I need to know what is my best price for performance option with aero wheels. Should I purchase a disc wheel for the rear, possibly a Renn 575 and keep our Kysirium in the front or buy two aero wheels as a pair, such as Hed Deep’s. Our budget is small. We do not have $1,000.00 to spend for race only wheels. Our budget is about $600.00. The Hed wheels as a pair can be had for about $600.00. We definitely need some direction. My wife uses our carbon bike for time trials and is competitive over 20K-40K and I use the bike for short or sprint distance triathlons. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks is advance.
Well, the 575 is $400, and one of those head wheels would be about $300, so if you can go up another $100, you can have a disc rear and a Hed deep section front. Thats not a bad combo.
As Nick stated the 575 is $400 but you may also want to call Frank and see if he still has some of his earlier wheels. You could probably get that even cheaper now and then get a Hed wheel or look on Ebay and find something. Hope this helps. Good luck BTW I have a 575 and it is a great wheel came very true and rolls great. Frank makes a great wheel…
Craig in Alabama
Thanks for the information so far. I was thinking the same thing about the Renn on the rear and a Hed Deep or something similar in the front instead of buying the set, although, the set would be nice to have. I am very glad to hear positive things about the Renn because that might be our first purchase for now. The price seems amazing for this type of wheel. I am glad to hear that people or liking it and it riding good. Can the Renn be used on a slightly hilly course or does it need to be mostly flat?
Then 575 is not actually that heavy. Only slightly heavier than a Hed 3. It would be fine on anything but an uphill TT. 100 grams is not going to affect your climbing, while the aerodynamic advantages of the disk apply on some of the uphills, all of the flats and all of the downhills.
I have the original RENN disk and I’m real happy with it. Durable, but still lighter than my training wheels.
I noticed that the Renn disk is actually lighter than the Hed Disk which is great. I also found a wheel, I don’t know if Hed has it in their line right now, called the Jet 2000 (60mm), which can be had for around $300.00, for the front and that seems like a good enough wheel at a good enough price. I hope this will be a good combo for us. Thanks for the info regarding the Renn.
IF you have to choose between Ksyrium front / disk rear and Hed Jet front&rear - go for the Hed front&rear option:
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The front wheel is most important regarding aerodynamics.
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The difference between Ksyrium and Hed Jet in front is large, while the difference between Hed Jet and a disk rear is more marginal.
Like ajo said, deep front and rear because the front is really more important than the rear.
As for the weight of the Renn disc, it’s lighter than my monocote cover spoked wheel from last year.
I have a Hed CX front that I bought off of Ebay for $150, you can find Hed Jets all of the time for nearly that or a little more. With the Renn/Jet combo you should be somewhere near $600.
If I buy a Renn disk that is Shimano compatible, do I need to buy an Ultegra 10 cassette to go with it, or can I simply pull the cassette off my existing training wheel and put it on the disk? If so, is it a relatively simple process?
Check the classifieds section here:
Somebody just put a Cane Creek (Zipp 404 rim with a better hub, and titanium spokes) on eBay with a buy it now of $250.
To swap cassettes requires a cassette tool (sorry, the specific name escapes me at the moment.).
I have a Renn 575, I got it from Frank for $250, it was one of the off color ones he didn’t like (it’s dark grey). I also found a Hed front on ebay for $100.
Unless you need to have 10 gears on the back, you can easily swap cassettes. As the little furry one said, you just need the special cog tool to remove the lock nut. It’s not expensive and it’s not hard to do.
What was the turnaround for those of you who ordered a 575? I ordered one on May 11 and have a race this Sunday, but still no wheel.
The cassette tools you need are a lockring adapter and a chain-whip. The lockring adapter is basically a nut that will allow you to unscrew the lockring on your cassette. The chain-whip is used for kinky sex.
Thanks. Follow up question: If I just buy a disc now and swap the cassette, do I have to purchase a front aero wheel to go with it or can I still race on a stock front wheel and get some benefit with the disk? Trying to maximize my cash funds for the best performance right now.
I did that for a year.
I felt like an ass showing up to races with a disc and a black tire, and a 32 spoke box rim with a goofy yellow tire.
A matching aero wheelset is definitely the way to go.
What kind of bike do you have?
sorry, can’t really help you
I got mine about 18 months ago, Frank had posted he had 8 “seconds” available, I called he told me that he wasn’t happy with the color, other than that, there were fine. got it in about a week.
I noticed a difference with a disc rear and non-aero front. You can get a relatively deep front for less than $100 on ebay. I got a Velocity Deep V with bladed spokes for about $80. Its better than my training wheels.
Don’t want to feel like an @$$, so I sounds like I should invest in one.
To answer your Q, 2005 P2K. Didn’t get the Velomaz Vistas per the specs (“can change at any time”), so the bike had Bontrager Selects- bummer I know.
As far as I know you can put a 10 speed cassette on it, having another cassette is convenient but not necessary
I have a 9 on mine.
jaretj