Those, with White Industries T11 hubs

I dunno, but while it's hard to absolutely isolate aero advantage, I set all my PRs on my Argent wheelset, which I swap between Ksyrium Equipes on one bike, while I have another bike with either Velocity Aeroheat or Mavic Open Pros rims. Regardless of the mix-n-match, PRs all belong to Argents.

I'm firmly of the opinion that aero helps carry speed and allow a higher average during recovery or sub-max efforts, which then allow longer, harder max efforts. If I can drop back to Tempo and shave another 5-10bpm, I'll last longer and have more punch for efforts. Aero wheels are like Viagra, you see? :)

It's almost impossible to look at a typical ride and quantify what you did with the extra energy; I might average 19.2mph over 50mi @ 1.7k ft elevation one day, but grab a segment PR another day over the same ride while averaging 18mph. Does the lower average mean the aero didn't help? Of course not. Could've been weather, traffic, or just the goals of the ride.

Like Silvercivic27 said, the beauty of aero wheels is that they're at your service anytime you want to take advantage of them. I don't need to ride as hard as possible all the time on every single ride to derive benefit, so while I might make several seconds on a 40km TT, I'm happy to take two seconds on my favorite 1.5 mile segment when I drop the hammer and go for it. Netting than one PR is all the result I need to know the package is working.

^This!

Is my aero Venge faster? Yes...because i tend to puit more effort into it and hit the hills harder, since it is a "fast bike". If I try doing the same on my old Klein, it is just as fast.

It depends on how you define "sucks," "standard jersey," and "fit properly." EpixGear on slow twitch only extrapolated a 7 second gain going from aero jersey to skin suit over 40k with a heavy head-wind in one direction (1:10 and 1:17 versus a club cut jersey) based on unspecified speed where the implications are fit riders on triathlon bikes.

From Drag difference between a normal bike/bibs and a tri suit?: Triathlon Forum: Slowtwitch Forums

"club cut" is standard for many people and considered to fit properly, although in good shape euro-cut jerseys which larger people confuse with race-cut fit me looser than club-cut in bad or even fit by American standards shape.

Louis Garneau XS pro-fit, quite nice at a relaxed pace. They don't make a smaller size, and it would have fit issues in the shoulders or due to length if they did.
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=437095

Louis Garneau XS skin-fit, for high-speed:
http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=437096

I'd love a comparison of that sort of difference, on a road bike without aero bars, at a more typical 20-22 MPH solo speed.

I'll preface this by saying, no offense to OP and I'm not saying this is him, BUT

The ironic part about the whole "aero wheels to make me look and feel sexier so I will ride more" is, to most everyone else, seeing an overweight, out of shape middle aged guy on aero wheels (especially the ones plastered with giant decals) makes them look WORSE than riding regular ones. Unless you really look the part of a fit, fast, strong cyclist then wheels like that make everyone look like a poser, IMO. And of course, we make our bikes look sexy for the benefit of everyone else out there, don't we? Think about it. If you were alone on a deserted island with no one else to see you and your bike, would you really bother with "visual upgrades"? I know I wouldn't. I don't as it is in a local area with many dozens of other people out there every day.

Co-incidentally, when one does look the part enough to be able to "get away" with that look, said person is also usually fast enough to actually reap some of the benefits.

I desire to keep my bike as understated looking as possible, if you hadn't already figured that out. I'm not fast or strong either, btw.

:lol: i get it.

So the day to day variance in wind, how you feel, the elevation gain, blah blah blah, means the "noise" will usually swamp out any measured "gain" from aero wheels. I agree with others here, especially if you're not racing, that deeper wheels are mainly an exercise in making your bike pretty or aesthetically pleasing to yourself. Just get what's good looking to your eye and is within your personal budget. It's nice to ride a bike that you think looks good.

I get what you're saying and maybe I started my journey back when I first got my road bike as somewhat of a poser, who knows, I was into the sport and enjoyed every second on the bike. A year and a half later and at my best down 50lbs from where I started, best fitness level since my 20's, and feeling stronger than ever. I need to loose another 15-20lbs to be where I'd like to be and have been working to get there, hopefully by May. As far as understated goes, my bike is a Caad 10 Black Inc which is all black, I even removed all of the Gold lettering and stripes to tone it down a bit. If I end up getting the Hed's, I'd more than likely remove the big "HED" decals too. I dress in plain black LG bibs and a plain solid color jersey, no team kits here. Also, if I were stuck on a desert island with nobody to impress, I'd still want the baddest mtb man has to offer with an endless supply of tires and nutrition!

Aero wheels give you incremental speed. Just like a previous poster said, just like a aero helmet and according to specialized, if you have hairy legs, shaving them will give you the same benefits (at zero cost). All these little benefits add up to a significant time for racers, for recreational riders does it matter?

add aero full carbon wheels cause they look nice, if that has a placebo to make you ride faster and more, then it might be worth it.

