Options for aero aluminum clincher wheels around $1000?

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benjaminm3
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:17 pm

by benjaminm3

hi all,
I haven't been able to find a thread that covers this specifically, but I'm interested in:
- Aluminum braking surface
- Aero with a modern toroidal profile
- Reasonable-ish weight
- Clincher - these are for daily use and I'm not really prepared to go tubular

From what I've been able to find, these appear to be the options:
1) AL33 - Reasonably light at 1600 grams, with a modern aero profile. $875.
2) FLO cycling - the aluminum + carbon option seems possible - these are slightly heavy if you take the 60mm rim depth option - 1900 grams, but also reasonably priced at $1000.

I excluded the new dura-ace 9100 clincher options as those don't appear to have a toroidal aero profile, and don't seem as wide as the other two offerings.

Are there other options I'm overlooking?

Apologies if this has been covered before, I was unable to find a thread that covered current options.

by Weenie


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Multebear
Posts: 1395
Joined: Sat May 02, 2015 10:11 pm

by Multebear

Boyd Altamont

Several Kinlin rim offerings like XR31T or the 279.

User avatar
mpulsiv
Posts: 1384
Joined: Mon Mar 24, 2014 9:17 pm

by mpulsiv

Multebear wrote:Boyd Altamont

Several Kinlin rim offerings like XR31T or the 279.


Another vote for 30mm Boyd Altamont. I have been training and racing on these year round.
www.boydcycling.com/shop/road-rim-brake ... ront-wheel
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benjaminm3
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:17 pm

by benjaminm3

Do you have the ceramic coating? How have you found its held up?

stormur
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Location: FIN

by stormur

benjaminm3 wrote:I excluded the new dura-ace 9100 clincher options as those don't appear to have a toroidal aero profile, and don't seem as wide as the other two offerings.


And what that is telling you ? ( hint: think out of the box )
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Mark Twain


I can be wrong, and have plenty of examples for that ;)

benjaminm3
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:17 pm

by benjaminm3

From everything I've been able to read lately, toroidal profiled rims appear to give good aero benefits without the downside of being blown around in crosswinds. It also appears that the aero profiles seem to outweigh the benefit you'd get from a lower weight rim. Am I missing something? :)

alcatraz
Posts: 4064
Joined: Mon Aug 29, 2016 11:19 am

by alcatraz

How about a set of used HED Jet 4 or 6 wheels?

/a

stormur
Posts: 1173
Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2014 3:50 pm
Location: FIN

by stormur

benjaminm3 wrote:From everything I've been able to read lately, toroidal profiled rims appear to give good aero benefits without the downside of being blown around in crosswinds. It also appears that the aero profiles seem to outweigh the benefit you'd get from a lower weight rim. Am I missing something? :)


you do. very much. Don't trust marketing and claims from manufacturers, be aware cycling forums ( including this one ) are full of paid content too.

to make long story short, your 1st statement is completely wrong , 2nd one not accurate.

V shaped rims are much better performers in both areas ( reducing drag at every yaw and lighter ).



I asked here many times for RELIABLE DATA which will prove I'm wrong... never get it. Zipp funny claims and comparisons are not data, reliability I won't even comment ( comparing apples to peers.. totoaly f---d protocol, any student wouldn't pass to next year for that ). All the rest are just claims. No data.

Find some aero/hydro-nautic forum, read for a while ( it will take a lot of time, but fascinating knowledge ) and make own conclusion. Those forums are full of engineers who make a ( very decent ) living on "cheating" wind; and they do not want to sell you anything, nor are paid to "help" you making decision (99.9% of population simply can't afford stuff which they work on ).

PS my knowledge about aero profiles comes from engineer with 25y+ experience in aeronautics ( can't name companies he works for, however there's not to many in that field, isn't it ;) ? ), privately building racing boats & designing sails.

Aero benefits can outperform weight in certain conditions, which are very difficult to achieve ( considered as "extremies : very heavy but very aero wheels vs very light and non aero at all ). Best would be compromise ; as light and as aero as possible.

I saw somewhere veery complicated calculation.. conclusion was that below 1.8 % of a system weight ( rider + bike ) there's not any particular gain, so wheels should be ( ideally ) kept on/under this weight limit and as much aero as possible ( profile, amount of spokes ( notice I didn't wrote SHAPE of spokes ! ) .

No idea was it accurate or not, but just someones idea...


Another topic are hubs. Some have better performance than others

At the end, check how much REALLY aero set matters in other situations than TT ;)


Overall, your thought to go higher profile( Cf faired ) set with alu track is very reasonable if you want clincher rim braked set. Are full CF wheelsets without brake heat issues, but require quiet significant budget. Here "there's no free lunch" applies more than ever.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Mark Twain


I can be wrong, and have plenty of examples for that ;)

morganb
Posts: 732
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:30 pm

by morganb

HED Jet 5 can be found for just over 1000.

Marin
Posts: 4035
Joined: Wed Jan 22, 2014 11:48 am
Location: Vienna Austria

by Marin

Kinlin XR31t, you can get a set for half your budget.

Superstar sells then under their own name too BTW

benjaminm3
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:17 pm

by benjaminm3

stormur wrote:
benjaminm3 wrote:From everything I've been able to read lately, toroidal profiled rims appear to give good aero benefits without the downside of being blown around in crosswinds. It also appears that the aero profiles seem to outweigh the benefit you'd get from a lower weight rim. Am I missing something? :)


you do. very much. Don't trust marketing and claims from manufacturers, be aware cycling forums ( including this one ) are full of paid content too.

to make long story short, your 1st statement is completely wrong , 2nd one not accurate.

