WebsterBikeMan

Or the lack of weight. Balancing the forces, it's the forward component of gravity vs wind resistance. Wind resistance depends on effective frontal area and speed, the forward component of gravity depends on weight and the sine of the slope. The rate of acceleration, and terminal velocity depend on the combination.

TandemGeek

Uhhh... No. The weight that our 'team' has added over the past several months has more than off-set the 5lb reduction in frame weight on the Calfee vs. our lightest Erickson.

Jim O

The pros are using deeper, more aero wheels in climbing stages, BUT these wheels are tubulars, not clinchers.

Deep section clincher wheels such as Zipp 404's are significantly heavier than tubular 404's. The clincher version is a serious disadvantage on long climbs over a conventional clincher rim and you will not make up the lost time on descents.

merlinextraligh

The relative weight difference between a light set of clinchers, and an aero set of clinchers is the same as between a light set of tubulars, and an aero set of tubulars.

For example, Zipp's lightest wheel the 202 is 1082 grams for the set, the 808, is 1462 grams. Which is just about the same weight difference as between the Topolinos and the Rolfs.

reversegear

Alex & Deya -

I just checked out the results from the King of the Mountains rides - Wow! are you FAST!

https://planetultra.com/KOM/Results/2...%20Results.htm

Congratulations on three great finishes!

merlinextraligh

That is extremely fast. Great job.

Alex & Deya

^
Thank you. We had a very good last stage and actually had the fastest time of the day, the problem was that finished before 2:00 pm and got penalized, 7 minutes were added to our finishing time and that made it 5:19 We had never done this century and we didn’t know how fast or how much time it was going to really take, so we ended doing it faster than we expected.

Ps. reversegear you have our greatest respect, finishing the three stages is a great accomplishment regardless of how fast it is done, and just doing it is awesome.

TandemGeek

There was a noticable difference after switching wheels on the 30+ mph descents, not as much as lower speeds. There's still probably some added drag coming from the fat tube frameset as the Calfee is still not as blazingly fast on descents as our very slippery Erickson.

Without a controlled test envirnoment it's too hard to know if the difference in descent speeds is related to added aero drag from the wider cross section of the Topolino carbon/kevlar spokes and the large black plastic spoke terminators that join the carbon/kevlar spoke to the stainless steel threaded spoke end OR if it has something to do with the bearings or bearing/hub/axle interface.

Again, the Rolfs seemed to move through the air with less noise and we were able to match speed or be just a tad faster than teams who were over taking us with the Topolinos. However, on the down side, the Rolf's lack the rock solid stability and tracking of the conventional 36h wheelsets we've previously used the 7 other Tennesse Tandem Rallies which gave us the willies on two very technical descents with tight turns. The Topolino wheels have also proven to be very stable and track well so therein lies a few more trade-offs.