So, since you haven't bought wheels yet...

I would recommend demoing some wheels if you possibly can, especially whatever you think you are going to buy. There's more than meets the eye - stiffness and how they handle in wind are hard to describe, if you can try them it would be good.

Also, make sure they fit in your frame, I have a Scott Plasma TT bike that I can't put my Zipp 303 front wheel on, the frame is too narrow.

Go deep


go balls deep. :P

Good advice, I have a shop that demo's Reynolds wheels and they said no charge for me, just tip the mechanic swapping my cassette over so that's a good place to start. I believe the caad10's can fit 28's so I should be ok, and the newer Reynolds are pretty wide so I'll find out soon enough, thanks.

That fast person is going to face just as much derision from the non-cycling masses because of the tight spandex fit. Might as well just ride what you want, and **** the haters.:thumb:

Sounds like you'd like my new bike so thought I'd post a picture to further tempt you: do eeeeet! You know you want to! Jet Jet Jet!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v8...ps9dqihnlt.jpg

Nice! One of the best looking I've seen anywhere.

I'm a little sad at how much influence everybody else has on your behavior & opinions.

This is more my style... :thumb:

Having said all that, I just went for the maiden voyage on my new Reynold's assault wheels. I'm pretty convinced they pedaled themselves.

But real comments - they're not super deep by any means but I could definitely feel the wind on the front wheel, and I'm not a small cyclist either. The thing that surprised me was how flighty they felt bombing down a hill at a little over 40+. My AL clinchers felt much more stable at that speed, so that surprised me a little.

I was probably about a minute faster on my 13 mile route tonight than I was a week or two ago, and I included a little detour tonight to a public restroom. The fact that I was well rested probably had more to do with that than the actual wheels but I enjoyed the sensation of riding on them and pushed a little harder than I normally would. I don't want to be "that guy" you know. :D

I'll have to do some little scientific experiment, but I think I got some rear pad rub when I was out of the saddle climbing up a short but steepish hill. I say "think" because the traffic noise was challenging. The wheels are so true I put the brakes pretty close to the rim, certainly closer than they were on my other rims last time I rode. With only 24 spokes in the rear I guess that's to be expected.

$800 though, I really love 'em for that price.

[QUOTE=TrojanHorse;17604771]I'm a little sad at how much influence everybody else has on your behavior & opinions.]


It's not as sad as how you carved up my post to try and make it look like it had the opposite meaning from what it did.

Did I hit a nerve? How many aero wheel sets and other items do you have that are carefully selected for aesthetic value? They all nicely match your team sky / raphpa / retro systeme-U kit? I bet you're just the belle of the ball at the group rides. Does your purse have an aero component, so it doesn't hold you back too much as it hangs jauntily from your arm?

Now that deep wheels are "the look" and have become common, I'd much rather be different and old-school by riding my plain-old aluminum non-aero wheels. -and i wouldn't pay hundreds, or $1000 or more for wheels that don't do anything more than any other wheel....

Sweet ride!

And again it seems like I extracted your exact viewpoint from your post because you're repeating yourself again in this one. I'm curious as to how you think that was the "exact opposite" meaning from what you intended. It was pretty clear. :lol:

I went to 50mm deep (Bontrager Aura 5 TLR) rims from basically nothing in depth before than.
Advantage:
- They are lighter, they spin up faster and with less effort as a result they climb easier, they sound nice when coasting (if you're into that) and they're aesthetically pleasing.
- There's really not a whole lot to aero wheels. Besides the TT disc wheels which are the truth in aero, most of the rest are more form than function. They look great, they look fast, they make you look like a pro.
The speed you're looking to pick up will come from increasing your power output or dropping weight. Nonetheless it's not that aero wheels give zero return. They "help" when the conditions are just right ... keep reading, I talk about that later.
- My rides are in the 20-26 mph range on flats so I'm guessing there is some aero benefit but the most gain would be more from the weight reduction of the wheels than the how well it slices through the wind up front and less low pressure at the back etc etc...
- What I've noticed with deeper wheels is that it feels "easier" and this is more of what I think translates into the increased speed more than the aero benefit. The aero benefit is found in a very narrow window depending on what direction the wind is blowing from and this is always in flux. Hint: crosswinds are not your friend.

Disadvantages:
- You really need to know what you're getting into when it comes to cross winds. I can't stress this enough. I've lost count of how many times I've felt the front of the bike twitch and jerk under a gust of wind from the side - or feel myself being slowing pushed from one side to another under a steady cross wind and have to keep correcting.
If you're not firmly holding the bike at all times basically this will cause an accident at some point. Kinda need to be awake now with these. May not be applicable to you in Flatrida but I've also had to slow down on descents as the wind started making the bike more unstable. Never happened with the original rims.
Mine are 50mm Front and Rear and you're looking at wheels that seem to be 60mm Front and Rear so it will be more pronounced.
I used to be able to sit up, hands off the bike and coast even on descents sometimes when I had the original heavy wheels. I had to give that up with the quickness.
- Second may not be a true disadvantage but it's a speed penalty due to a reduction in weight. I actually lost speed (about 5mph) on descents because of how much lighter my aero wheels were. The reduced weight gave me less momentum going downhill and my max speed was about 5 mph less on lighter aero wheels.

