Fastest Clincher Front Wheel

Triathlon Forum
1

Who makes it? Hed, Zipp, Mavic or ? Assume a disk in the rear.

I am leaning toward the Hed3…

2

the Hed3…

3

XENTIS.

Zipp 808 is, according to wind tunnel data (provided by Zipp), faster than the H3. So the Zipp 808 is the fastest commonly available front.

The Xentis Mark 1 was shown to be faster than the 808, however. A Mark 1 pair (Kona legal, FYI) is faster than a 999 pair, so a Mark 1/Disc combo is going to be the fastest. The Mark 1’s are hard to find, but they are hands down the fastest wheel you can buy, and a pair of them is legal for every race.

The new Mark 1’s (I got to see some up-close this past week as Olaf was riding them) have improved the stiffness over previous models and now have a DT-Swiss made hub instead of a Hugi hub.

The 808 has the advantage of being more easily repairable, since a broken spoke on a traditionally spoked wheel can easily be fixed. And Zipp customer service is outstanding. But for sheer speed, the Xentis wins.

4

Xentis? Is this the Jan TT wheel that he put on backwards?

BTW, Hugi hubs are DT-Swiss, no?

5

Yes, that is the wheel that Jan put on backwards. If you put it on backwards, though, it is no longer quite so fast. :slight_smile:

I guess it was something like it was the DT Hugi and now it is like the DT 240. I’ve always been confused as to what the difference was/wasn’t between Hugi/DTSwiss. It is a NEW hub model, that much is certain. It’s much quieter according to Olaf.

6

Rappstar: Do you have some data to back up the Xentis being the fastest wheel?

Edit: Here’s Zipp’s data, claiming the 808 and the 404 to be faster than the H3 (http://www.zipp.com/tech/documents/AeroOverviewData2.pdf)

/Kevin

7

Since I went through this not long ago…some biased studies do show that the 808 is marginally more aero than the H3. However, the handful of seconds advantage it had (like maybe 5-10 seconds in Oly) wasn’t worth the price difference to me.

ot

8

Test from the German magazine “Triathlon Special” 1/2005 http://www.spomedis.de/Trishop/index.html?magazin-nachbestellungen.htm
http://www.xentis.at/triathlon.html
Quote
Aerodynamik-Test mit Laufrädern

Das Ergebnis:

  1. XeNTiS mark 1 349Watt
  2. Zipp 909 Scheibe/Hochprofil 352Watt
  3. Zipp 808 Hochprofil 366Watt
  4. X-Treme 3-spoke 370Watt
  5. Lightweight Carbon 377Watt
  6. Laufrad mit 32 Speichen 387Watt

(Triathlon Special 1/2005). It was wattage required to maintain speed X (i think like 45kph or so) on a track, so lower is better.

Read the similar post here: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?do=post_view_flat;post=392652;page=1;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;mh=25;

There were a lot of good answers…