Look at Tom A's wheel data and make some connections.

I'm trying Nick,
The flos seem to blow the hed jet out of the water. Hed have normally tracked zipp pretty well.

Not saying that they don't make good wheels, but everyone's cycling products blow everyone else out of the water in their own tests.

---

---------------------------
''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

That was Toms test I was talking about

Where can I find this?
Thx!

Have no clue about the numbers, especially when we're splitting hairs at this point for a MOP'er, but as someone who owned a set of flo's (60/90) and now has a set of Zipps (808 FC), I prefer the Zipp's. I absolutely loved my Flo's, there was nothing wrong with them and they were great wheel, but I couldn't pass on the chance to get a brand new set of Zipp's at a big discount. Where I have noticed the biggest difference is in crosswinds. I find the Zipp to be a far more stable wheel in heavy crosswinds and far less twitchy, especially at high speeds. For a reference, that's comparing a shallower Flo 60 front to the deeper 808 front. What that translates into on the clock, who knows, all I know is I no longer dread the crosswinds like I used to (i.e. Galveston 70.3). I would recommend Flo's to anyone who ever asks me about them, but if I have the choice, I'll still take the Zipp's.

Their new Carbon Clinchers sale just ended yesterday. I think at this point the jury is out on how well they will perform until people get them and test them. Once this first batch ships and people get some time in racing and training on these I feel like we'll get a better picture of their performance. That being said, the way they went about designing these wheels is unlike what any other manufacturer has done. Those insights alone may yield far better results in the real world vs lab tests since that's what their design data was based off of.

I for one was moments from hitting "CHECK OUT" on a new pair of ENVE 7.8 Clinchers when the Flo News hit. I decided to wait the duration of this season, get more information and then make my choice. For the 7.8 price I can purchase a full range of wheels from Flo that puts me in a great spot to race/ride any kind of terrain effectively.

---

------
"Train so you have no regrets @ the finish line"

I'm waiting as well for real world reports. I'm hoping for the best from Flo.

What are you looking at? The HED Jet6+ came off very well in that data...essentially tied for 1st with the Roval CLX64. They didn't look good with the 24mm Turbo Cotton tires on, but no wheel looked good with those tires.

The Flos were right in the mix. Just marginally slower than the CLX64. And that was the old Flos, obviously. If you trust Flo's recent data I think it's reasonable to think that the new Flos are probably fairly indistinguishable from the current best-in-class. At least aerodynamically. We still need to learn about the carbon brake track, etc.

I have been trying to find and read all that I can about wheels to try to make a data-driven purchase decision. I had to do some deep family negotiations to by an un-budgeted bike, so when I make the funding request for wheels, it better be right, because I can only go to that well once...

One thing I have observed is that there are a number of mega experts on this forum, either true wheel designers or people who have spent significant time in wind tunnels coaching riders and equipment. However, there is not enough shared, non-marketing, objective data on the true real-world differences between products. So, this is where it has left me...

1. Aero wheels are substantially better than running on stock aluminum rims.
   
2. Most of the wheel tests are done with just a wheel on a fork, so the relative, incremental advantages of the wheels are in an ideal environment with no other drag or airflow disruptions in the system.
3. The rider and bike will have a material impact on the airflow that reaches the wheel, and this would mean wheels could perform relatively differently between riders and bikes. Therefore,
   
4. It is likely that only a portion of the total claimed improvement would be realized in real life, because the bike and rider will alter the airflow over the wheel and probably diminish the value of the improvement, relative to the sterile test environment.
5. Due to #4, the slight differences between the top aero rims may not be material at all in real life. Therefore,
6. I plan to buy based on three factors


1. Belief that product is in the top aerodynamic performance tier of wheel products (Enve, Hed, Profile, Zipp, Flo, Bontrager, etc.)
   
2. Perceived quality, intentional design (open mold products lose here), customer care
3. Price
7. #6.1 and #6.2 above are pretty much the same list, so the decision quickly comes down to price. For me, Flo has won, and I have yet to find an objective, data-driven defense that Enve, Hed, Zipp, etc., provides any material value, much less >$1,500 value, over a comparable Flo wheelset.