V shaped rims are much better performers in both areas ( reducing drag at every yaw and lighter ).



I asked here many times for RELIABLE DATA which will prove I'm wrong... never get it. Zipp funny claims and comparisons are not data, reliability I won't even comment ( comparing apples to peers.. totoaly f---d protocol, any student wouldn't pass to next year for that ). All the rest are just claims. No data.

Find some aero/hydro-nautic forum, read for a while ( it will take a lot of time, but fascinating knowledge ) and make own conclusion. Those forums are full of engineers who make a ( very decent ) living on "cheating" wind; and they do not want to sell you anything, nor are paid to "help" you making decision (99.9% of population simply can't afford stuff which they work on ).

PS my knowledge about aero profiles comes from engineer with 25y+ experience in aeronautics ( can't name companies he works for, however there's not to many in that field, isn't it ;) ? ), privately building racing boats & designing sails.

Aero benefits can outperform weight in certain conditions, which are very difficult to achieve ( considered as "extremies : very heavy but very aero wheels vs very light and non aero at all ). Best would be compromise ; as light and as aero as possible.

I saw somewhere veery complicated calculation.. conclusion was that below 1.8 % of a system weight ( rider + bike ) there's not any particular gain, so wheels should be ( ideally ) kept on/under this weight limit and as much aero as possible ( profile, amount of spokes ( notice I didn't wrote SHAPE of spokes ! ) .

No idea was it accurate or not, but just someones idea...


Another topic are hubs. Some have better performance than others

At the end, check how much REALLY aero set matters in other situations than TT ;)


Overall, your thought to go higher profile( Cf faired ) set with alu track is very reasonable if you want clincher rim braked set. Are full CF wheelsets without brake heat issues, but require quiet significant budget. Here "there's no free lunch" applies more than ever.



Interesting, perhaps I wasn't as precise with some language, and perhaps my conclusions aren't quite all there.

1) From the material I've read, a V shaped rim appears to be faster in situations in which there is no cross wind
2) In situations where there is a crosswind, the toroidal or U shaped rims are claimed to provide smoother airflow, such that riders don't get blown around as much.

Between those two points, what the marketers at wheel companies would like you to believe is that in sum total, not being blown around as much is worth it at the cost of slightly worse straightline performance. From what I've seen written about these types of wheels from both reviews and posters on forums is that this claim may be plausible. It's difficult for me to know how much the placebo effect plays into anyone's evaluation of a wheel, and I understand that reviewers are often biased.

I've read some other stuff from FLO cycling and others that suggests that most of the time, riders encounter yaw angles under 10 degrees.

How much of that do you agree/disagree with?

Some questions -
For me, not getting pushed around in a crosswind is a pretty desirable trait, is there any reading material you can link to me showing that other wheel shapes perform more or less similarly?

I'll admit that when I've looked at FLO cycling's data, over the course of an ironman they expect you might save 4 minutes with a wheel. That's a number I could see myself caring about if I was in competition, but not otherwise.

At the end of the day, I'm wondering if I should save myself the money and just order a set of Zondas :)

stormur
Posts: 1173
Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2014 3:50 pm
Location: FIN

by stormur

So long as you'll read manufacturers claims and "data" you'll be heavily misinformed. I can prove easy ( even giving some looking good numbers ! ) that what I sell is best. Anything it will be, irrlevant.

I wrote loong post an deleted all.

1 thing only ; Lets verify claim "aero outperforms weight", that will expose reliability of all other claims.

Pro teams ; do they want to win ? Do they have Terabytes of data showing what's faster ?

Do they use high profile wheels in climbing stages ?

And how professional and result oriented practice relates to manufacturers and "sponsored content" authors CLAIMS ?


Last thing ; are new wheel designs more efficient than old ones ( like nemesis rim ) ; sure they are. But testing 2 identical bikes, single piece of equipment won't give you claimed "advantage" over another modern design. Have somewhere PhD with conclusion that differences are so small, and so non measurable in real environment, that only controlled wind tunnel could show any ( it was about efficiency of few modern aero wheelsets from various manufacturers ), and even then results couldn't be transformed into time/ power saving .
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Mark Twain


I can be wrong, and have plenty of examples for that ;)

Imaking20
Posts: 2260
Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2011 5:19 am

by Imaking20

So, definitely listen to stormur if you're shopping for a fast boat.

Otherwise, narrow V profile rims are more inclined to being steered by the wind rather than by you. In my experience, it's not as cut and dry as depth though (I've found Reynolds Aero 58 more stable in wind than some narrow 27-30mm alloy wheels). Most of the wheels people here are recommending (Altamont, Kinlin 31, Flo 30) should be all but invisible in wind though and I'd expect them to be quite comfortable. I think the price of Altamonts is a bit silly myself. With your criteria and budget, I would be all over some used HED Jets! Or maybe some used C35 or C50.

thumper88
Posts: 178
Joined: Tue Mar 13, 2012 7:27 pm

by thumper88

AL33 based on the tunnel results. But they don't have a long track record. So there's that. As an early adaptor of Pacentis I'm beginning to come around to the idea of letting stuff prove itself a little first....

by Weenie


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glepore
Posts: 1408
Joined: Thu Mar 28, 2013 4:42 pm
Location: Virginia USA

by glepore

As an al33 user for all of this season, they are invisible to wind. But then again, so is anything only 30ish mm in depth. I really like these rims. But then again, I've liked c24's. And some 50ishmm rims.
Cysco Ti custom Campy SR mechanical (6.9);Berk custom (5.6); Serotta Ottrott(6.8) ; Anvil Custom steel Etap;1996 Colnago Technos Record

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