You know how some people claim that increased weight on the wheel rims causes you to accellerate slower? It's actually so small that you'll never feel it.

Here's an article explaining it.

Why settle? I'll take light and aero please.

Why shell out the extra dinero for the "light" wheels, when the reduction in weight makes almost no difference whatsoever?

Im not convinced because of slowtwitch article. I used to have Bontrager Select wheelset that weighed close to 2000g. I upgraded to DT Swiss Mon Chasseral 1450g wheelset. Felt easier to pedal to me, for sure! So either it's more than 1%, or 1% is enough to feel.

Also, I just noticed. The chart says its for 5 seconds. Over th course of a long race that lasts an hour or hours, that 1% could add up to minutes of advantage, potentially....right?

Weight does matter on a climb, that's why. If you want 1 wheelset that is fast on the flats and no penalty on the climbs, you get light and aero.

Go aero and light

Or, it was in your head.

You spend very little time accelerating; if you are accelerating 1% faster, and it takes you 5 seconds to accelerate, then you've shaved off a whopping 0.05 seconds. If the article is off by a factor of 5, then the acceleration is 0.25s faster. There is no way a human being could detect that based on feel.


It's not a constant 1% improvement. It's an improvement only when you accelerate.

So let's say it takes 5 seconds to go from 0 to 20. If you accelerate 200 times in the course of a ride, you've "gained" 10 seconds. Under optimal conditions. On paper.

In real world usage, I seriously doubt such infinitesimal differences actually make any difference whatsoever. If you lose a time trial by 5 seconds, or get spit out the back of your weekly club ride, I doubt anyone wil believe it's because your wheels weighed 100g more than the lightest wheels on the market.

You do see that to get to a 1% difference they had to increase the rim mass by 400g. The actual difference in combined rim weight of your 2000g wheelset and your DTs is probably less than half of that.

I dunno... the 11 pounds of wheels and tyres on my Surly take a little while to get up to speed.

imma call complete and utter cabbage on that article

i'm not sure, but, it think that unless a pedal stroke is perfectly uniform and of equal force through it's entirety, the bike is in a constant state of acceleration or deceleration when it is not coasting.

okay then go do a test yourself. get a set of light wheels and a set of heavy wheels, then sprint up to lets say 35 mph from about below 10 mph. measure how long it takes for each wheel. when you notice no difference, remember that all the marketing behind bike parts are overstated beyond belief.

if a rider is getting dropped on any ride, lightening his bike by even 10 lbs wouldn't help him enough, especially if he wasn't dropped on a pure climbing race.

The article looked at acceleration from 25 to 30MPH. In that case the acceleration is quite low because much of the power you put down goes into overcoming wind resistance and very little goes into acceleration. Lighter wheels are more noticeable when you're noodling around in a parking lot or starting from a dead stop. Less so when it matters in a race.

Pure Drivel !!!!!!

Actually, I've done this in various scenarios (race bikes, commuting bikes, mountain bikes). It does make a difference. In order of most impact, I'd say the commuter shows the most drastic improvement because of the stop-&-go nature of riding in traffic. The mountain bike is next, since climbing at low speed really does turn every pedal stroke into a substantial accel/decel cycle. The road bike is last, but the light wheels are still a significant boost when it's hammer time. I had a co-worker asking how in the world I managed 17.6mph up Doomsday Hill (Strava KOM) and I said "the key is to not slow down" I had the Alpha 340s on my rain bike that day instead of my daily-driver wheelset.

When I switched to a set of Rolf Vector Pros in 2001, I noticed a .75mph average increase in my speed over my Mavic Open Pro wheels - or so said my cyclometer. So aero does count and this was not under race or timed conditions, just me riding the same route and looking at what the speedo average said. It was early evening so no wind was involved. This was consistent for nearly every ride with them. As for light weight, my 1200 gram wheels sure feel like they getup go (****n' git) faster than my 1800 gram wheels do. And climbing is where the clearly noticeable. Should you spend bigger bucks for a set of wheels that get up to speed faster? I don't know, it depends on what the speed is and what you determine to be faster is. Should you spend more money for aero wheels? They do make a difference. For climbing wheels? They do make a difference. But also as was posted, none of this will over come less fitness on the part of the rider of said bike. They will help.

SO, does any one wish to debate aero seat posts or handle bars

How does the author come up with his numbers? They just magically appear as a percentage of his effort.

If you read the comments it may be that his 1% saving is actually 3% even with his magic math.

If I'm doing 200 accelerations in an hour I'll take 3% in a heat beat.

I throw out the data and go by what works for me.... I'll be dropping 600 grams off my wheels for only $350 when they come this week...

Exactly, and my point about being less than 1 mph faster with new aero wheels at about 19mph is real!

I'd like to get lighter rims on my sports car. I've heard it makes a noticeable difference accelerating, especially when weight is removed from the outer perimeter of the rim.
It seems the effect of a lighter bike rim would be noticeable especially when taking off from a dead stop. However, my heavy bike rims don't bother me a bit because I'm slow anyway!

Please google "placebo effect" ... it's going to be an interesting read for you I believe.

Here is another attempt at testing wheel mass and aero effects. It only deals with whole wheel weight as opposed to rim weight, though:

https://biketechreview.com/reviews/wh...el-performance

And here is the mass section from everyone's favorite great wheel test:

https://www.rouesartisanales.com/article-15988284.html

Both have flaws, but they do explain where their numbers come from.

Because hills and mountains are out there

Thanks for the links.

I am resistant but want to talk with physic-geek friends to make sure the data/methods are sound. That's beyond my pay grade.