Uh, I'd stay away. If you ever break a spoke or crack a rim watch as hilarity ensues as your LBS trys to get any kind of information in a timely manner from Bontrager about part availability and hope they don't lie which you will only find out about two weeks later.

Just say no to paired spoke kids. Especially on something you're going to be doing a lot of sprinting on, it just doesn't make sense.

think about the last statement you just made...and I think trek and bontrager know their ****. Pretty much every team in any major tour used paired spoke wheels



I think Robbie Mcewen did alright on those wheels, no?

I'll admit that the practice is to send paired spoke wheels back to the manufacturer to have them replaced, because the spoke tension is a ***** to dial in without the fancy tool (pretty much a giant rubber band), but I'd be willing to bet these wheels hold up pretty well...Why do people have to be ANTI something just because it's new...I don't get it...these guys have been making bikes longer than we've been riding them...i think they know what's up...have a little faith (with the exception of biopace)

-jason

that's not a graphic. they actually use a ****-ton of their proprietary carbon spokes, and throw a clear cover over it.

I had to check their website to be sure that this wasn't just super-biting sarcasm. Those spokes are insane.

i just read that on their website. thats f'n crazy, i always thought the design was just a graphic.

yeah my xeros paired-spoke front wheel ****ing rocks your socks. hater.

those superlights seem way overpriced. you can get a nimble wheelset for far less money, and probably better aero/moi performance (well, maybe not better than the disc for aero). if you want ultimate aero, you could get the nimble front, and a zipp 900 rear, or a nimble spoked front and the nimble mag rear.

or i don't know, maybe the lightweights are better.

i actually sent carbonsports an email a while back,

the reason that the lightweight track wheels haven't been made available yet is that they're trying to develop a more durable spoke, given the greater likelyhood of crashes on the track than the road. on the low spoked lightweight wheels, if you shear or damage a single spoke, the whole wheel is toast and completely unrepairable. they also don't sponsor or give out freebies.

fwiw, they beleive that their disc wheel is going to offer unparalelled performance benefits. generally speaking, disc wheels tend to be heavier, less radially stiff, less laterally stiff, and than a 36h spoked wheel. they also have less efficient power transfer from the hub to the rim. of course this is offset by aerodynamic resistance magnitudes lower than spoked wheels. apparently they have the data to prove that their disc wheel is radially & laterally stiffer, more efficent at power transfer, far more aerodynamic, and about the same weight as a 36h 3x lightweight tubular.

time will tell, but when lance, jan ulrich, and ivan basso were using their climbing wheels, it was on the d.l.

Lance, Ulrich and Basso are on the downlow?

It's pretty clear you don't work at a shop or know who has the best warranty process. We had a brand new, straight out of the box cracked hub flange and rim extrusion on a XXX Lite tubular wheel which Bontrager replaced sight unseen the same day. Now that's service! Good luck trying that with American Classic, Spinergy, Cane Creek, brand x online retailer...oh you get the drift. Also, while I'm not the greatest advocate for new technology, paired spoking means nothing unless the rim is ultimately strong. If you do 36H 3x on a 350 gram rim (American Classic Sprint 350s), you might have a fairly light wheel, but it's still going to be flexy as **** because that rim is BAD NEWS. Sorry, but taking away spokes doesn't equate to weakness of the wheel as a whole. It's a factor of rim strength, hub choice, and equilibration of spoke tension.

I was under the impression that disc wheels have adequate lateral stiffness. I have heard, also, that disc wheels (lenticular, and on the track, at least) can be too radially stiff, sort of forcing you to keep a line. I have no data to back this up, though.

I think their low overall weight is probably a huge advantage to road riders who are usually giving up stiffness for weight. On the track, MOI is the name of the game, and if they can start producing significant numbers in that arena, coupled with significant stiffness increases, we might start seeing sprinters with discs.

As an aside, if discs became suitable for match sprints, do you guys (or gals?) think tactics would change a lot in an event like that since drafting would become less important?

from the 2006 UCI world track championships theo bos vs craig mclean match sprint final:

I kinda meant more for the fronts. To be totally honest with you, I don't understand why anyone with the means wouldn't use a disc rear for every event that allowed it. This is just an assumption here, but I always thought sprinters don't use discs because they're not stiff enough, and they don't accelerate fast enough, whereas pursuitists don't care about that stuff, so they often use dual discs.

There's also the obvious consideration of not always having the luxury of riding on indoor tracks.

The lightweight disc was so much cooler when I thought the spokes were just graphics. Classy like a tuxedo t-shirt.