Ultimately what people don't tell you with "aero" wheels is they are only really useful in a head wind or tail wind situation i.e. your 12 and 6 o'clock position. Once that wind starts to come from 1 o'clock if start to suffer and at 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock, forget about it.

Ditched the aero Bontrager Aura 5 in favor of the climbing Zipp 202's. How these work I'm not 100% sure yet as we're not blessed with equatorial weather up north this time of the year. I've been on the trainer.
You may have your mind stuck on aero wheels and you probably won't overcome this bug or get it out of your system until you get it but I'd recommend looking into all-around or climbing wheels.

Also consider renting some aero wheels for a while. One of my LBS rents aero wheels for about $180/week - and this is in expensive NYC too so Florida should be significantly cheaper. Keep in mind these are full carbon sets that retail for over $2,000 so for $180/week it's actually not bad. If you can do something like that and really put some miles in I'd recommend that before purchasing anything.

The benefits from deep wheels are aero and not weight. Weight advantage comes into play with climbing and accelerating. But in most conditions, you go faster with aero over weight.

This is why I have yet to buy wheels. I get the bug and post here asking opinions which leads me back to the same conclusion I came to last year when I thought I wanted new wheels; They won't do anything other than look nice and possibly allow me to pick up a little bit of speed mostly due to their sound and feel which may make me pedal a tad bit harder. With that in mind I'm just going to wait until the time is right and either buy a set of aero wheels because I found a killer deal that I couldn't refuse, build a set of H+ Son's or Belgium+'s with my choice of goodies, or get a light factory built set like the Ardennes or Argents. In the mean time I do plan to rent a set of Assaults and/or Strikes just to get a feel for them and go from there, thanks!

What you're saying isn't entirely true. Aero wheels do give you a speed advantage. There are lots of tests with data that quantify that. Now if you mean really meaningful speed increase like 1 mph, the answer is no, wheels won't do that. One other thing renting wheels is a god idea. That will give you a god sense of how they feel and handle. But the speed improvements won't be something you can see or measure yourself. The differences are down to saving several seconds each mile and not minutes.

Bwahahahahahahaaaa

You like my sexy wheels! lmao

I just bought a set of Reynolds Assault, Disc/Tubeless... I need a second set of wheels (spares) and I want to differentiate the two sets. The Reynolds will be my pure road wheels, I'm going to slap 25mm rubber on them, and I'm going to slap some 40mm gravel tubeless on my Ardennes+.

The Reynolds & 25mm combo will be overall a bit lighter in weight (versus my 28mm & Ardennes+), and 11mm deeper in profile @ 41mm, than the Ardennes which stand at 29mm.

Another thing that the deeper profile supposedly provides for the heavier among us (I'm 200# @ 5'10") is it's a stiffer wheel.

Nevertheless, I don't anticipate too much of a difference between the two wheelsets.

I bought them because I want to dedicate a wheelset to off-road and basically get a feel for what the carbon/profiled rim brings to the picture. Reynold's does market the Assault as an offroad rim but...Why thrash carbon when you can thrash bombproof aluminium (HED)?

Hopefully next year I'll be holding an average of 190# and enjoying a commensurate increase in energy because of conditioning. Maybe I'll see that number this Fall which will be awesome.

Snazzy!:

https://scontent-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hp...36&oe=55BDCFF1

those are some sexy wheels!!

for you disc brakes will provide the same stopping power.. but from what I am hearing carbon clinchers are not exactly the best at stopping. And so I am really apprehensive about getting carbon wheels

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. ;)

We gotta ride that Century+ I mapped in Harriman...Should be good for 100ft per mile... Greg, Alex...I bet David is going to be a monster when he gets back to the States. As usual I'll be a few minutes late. lmao.

From what I've experienced, braking in wet conditions can be a bit unsettling. During the first few seconds there may be little to no grabbing, but after a few seconds the water is shed from the carbon rim and the pads will grip the surface. I'm using Zipp's composite cord brake pads, so other pads may perform better in wet conditions. If you anticipate this slight delay, no big deal. But other than very wet conditions, braking is not an issue. Also, if you're doing many long, steep descents, I've heard overheating could also be a concern.

hey man, we definitely had to do that Harriman Century this summer.. everyone knows that sexy wheels makes you 18.32434% faster...

lol... better believe that at home I look wheel porn all night while saying "ooohhh ahhhh, yeah baby, I like that"