Jet 90 and 808 clncher compete with each other, I thought about 808 but money is just crazy, Jet 90 is quite light for that depth of rim, the hub is great and it rolls for ever and is super smooth. Get a Jet 60 up front and you will have a great combo.
I have a ste of zipp303 for road racing and at first I was abit worried by the Hed concept of the crabon fairing as at first impression it is less robust than the bonded zipp wheel.
No issues at all with the Heds Durability and as an owner of both Hed and zipps to be honest in racing I can’t see the difference, my personal bias is that Jet 90 is superior of course my zipp wheel was a 303 so a 90 should be faster.
I love it and Hed simply make the best value for money race wheels going around, they send you the right size valve extender with the wheel.
Go with a disc (or cover), even for Wildflower. It’s faster (here’s a video from the '08 race…you can see most of the pros using discs): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQON8IdCJxE
The slight increase in weight you have to drag up Beach and Nasty Grade is easily outweighted by the benefits of the disc over the other 50miles of the bike.
Jet 90 C2. Add a Conti Attack 22cc tire to it and gain a few more degrees in effective yaw. weight? Who cares (to a point)? The combination of this wheel, tire, rim width, and design overcomes any weight issues compared to a Stinger 9, 808, 1080, or whatever lighter set-up you are looking at. I just got a Jet C2 90 with the Conti set-up. Holy crap! I thought my old wheel on the front felt ungodly fast but this is crazy. Enjoy!
Sorry for the dumb question, but do hed jets, or any carbon wheel make that roaring sound like the disks do? I think i recall hearing zipp 808’s make some sort of sound.
They do make a bit of the sound you are thinking of simply because of the empty fairing that is on them. But, nothing beats the roar of a disc. That sound makes you faster. The Hed Jet C2 9 has more of a cutting sound when you are in a slight awe of wind. Not like an H3, more consistent.
Ok, so what sound does the h3 make? Sounds dumb, but since I’ve read there is little difference between the two aerodynamically, I"m wondering which one makes a better sound.
I have a Renn disc and rear H3 (for Kona or any other race they won’t allow a disc). The H3 does make a bit of noise (certainly more than a Jet 90), but it’s like 20% of the roar of a disc…nothing beats that noise!
For what it’s worth, thanks for the advice.
I ended up using the alps wheels and getting a rear cover. Sure enough, it was my fastest bike split in 18 years(!)-2:39:18. In '90 and '91, I did slightly faster but I was around 25 years old back then. This was 2 to 6 minutes faster than recent times using either Nimble Trispokes, plain old spokers, or uncovered hed alps.
how much difference in time would there be if I went from a set of cosmic carbones to 808s or 90s for HED? Is it worth it?
also, my carbones have spokes on alternating sides-would a wheelcover do the trick? Are the wheelcovers removeable easily, or are they fixed?
Probably about 30sec. over 40k for the set. The Carbones are 50mm rims, but the gains as rims get deeper are increasingly marginal (HED’s site shows the drag numbers and you can see the marginal gains between a 60mm and a 90mm).
The rear cover attaches with screws (the 2 sides screw together, sandwiching the wheel, there’s a pic higher up in the thread), and can be removed in a few minutes (most of the time is actually in removing the cogs from the freehub to get the driveside cover off. Twain, the OP, just used one for Wildflower, so he could probably give you some perspective.
I mulled over 90/90 and went with FP80/FP80. I think the FP80 is a bit heavier. I don’t even remember pricing anymore on the 90s, but my rear FP80 with wireless PT was ~$1400 from Wheelbuilder.com. No computer included there, and bottom of the line wireless PT.
FPs are probably the best deal going on race wheels. I like my HEDs–they are ridiculously light. But if you want a structural carbon rim the FPs are money.
I just got a Jet 9 front wheel from Tri-zone, overall I think its a very good wheel and handles better in the wind compared to my H3.
One quality thing that sort of bugged me about the wheel was all the carbon holes cut out for the spokes were trapped in the carbon flairing and I had to spend about 30 minutes fishing them all out (they would make a very annoying rattling noise).
