On this same vein, how much is it actually cheaper to manufacture these hookless rims, compared to the same model hooked? I have to guess based on wholesale/direct sellers that the cost to manufacture a single rim ends up at less than $100 (not counting any R&D, QC, shipping, anything like that). Removing the hook isn't going to remove material cost, but could reduce tool and labor cost. I have a hard time seeing the total savings at more than ~10%, but I really have no idea about such specifics.

The point is the manufacturing cost savings surely must be significant for these companies to take on such a risk and continue to push the product in the face of majority opposition. Like, why would Zipp continue to push the narrative by making a $3000 disc wheel with an 80psi limit if they only save $15 in cost? Seems like surely a hooked rim would capture a greater market share.

from inside the asylum i can report that zipp's 303 S is really causing havoc among premium wheel makers. it's just impossible to compete with this wheel if you're a premium wheel brand trying to get OE spec. so, yes, the cost/benefit of hookless is evident in this wheel. but there's a limit to this. the cost of materials, mold making, labor dwarfs the savings you get by getting rid of the bead hook.

as to why zipp feels that it's worth the risk to cheese off 75 percent of its skeptical customer base, you're right. it's not because it's trying to save a few bucks.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Do you have a feeling how much of the hookless premium wheels are about differentiating oneself from many other manufacturers doing hooked? (I find it very hard to differentiate marketing vs truly believing in this tech as better for tri/TT with the limited available data.)

And whether the 303s should be seen as a loss-leader from zipp, getting more people used to and trusting wide hookless rims? (it has great value for price compared to other hookless offerings which are very premium)

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https://besse.info/
https://www.strava.com/athletes/2012033

Yeah a $600 wheelset is in line with what direct to consumer Chinese brands are charging. It's puzzling tho because other Zipp wheels don't have such a markdown. The economics just don't make sense to me here. The only way I can wrap my head around it is if Zipp already had long term contracts in place with bike brands to supply wheels for their builds. In such a case with guaranteed sales then cutting costs starts making sense.

To the later point, if it's not trying to save a few bucks then what's their actual motivation? Do they truly believe that hookless is faster than hooked? Surely such a stance would be backed up by robust data. Data which hasn't been corroborated by independent testing. The whole situation is just weird.

TL;DR - It looks like hookless for road and TT bikes is likely inferior to hooked and is a solution in search of a performance problem.

I just read many of Dan's & Ryan's hookless commentaries and interviews on the home page. I was this many days old when I learned that the hookless controversies and objections may have some meat on them. It seems like it is more difficult to get a setup system that complies to the "Rule of 105." And experts that do testing for athletes and teams are still leaning toward hooked setups for the fastest solutions. Further, it seems like the manufacturers, standard makers, and marketing messages did not keep pace with the exuberance of saving a few bucks.

Ultimately, I do not care, since the hookless and tubeless setup on my road bike is for comfort, not speed. And I am unlikely to have a blowout at 60 PSI. But, I am now less likely to consider hookless on a TT bike until this all coalesces a bit more.

I've seen testing between a HED Jet+ disc and a Zipper Super9. Let's just say, I'd save your money and get the Jet...

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Heath Dotson
HD Coaching:Website |Twitter: 140 Characters or Less|Facebook:Follow us on Facebook

I think you are right, it will be plenty enough for almost all people in almost all cases except……for tri and tt.
At least as for now.

The testing we did on several riders on hookless wheels, agreed, on a pretty good riding road surface, showed with no exception that 28 mm gp5000 tubeless set up on cadex 4-spoke and/or cadex disc wheel they were fastest at 5.5 bar, second fastest was 5.0, third fastest was 4.5 and slowest was 4.0 bar. The 28 mm tire measures a little over 30 mm on the wheels.

And we knew the 5.5 bar was out of the limit but we took the risk just for comparison sake.

Within a couple of weeks I will do some more testing most likely also with the Zipps incl. this new disc wheel

Jeroen

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Owner at TRIPRO, The Netherlands

Just like the new super shoe market with shoes costing more than $250, I can't believe there is ANY market for a $3000 wheel. The cost/benefit analysis of this breaks my head.

