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Wheelscience / Elemental
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anybody wants to share his/her experience with these wheels?

https://www.wheelscience.com/
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [Plissken74] [ In reply to ]
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$400 wheels being sold for $1000
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [Plissken74] [ In reply to ]
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Their 'Where does your money go chart?' says about all you need to know.

According to them:1) everyone has the same manufacturing and QC cost; 2) On a $2000 wheel set a retailer pays $1500 (33% mark-up); The costs of R&D and marketing are negligible.

I don't believe any of those statements to be true. What is true is that $1449 (they hide the extra $350 charge at first glance) is a lot for 60mm or 88mm open mould rims.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [lyrrad] [ In reply to ]
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lyrrad wrote:
$400 wheels being sold for $1000

the point is, are zipp wheels also $400 worth?
do these wheels have added or similar value?
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [scott8888] [ In reply to ]
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Also, the font on the decals are horrible.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [Plissken74] [ In reply to ]
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Plissken74 wrote:
lyrrad wrote:
$400 wheels being sold for $1000


the point is, are zipp wheels also $400 worth?
do these wheels have added or similar value?

Zipp value is world leading aerodynamics and unmatched carbon brake surface for heat management as well as class leading weight.

Fact is, If I order direct from China for quality rims, use say DT 350 Hubs at wholesale and build the wheel myself using Sapim CXray spokes, again at wholesale, I will end up spending around $1000.
That will not match the Zipps for brake track although the rim shape will be the same as Firecrest as the patents that cover that are now run out.
Now if I were to on-sell them like these guys do, I need to double that price or it simply is not a sustainable business model.
So for them to sell at those prices they have a really cheap build, hence my original comments.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [Plissken74] [ In reply to ]
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There track testing is kinda meaningless. Just about any aero wheel with a decent tire will be faster than an Aksium. Heck crummy tires and butyl tubes will cost you 60 seconds in a 40k.

These might be OK wheels or they might be turds. Their tendency to leave out all the important details, like their R&D work and testing methods, makes me think the latter.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [Plissken74] [ In reply to ]
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [Plissken74] [ In reply to ]
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Hi, I own wheelscience. Happy to take any questions you may have. We have a great rider experience piece on our website you might want to look at. We just want to deliver good wheels at a good price.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [WSWheels] [ In reply to ]
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Can you walk us through the analysis and testing you did for ensuring adequate heat management during heavy braking on long descents, and braking performance vs. both carbon and aluminum standards (i.e. Zipp and Hed)?

I see you did some velodrome testing. GP400sII and butyl tubes were mentioned. What width? Same setup on both wheels? It says multiple riders were used. Can you elaborate on the protocol?

Thanks.

-------------
Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook
Last edited by: RowToTri: Oct 27, 17 13:51
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [WSWheels] [ In reply to ]
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WSWheels wrote:
Hi, I own wheelscience. Happy to take any questions you may have. We have a great rider experience piece on our website you might want to look at. We just want to deliver good wheels at a good price.

What tires and tubes were you using for the Alphamantis testing and did the Mavics get the same tire/tube combination?

I would also be curious to know if the weight differences between the Elements and 404s is mostly In the rims or hubs, or somewhere in between.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [grumpier.mike] [ In reply to ]
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If the company has real cred he would have showed his real name in his profile and possibly given an email contact.
I note they don't even show a rim profile on their website.

Hey Peter, why don't you tell the good folks here a little about your product, development and testing?
Last edited by: lyrrad: Oct 27, 17 14:04
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [lyrrad] [ In reply to ]
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All my contact details on on the website - I did not think it was the done thing to put real names on here
Last edited by: WSWheels: Oct 27, 17 14:04
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [Plissken74] [ In reply to ]
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Brake testing

we have a test rig that runs are wheels under load for the equivalent of 10km with the brakes on. The rims sit at a high temp for an extended period of time. We have had zero heat failures in three years.


Aero testing protocol

All wheels used 23mm GP4000sII with continental butyl tubes at 100psi. We had two riders both of whom were very experienced riders with good, stable aero positions. They aimed to hold around 35kph. Power meter used was a powertap rear wheels for front wheel testing, recalibrated for every test and a quark for rear wheel testing and front wheels testing to get comparative data. Each rider ran each wheel tested 5 times.