But, I am not making my purchase imminently, so I continue to search and read until I do.

I have the original Flo wheels in 60/90/disc. I found the following data on their website stating time savings
over varying distances. The graphs for the new design wheels show less net grams of drag. The information
below is time saving I found for the new design and original design.

The chart for the new design shows a 2016 90 Carbon/Al time savings over Ironman at 4m29s.
On a chart in 2013 they listed these savings: Flo 90 6m39s.

The other wheels showed similar results with the original saving more time than the new design.

Maybe the two aren't comparable, but would be interesting to know why there is a difference.

BTW: I love my FLO wheels. Was planning to jump on CC bandwagon, but don't see a reason based on the
numbers off their website.

I'm not sure about your 4), in the sense that while the rider and frame, etc, introduce more variables, those variables don't always work *against* what you'd expect from a standalone test. They could work in concert with the rest of the system. That's part of the marketing schtick of Enve.


Any? Some of those wheelsets are lighter. That's "data driven" and provides a material value. It's up to you to decide if that's a cost-effective value for your purposes. But it is a difference. Probably not a measurable difference for most people here. But if you're a road cyclist doing a road race with a race-deciding 30-minute climb, a few hundred grams may fall into the "measurable" category.

My point with #4 is that due to the complexity of the whole system, the marketing claims are not really verifiable-- the just devolve to marketing and branding. So, I would not bet thousands of dollars on anyone's claims in the top tier that they are better than everyone else's.


"Material" in that it will result in a consistent, measurable performance difference for most riders. I agree, that some wheels are lighter, though with the current crop of 2016 carbon wheels, the weight differences are getting pretty narrow. So, again, I am not willing to bet $1,500 in incremental spend that one top tier wheelset with its weight delta and aerodynamic claims will consistently best another wheelset.

If I had the resources to do my own wind tunnel testing with me on my bike with different wheels, I have no doubt that I would determine who they all would likely perform for me. And then I could rank them by performance and decide how much to spend to buy performance. But I, and most people here, will probably not test wheels in a wind tunnel. So, people will likely make a purchase decision based on a spectrum with budget on one end and marketing on the other (that the more marketing influences them, the more they spend).

Hed Jets 6 ~ Flo 6 Carbon > Flo 6 Alu new Gen.

Sorry those symbols mean nothing to me!

" I had to do some deep family negotiations to by an un-budgeted bike, so when I make the funding request for wheels, it better be right, because I can only go to that well once... "

If I had to go through all that for new wheels.....I'd be looking for a new family not new wheels!

He means that the HEDs and the full carbon FLOs are roughly as good as each other, whilst both are better than the carbon & alu FLOS.

I'm not necessarily agreeing with him, just translating ;)

You actually might be able to do this for each person without a wind tunnel by using the power pod. Check out the review on DC Rainmaker's site, and especially the discussion of the native software (Isaac, I think it's called).

---

owner: world's tightest psoas (TM)

All of our real world testing changed our Net Drag Reduction Value (NDRV) Formula. In short, our NDRV formula calculates your times savings by using a weighted average of drag savings and combining that with the time spent in each angle range. Our new studies taught us that you spend a lot more time at shallow yaw angles than we used to believe.

If you look at an aero chart, the biggest savings are at steeper yaw angles. Previously, we believed that you spent the majority of your time at steeper yaw angles, which in turn put more of the "importance" on the steeper yaw angles in our NDRV formula. Now that we know what yaw angles you actually experience, we adjusted our NDRV formula and put a lot more focus on shallower yaw angles were the time savings are lower.

This is why the overall time savings estimate are lower.

All that said, the newer wheels are still faster than the old wheels.

---

Chris Thornham
Co-Founder And Previous Owner Of FLO Cycling

We had nothing to do with that test. Tom A. did the test and we had no idea he was doing it.

---

Chris Thornham
Co-Founder And Previous Owner Of FLO Cycling