I guess that is why I still race duathlon/tri on a Flashpoint 60 with a 20mm Supersonic tire with a rear, spoked Powertap wheel and a cover. The pain in my legs always makes me forget the road is occasionally rough.

And that is from a guy who is all in on big tires for ever other application. My road bike uses a 38mm Challenge Strada Bianca at 30 psi and I would never go back to skinny.

i can only tell you how i decide on the wheels and tires i choose. my imperatives are these:

1. my very first decision is tire width. this drives so many of my bike and component decisions. this is irrespective of who makes the wheel or tire. i choose my desired tire width and for performance (racing) it's 28c blown up to a 30mm measured width (and that's whether road, tri, tt). for everyday riding (on a road bike) i'm riding at least 30c, usually 32c, which blow up another 2mm or 3mm in width when inflated on the wheel i'll choose.
2. this informs my pressure choice. 60psi on the 28c and 50psi on the 32c (42 to 45psi in that tire if i'm riding light gravel).
3. this informs my wheel style, which is going to be hookless because the pressures i'll ride don't come close to exceeding the 5 bar hookless limit so i may as well take advantage of the advantages in a hookless wheel. it also informs my rim width because i feel the sweet spot for road is a tire with a rim width about 5 to 7mm narrower than the nominal tire size. this means 23mm more/less for performance wheels and 25mm (this is inner bead width) for everyday wheels.
4. then it goes to brand. i'm picky about choosing a brand that doesn't just make a hookless wheel to be new or cool or because it's the trend, but makes a hookless wheel because it recognizes the benefits of hookless and manufactures to those benefits (stronger rim, better resin penetration and so on). and, i want a manufacturer that's done a spitload of blowoff tests so that it knows that its rims can comfortably hold a tire (enve's rims have to hold a tire up to 165% of its max pressure, cadex to 200%).
5. then, in tires, i pick a tire that i'm comfortable with. for me, it's vittoria, cadex, goodyear and a few other brands that i personally use, have confidence in, and that i know has good manufacturing control of its tire bead (specifically, that the bead is not stretchy). you're fooling yourself if you think a tire with an overly stretchy bead will come off a hookless wheel but remain on a hooked bead. it'll come off both. the bead hook will give you an extra 20psi or so if safety. that's it.

i don't think the 303 S is a loss leader and i'll tell you why: i've begged SRAM for years to loss lead on some of its products. for example, wireless blips. i think they should darned near give those away to OEs, because they're a great bar-end shifter and they open the door to the same of the entire groupset. but they resist this every time. it's just not something they do. i think they just make a lot of those wheels, and they design and manufacture them as a high-end OE wheel, with economies of scale, and can deliver them at that price. SRAM and daughter company zipp have OE dialed. it's a core part of their business. premium wheel makers have a hard time just logistically competing (e.g., getting their wheels over to taiwan or china for complete bike assembly).

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

thanks for engaging. i just got back from sea otter last night. i don't know why SRAM wanted to launch its disc during sea otter. this makes it kind of hard to pay enough attention to this if you're writing this up for an audience because you're... busy with sea otter. so, i omitted the data part of this in my writeup of zipp's new disc. now that i'm back i'll present what i have and i'll tell you what i do NOT have that i wish i had and that i will try to get from zipp. give me a day or two.


i don't think my presentation of silca's results are contorting the numbers to fit a narrative. i've just been looking at why there is a disparity between various recommendations, and in my attempt to reconcile them i felt that the big delta is that many people - i, for one, and suspect i'm not the only - see "measured tire width" and think screw it, there can't be that much difference between named and measured, i'll just go with named and call it good.

but in fact the tire makers name their widths based on a 19mm inner bead width and that's on NEW tires recently introduced (any tire in a mold a couple of years old or older probably measures true to a named size on a rim with a 15mm internal width). all the hookless makers are using 23mm and 25mm internal bead widths. this grows the tire in width by 2mm at least beyond its named size. that's a pretty big difference and just right there you drop 10psi from the silca recommended pressure (if you use measured instead of nominal). at this point the silca recommended pressures and the pressures the manufacturers recommend are pretty close. silca is still higher, but by maybe 5psi or less.

