EVERY brand has the fastest wheel! I’m not so upset about which wheel is fastest (because i’m not going to win @ kona on ANY wheel), but more so that wheel makers are all able to produce drag vs yaw graphs with their wheels at the bottom. this either means wind tunnel testing isn’t valid, or that two of these wheel makers are either a) dishonest b)unable to perform sound experiments or c) misleading with how they render their results. Thoughts?
!(file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/jdubos/Desktop/clip_image002.jpg)then… ya know, Hed’s stuff:
http://www.hedcycling.com/aerodynamics.asp
What it means is that the testing protocols are not consistent, and everyone uses a protocol best suited to their wheel.
For example, Zipp FC wheels are designed to minimize the penalty from using a wider (23c tire), so if you test a 808FC vs. a H3 using a 23c tire on each you will get different numbers than if you used a 20c tire on each.
Then there’s in a fork vs. bare wheel…and which fork. Every manufacturer uses a different setup and not surprisingly they have found a wheel design that does best with that setup.
well in the case presented, zipp didn’t test the enve wheel.
and in both graphs the zipps beat the heds, with somewhat similar shapes in the yaw sweep.
so nothing innately contradictory there.
but yes - tire, frame/fork/spinning/not spinning/front wheel/both wheels/casette on/off etc etc can change the results.
cannondales chart looks like it on a bike, zipps is a bare wheel.
The cannondale chart was generated by Enve. Leaving out competitve wheels is just as bad, if not worse, than setting up a test to favor your stuff, but in the case of the ZIPP test, ENVE’s latest wheels weren’t around at the time, although ENVEs last gen wheels were.
Still this is advertising not legit testing. Does anyone think if Bons wheel company did a rigorous test, whith virually every wheel and every logical permutaTion, and their wheel came in a very slight 2nd place that they would pubish that fact? Even when AVIS had the commercials about being 2nd but trying harder, they were saying they were 2nd place, but that they were 2nd in sales but where better than first.
Styrrell
at any given moment there should be at least 1 company willing to do a fair and comprehensive test and publish the results =)
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You are seriously surprised that someone selling their product isn’t going to do everything they can to make their product look the best?
Seriously?
at any given moment there should be at least 1 company willing to do a fair and comprehensive test and publish the results =)
Consumer reports. Heh. They could kill most companies in the wheel industry with a 6-page article.