We undertook this testing knowing it was not under lab conditions but it demonstrated to us the document-able benefits of our wheels and we stand by the results 100%

Product development

our first rims were open, our current rims are our own. The profile was developed to give the best balance between straight line speed and cross wind stability - that is the true benefit of the wider rim profile.
Last edited by: WSWheels: Oct 27, 17 14:16
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [grumpier.mike] [ In reply to ]
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Its the rims mainly being the weight difference to Zipp
Last edited by: WSWheels: Oct 27, 17 14:18
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [WSWheels] [ In reply to ]
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So your your wheels are barely a minute faster over 40KM than one of the worst aerodynamically challenged wheels ever manufactured?
What sort of warranty do you offer for a heat damaged wheel?
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [lyrrad] [ In reply to ]
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Our performance data matches us up against all the other brands so I guess your point is all aero wheels are not worth it?
If you correctly install install the brake pads, that being toed in and at least 3mm below the rim top you will not see a heat failure. If you do we replace the wheel, simple. Over the three years we have been operating we have had one rim failure being caused by a bike shop swapping on some none carbon pads, idiots, we swapped that wheel over for free. We do not count that as a heat failure.
Last edited by: WSWheels: Oct 27, 17 14:38
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [Thomas Gerlach] [ In reply to ]
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Thomas Gerlach wrote:
Plissken74 wrote:
anybody wants to share his/her experience with these wheels?

https://www.wheelscience.com/


Regardless of experience, I just don't understand why when you get can a set of HED JET 6+ Clinchers for $1099. Throw a disc cover on if you want a disc as well.

He can do it for less than that at MBS:

https://www.mybikeshop.com/...el-set-full-warranty

My mousing finger is itchy for it.

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that speed, for lack of a better word, is good. Speed is right, Speed works. Speed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [WSWheels] [ In reply to ]
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So if my rim melts when it is 3 years old you will honour it?
Do you class pulsing under brakes as a rim failure or at least a manufacturing fault?
You list maximum pressure as 125PSI, is this for all tyre sizes?
Is there an indicator on the rim to indicate that the pads should be more than 3mm below the lip?
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [lyrrad] [ In reply to ]
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The warranty is currently 2 years so no at this point, I am currently assessing extending our warranty to lifetime given our zero failure rate.
Yes that would be an uneven surface so we would say that is a failure
Yes, tyre size has no impact of the forces put into the rim by the pressure as the contact area is the same.
No there is not, but we provide a guide in our owner documentation around that. To be honest that is not an "us" thing it is just good practice for all carbon clinchers (not an issue for tubbies) so you seperate the forces being applied to the wheel. Any good bike mechanic would be on top of this.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [WSWheels] [ In reply to ]
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As a mechanical engineer running a startup I'm always interested in others' experiences doing technical work in a small resource-constrained team environment. Can you talk some about the experience of your engineering team? Who's your chief engineer?

When you designed your proprietary wheel did you use open source systems for FEA and CFD analysis like NASTRAN & Openfoam or did you use a package like Ansys?

I've found more affordable FEA packages like Solidworks have had a hard time with nonlinear problems like in highly loaded coupled thermal-stress analyses. Has that been your experience in carbon brake track design?

-------------
Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [WSWheels] [ In reply to ]
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WSWheels wrote:
The warranty is currently 2 years so no at this point, I am currently assessing extending our warranty to lifetime given our zero failure rate.
Yes that would be an uneven surface so we would say that is a failure
Yes, tyre size has no impact of the forces put into the rim by the pressure as the contact area is the same.
No there is not, but we provide a guide in our owner documentation around that. To be honest that is not an "us" thing it is just good practice for all carbon clinchers (not an issue for tubbies) so you seperate the forces being applied to the wheel. Any good bike mechanic would be on top of this.

You fundamentally misunderstand physics if you believe that tyre size does not have an impact on PSI rating on the rim.
Think 'hoop stress".
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [WSWheels] [ In reply to ]
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WSWheels wrote:
Yes, tyre size has no impact of the forces put into the rim by the pressure as the contact area is the same.

To be clear, you are saying that the forces imparted to the rim are the same from say a 20mm and 25mm wide tire at the same pressure?

-------------
Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [RowToTri] [ In reply to ]
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So yes, the tire size does impact, of course it does, around 5-6psi per mm of tire. My answer underestimated the audience so sorry for that. We test our rims to 140psi so the 125psi guidelines should cover all eventualities. So the question is should we publish differential tire size pressure guides? We don't think so, too confusing.
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Re: Wheelscience / Elemental [WSWheels] [ In reply to ]
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Good job explaining all this, WSWheels. You're never going to please everyone and it's disappointing some use this sort of forum to attack and people and companies more-or-less anonymously (most of the comments are fair, but some are unreasonable). I encounter Zipp (or the like) apologists all the time as I run a pair of Flo Cycling wheels. I reckon they are great - and fast - and based on your data, I would seriously considered buying Wheelscience if I needed a new pair.
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