then you have this other thing - which you test - and when i imagine how you test i believe i can see how your testing would exceed the chung method in accuracy and utility, because silca used a freshly paved road for its testing. so freshly paved it was still closed to traffic. for a discrete stretch of road, a few hundred yards maybe, just paved, there are no imperfections. then you move this all to a race course - and IM let us say - and you have some really great roads. but then there are stretches when the roads aren't so great. but you can't change tires or tire pressures during the race. the manufacturers - and their world tour cyclists, they say - err on the side of the imperfect sections of perfect courses because what they lose through overinflation during those stretches dwarfs the very small gains extra pressure gives them on the glass smooth road surfaces elsewhere on the course.

i'm relating. not advocating. in my own riding, i'm in an area that freezes. we get freeze cracks on our asphalt and at its worst it's like riding over railroad tracks. we have quite good roads in general. but the freeze cracks, and these sections occur here and there, with transverse cracks in the asphalt maybe 20 yards apart for stretches, are really not worth trying to get the extra pressure in there to deliver the extra watt on a smooth road. if i knew a road was perfectly smooth the whole way yes, i'd throw more air in there. i just don't have much experience riding a course that is uniformly paved that way. kona surely isn't. nor is oceanside, arizona, texas, placid, penticton, nice and so on. for sure, i understand that your reality is different. discrete TT roads in europe, closed to traffic, in countries that care enough about their pavement to put the good stuff down. not so where i live ;-/

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

You lost me at 30mm wide (actual measured width @ 60psi) front tire for TT.

Look at the HED Vanquish 28 v. 25mm data from the other thread, the difference in drag for the V84 at 0 degrees looks to be less than 10grams at 30MPH. That's probably less than 1W. And 30MPH is faster than the average speed of most of us in almost any TT/tri. And once rolling resistance is factored in, might be a wash. That's before comfort is even considered.

That's just 0 deg. Didn't have the patience to look angle-by-angle. Also tough to read the graphs with less than ~5g accuracy. Also, just the new HED Vanquish, obviously. I do inherently trust that HED's graphs are based on real data, though. I don't know what the data is, e.g. what pressures the tires were, what the WAMs were or casing tensions were. But nevertheless real....

So, um, how does it ride for guys over 200lbs? Does it blow out immediately? Read the article, did they actually do rider tests with the rider at 230lbs?

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I’m trying to bring the topic back to the use of the new Zipp wheel, a disc wheel, built to ride with speed and for races. I have never raced in the US so can’t comment on the road surface there. It might be as bad / worse as you say, I don’t know. Let me take this wheel to where I live and we have very good roads for cycling and for sure on most race courses for 90-95% of the course.

So for us the use of this wheel is speed. Using Silca’s calculator it still spits out pressures thar are either out of limit of hookless or barely within the limit. When I choose rider and bike at my 87-88 kg, choose a top tubeless tire in 30 mm width and new pavement it gives me 5.15 bar and 4.85 bar when it is worn pavement with some cracks. Only really bad pavement gives a value that comes close to the pressure that is actually the normal value advised by either Zipp, Enve or Cadex.
The 28 mm width tire on a Cadex disc wheel or their 4-spoke wheels measure 30 mm, but even choosing 31 mm makes little to no difference.

The use of a disc is to gain speed, nothing less or more, just speed is the main goal. The question is is hookless then the right choice to built a disc wheel on if it limits it range to 5 bar pressure. Am I willing to sacrifice 3-5 watts, maybe 6, on a wheel that sets me back $3000.

The thing I find really interesting is that their also brand new disc wheel for track with 21 internal rim width is built hooked so it can be used with 23 mm tires at 8.6 bars.
What data of testing could they have that they still decided to make the road disc wheel with 23 mm internal width hookless but being limited to 5 bar pressure.

And if they have data that proofs that this wheel tests faster with 28 or 30 mm tires at 4, 4.3 or 4.5 bar then on a hooked version with the same built dimension, same tires in type and width but at higher pressure why don’t they provide it?

I’m not buying a disc wheel because I want a comfortable wheel, at $3000 I want the fastest that is possible, agreed?

