In Reply To:
I've had the good fortune of racing and riding on 808s, Stinger 9s and 1080s for the past few years. My 808s were not warrantied after Zipp insisted a cracked rim was attributable to a crash and that was simply not so. I switched to Hed and sold all of my Zipps. I now am on Hed Stinger 90s/Vittoria 23 mm and love them as I feel they are much stiffer (the 808s required my opening the rear brake bridge before sprinting). Again this is one of those N = 1 things and my rear wheel was/is laced to a PT hub so the difference may be just in the hub as I went from a '08 2.4 sl to a '10 sl+ (larger axle diameter). I will say that I personally found the 1080 on the front only marginally more problematic with side winds than the 808 and the 90 seems to be somewhere in the middle under the same side wind conditions. That said, I'd like to point out my disappointment for Hed grossly misrepresenting the weight of their wheels if the VN weights are to be trusted...
The VN article has weights for mass and the 808s are 1566 grams (perhaps including skewers) which is 67 over the specs they give on their website. In contrast, the Stinger 90s weigh in at 1644 grams WHICH IS 140 GRAMS over the Hed website's specs of 1504 grams. I for one am
not pleased about this since part of my purchase rationale for the 90s included the weight (recall I use these for road racing as well)!!
Perhaps this is a result of skewer differences but I doubt it.
Just a quick "correction" on the physics involved with wheels hitting brakes. This is almost always cited as being the result of a wheel not being "stiff enough." That's actually not at all the case. The flat 900 disc is the wheel that most notably "hits brakes." The reason for this is because the wheel is EXTREMELY stiff laterally. Too stiff, in some people's opinions.
Think about why the wheels are hitting the brakes. There is no force being applied laterally at the top of the wheel. When people push on their wheels at the bridge from the side and say "look, it hits the brakes!" that is totally unrealistic. Try to imagine how you could ever generate that force while actually riding. What is actually happening is that the bottom of the wheel is getting move left/right as people stand and sprint. When a wheel has extreme lateral stiffness, the top will move left to right an equivalent amount. If a wheel has some reasonable amount of flex built in laterally, it can "suck up" this lateral travel of the wheel underneath the bike.
So when wheels hit the brakes, it's because they have TOO much stiffness, not because they have inadequate stiffness. The end result is the same, of course, your wheels are hitting your brakes, and that's a problem. But the actual reason why it happens is basically opposite of what people think. 808s are MUCH stiffer laterally than 404s. It's a lot easier for me to ping my brakes with 808s than with my 404s. And it's easier to ping it with 404s than with 303s. It's easiest to ping brakes with a 900 disc. But it's because the wheels are too stiff.
One thing to think about, though, what this means is that you are pinging your brakes because you are moving your bike a fair amount left to right. More flex in your wheels will help accommodate this. But the other thing you can do is NOT move your bike so much left to right. Keep in mind that all of the protour sprinters are running the exact same wheels you are. They don't ping their brakes (and Cav regularly runs an 808 rear). And the reason is that they move their body left to right a LOT, but the bike holds a very straight line. Moving your bike left to right is not going to make you go any faster. So if your wheels are/were hitting your brakes, it's not a problem with your wheels, it's a problem with how you sprint, which is a good thing, because it means there is "free" speed on the table.
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