. They don't have those speed dimples. And the spoke nipples are inside the rim. While the internal nipples are harder to deal with, the smoother profile is supposed to be faster. FP wheels also use less expensive bladed spokes and less expensive hubs, though, here, too, spokes and hubs aren't from some nameless factory in the far east. The bladed spokes are made by Belgian spoke giant Sapim, and while they're not as fast as the CX-Ray spokes, they're still much faster than a round spoke. The hubs are also made by Zipp.
Rounding out our test setup were Continental Grand Prix 4000s tires, butyl tubes, a Campagnolo 12-25 cassette and steel Zipp skewers. These tires have been the rolling rubber for our clincher test wheels. Having identical and nearly identical test tires is nice because it helps limit the variables. The performance changes have to be in the wheels, not the rolling rubber.
The deal with fast wheels is they often don't feel fast rolling out your front door. Low speeds don't allow the wheel aerodynamics to come into play and the heavier rim weight can feel like a penalty. Out our front door is a flat road, but we have rises in virtually every direction within a half-mile. The first few strokes were a big slower than the light wheels we've tested, but the weight is quickly forgotten once we got up over 15mph, even on the rise we typically use to get out of town.
We found that once we got into our tempo range, the wheels felt much faster than our old box-section clinchers, but also a good bit faster than just about any wheel we've tried thusfar, with the one exception being the Zipp 404 tubular (the Flash Point 60's flashy brother). Even on a solo training mission, any time we threw it in the big ring; we found we could roll noticeably faster. What was once a time to ride 20 mph seemed to go up to 22-23. What was once the effort needed for 22mph seemed to take us around 25mph.
The wheels felt good. Riding alone, even on hilly rides, they urged us to go faster, faster, faster whenever we could sniff a moment to throw it in the big ring. On our 10k rolling test loop, a tempo lap shaved almost 30 seconds off our time on the Zipp CSC clinchers at the same effort, which seems like a pretty big boost for 10k.
While we didn't attempt several-mile climbs on them, but we did ride and race on one and two mile inclines and short, steep pitches, and windy open stretches of road. For the hills we rode, the wheels rarely felt they were weighing us down. On short, steep hills, going hard always hurts, but going into them with momentum seemed a bit easier. About the one time they felt like they might be costing us was in a long road race with a 1k steepening pitch to the finish. At the end of a long race, it's a small ring, big cog hill. We felt slowed a bit, but even then, we had to recognize that the wheels saved us plenty of energy on the flat and rolling roads that comprised most of the loop.
We also raced them on an old airfield. As befits any place where planes take off, the circuit was totally flat and extremely windy. We were initially concerned that the wind might compromise our steering ability in the pack. But this wasn't the case. It seems that once you get a feeling for how to steer with deep-dish wheels in crosswinds, your ability to steer isn't compromised by any crosswind.
Riding Flash Points in the rain constituted another test. Not for the braking, which is on an aluminum braking track and totally predictable. Typically, wheels with internal spoke nipples take on water in the rain, the water coming in through the spoke holes. For this reason, most wheels with internal nipples have a drain hole on the sidewall. The Flash Points do not, but no water got in. When we asked about this, Zipp told us the water-tight seals are a point of pride for them, and, since in their mind constitutes a real advantage for their rims, they won't reveal how they do it.
Another surprise was that the aluminum rim sidewalls seemed a good bit higher than on their all-aluminum training wheel that we tested earlier. Not that the tire was difficult to put on, but that we had to use a tool, whereas with the all-aluminum rim, we could install and remove Continental tires by hand. They explained that the aluminum section of the rim weighs only 200g, so the walls are pretty thin, and that heavy braking at high speed can increase tire pressure by as much as 25 lbs. Taking those two factors into consideration, they made the rim walls a bit taller to further protect from blow-outs. They also recommend a maximum tire pressure of 125psi. And maximum recommended rider weight of 225 lbs.
While speaking of weight, we did weigh our set. The rear FP60 weighed in at 1050g, whereas the advertised weight is 1030g. The extra 20g could be
from the rim strip that came installed. The front wheel weighed in at 860g with both rim strip and computer magnet. The Flash Point specs say 854g. Without the rim strip or spoke magnet, the wheel would have come in below their advertised weight.
The wheels are heavy compared to light box-section clinchers, but they are markedly faster. Obviously, lighter while still as aero would be even better. We're continually musing on the tipping point of where a light wheel is of greater benefit than a fast wheel, but for most applications where you're going to be riding at a good clip, the Flash Point 60's will be a great friend that will substantially benefit you over the course of a ride.