Jeroen

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Owner at TRIPRO, The Netherlands

yes, you want the fastest wheel. bearing in mind that, over 56 or 112 miles, comfort is a component of speed. but yeah, what you want is the fastest time.

i don't stipulate to the silca calculator for these wheels we're talking about. i stipulate to that calculator for a tubed wheel, not a tubeless, hookless wheel. but i think the silca values are instructive. even tho the silca values are slightly (not much) higher than the wheelmakers themselves recommend and their pros ride, if you take my own edge case and i'm 77kg, if every single choice i can make in the silca calculator is geared toward a higher pressure - new, smooth road throughout, highest speed tires, choosing a talent option that's above what i actually am, i still end up right at 5 bar exactly. what the wheelmakers argue is that in fact ideal (for speed) pressures on their systems don't even approach 5 bar. i think this might be why marcag's testing differs, because he's not testing his riders on these systems. but i don't know.

i think this is going to be a pivotal year in cycling. if you see a lot of results on these wheels/tires it becomes harder to argue that you're giving up speed if you ride them. you can't argue that chloe dygert can ride this system because she's a woman. she's probably the size of the average world tour man (or larger). there's nobody riding faster than she is in timed racing and she's riding a tire that measures 30mm front and rear on these *slow* systems.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

First of all, we should stop with the Silca calculator, it is a guideline. I have simply said my data is more in line with Silca than other calculators. We should rely on test data.

Second, "marcag" data does not differ because he's testing rider on different systems. I have tested on hookless 22mm internal rim with and hooked 23mm internal rim width. Both busted the 5Bar limits.

As for what the WT riders are riding, yes, absolutely they are going wider. A lot are on 28. The wheels are being optimized for 28. But I spoke to a senior technical person on a WT team riding hookless. He acknowledges the majority of the peloton is riding higher than 5bar in TT. His words : they are riding between 5 and 5.8. We both acknowledged that teams are often willing to make compromises to satisfy sponsorship needs.

A person forking out $3000 for one wheel does not need to compromise.

Speaking as someone that was in the market for a new disc, I agree. Flat sides with a dimpled pattern (without any data) at 3 grand is woefully out of touch in my view. Their brand name is no longer strong enough in my view to take what is essentially a 15+ year design, make it wider and suddenly expect to be seen as leading edge.

Maybe Dan can clarify, but by "different systems", I thought he might be referring to SRAM's "rolling road" test, or similar.

thank you for the clarification. and for your participation in this thread. you're a good sport to indulge me.

you're absolutely right and i'll go further: whether i'm forking out $3000 or $300 i don't want to have to compromise. i'm glad you brought up optimization. i am routinely disappointed when i go to industry events and it's clear by the display that the brand folks in charge don't understand the features of the product(s) they make. i was heartened by the display in zipp's booth, where they're showing this new disc, because this BMC tri/TT bike is one case where the entire bike, from the frame to the wheel to the tire, is an optimized and fairly mature system. i think you can see how that is.



from disc brakes to tubeless to the whole wider tire thing i've always been at a disadvantage because i'm arguing in favor of the system when the system doesn't yet exist. disc brakes in tri bikes. questionable idea in 2016. until the system emerges that absorbs that tech.

so, i think we'll see a lot of 28c, which measure 30mm on average, on TT and tri bikes and they'll work now because all the new road bikes and most of the new tri bikes are optimized for this size, as are the wheels. this is why a tire of that size doesn't give up much if anything in aero, and wins big in Crr, handling, comfort. as for road, 25c is gone, even if some people don't know it yet. i think you see this in your own work with pro teams, yes? the working size in mass start racing is from 28c to 32c depending on road condition. this was inconceivable 2 years ago.

as to pressure what i'm hearing is that pro riders keep asking for wider rims, lower pressures, wider rims, lower pressures. but that's for this time of year. spring races. on the TT side, you would know more than i do. i don't find 5.8 bar scary or risky because i ride mostly zipp, cadex, enve and vittoria, schwalbe, cadex tires, goodyear, i trust all those combos to be safe at any pressure up to 85psi (notwithstanding the ETRTO's guidance of 72.5psi). if i was riding a different wheel or tire i might conclude differently. i personally don't ever feel a need in any of my riding, any use case, to exceed 65psi but it would be silly for me, where i sit, to lecture you on your business with your teams.

but there is one thing i would like to be clear on. there are tire brands i'm not listing above and i don't only avoid some of these brands for hookless, i avoid them for hooked. the safety issue isn't hooked or hookless. the safety issue is just the tire itself, regardless of the rim type.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

   





And I thank you for not banning me for being a dick at times. The Canadian side of me is nice. The Frenchman side is argumentative.

Talking to the guy that was on hookless and believed he was leaving a bit on the table, they have been told, very clearly, 4.9max. Period, end of story. Now, will they bend the rules if they are off the podium by 10seconds on the last stage Monaco to Nice ?

You mentioned a bunch of brands there. One mechanic of a hookless team I was speaking to was responsible for making sure the pressure in the tires that go on the roof racks had .5 bar less in them because they were popping in the sun. His completely unscientific opinion was that it was tire related not wheel. He explained why, I can't disclose, but he really put suspicion in my head.

Here's a tough question : tomorrow morning I have to buy a disc. I will go 28, fine. I am a billionaire, money is not object (this is an imaginary situation). Why do I go with the hookless Zipp wheel where I may be borderline vs the HED hooked wheel where I have 0 to worry about ? If it was gravel, I don't care. Cobbles or casual road riding, I don't care. But I have a TT or Tri to do, why do I take the hookless wheel ? Maybe I'm too fixated on the 72.5. Which is strange because I always considered speed limits on the road as recommendations rather than rules.

Been lurking on these threads. Dan you have shared your imperatives, and your preferred set up, several times.
Would you mind sharing your weight, kitted up, bike and bottles, heading out of the garage?
For the euro folks, who do indeed have better roads, a few photos of your typical riding surfaces, and a few of the more impressive frost heaves, might prove interesting.

Here is one of the great European silky smooth roads we test on

There are many here who have far more industry insight than me - my opinions are largely based on what I see happening in the real world.

There are two Time Trials in this year's TDF - neither having an uphill cobblestone finish :-). We won't really know how much pressure is in the tires. We won't really know if they are riding special one-off tires not available to the public.

None the less, if anyone gets on the Podium with a 30mm wide (or wider) front tire in those TT's, in ST's spirit of putting your money where your mouse is, I will send Slowman a crisp $20 bill.

Totally true, comfort, this is the variable on 56 or 112 miles that is very hard to quantify in how much it is going to cost -or not- in time / speed.
And as said before, I own a Cadex equiped with the hookless 4-spoke wheels and also a Cadex hookless disc wheel. The one thing I don’t get, still don’t get, is why would a manufacturer choose hookless over hooked as a way to built their wheels when hookless is limited at pressure and hooked is not. Well, not at 5 bar. Although the new HED new hooked wheels are also limited in pressure pretty low.

I’m completely on your side for normal road riding, gravel etc lower bar pressure is very comfy and nice. For tri / tt it would be great if brands could deliver hard data that shows that hookless built delivers a speed performance factor that could not be meet with hooked built.
They could even specify it by the use of different tires, the main used by either pro’s or what a majority of AG use.
If I want to pop out € 2750 for a Zipp disc wheel or even more for the new HED wheel I would like to see ‘hard evidence’ that I’m buying the fastest available. And not the fastest within the limit of what the rule is due to the way the wheel is built but ‘could’ have been faster if the wheel was built differently.

And the new track disc wheel by Zipp with a 21 internal width and hooked to withstand higher pressure/smaller tire at 8.6 bar. I would not say a good road pavement is the same as a super smooth wooden track but it seems like there is some middle ground left in between those two.

Jeroen

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Owner at TRIPRO, The Netherlands

You keep mentioning the pressure calculators but they are all just starting points or recommendations. And only one of them has multiple road conditions for tt/tri riding. I don’t think any of the calculators, including silca, are 100% correct. Theres too many variables from rider to rider and road to road for any of those calculators to be 100% correct 100% of the time. So I think we need to put them aside as they are a tool and not the end all be all.

Also, I don’t really buy that WT teams are riding exactly what zipp, enve, cadex calculators say. Are they close, probably. But it’s going to vary based on the day, road conditions, weather, etc. I’d also say that we need to put aside what they do during road stages and instead look at what they are doing during TT stages.

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