All,
I’m looking for a set of wheels for a road bike that I can train and race on infrequently. Given my profession I am limited to riding on average only two times per week (maybe 50-60 miles). This equates to about 2.5-3K miles per year. Are Zipp 404s durable enough to ride on 100% of the time for a couple of years?
To put the question another way…What is the useful life of a pair of Zipp wheels? 2K miles? 5K miles? 10K miles?
Thanks in advance.
SF
Here’s the real question about riding Zipp’s every day: If you hit a hole and ruin a rim on any given day, will you be upset?
If not, ride them.
If so, buy something that won’t upset you.
Maybe more to your original Q about actually wearing them out: I know several guys who ride Zipps full time. None of them have had hub failures or spokes pull through the rim, and I think they’ve all ridden them 10,000 miles at least.
I’d be more concerned about accidents than about wearing them out.
More than durable enough. They do just fine on Paris-Roubaix, and they do just fine in the tour. The only “downside” is repair cost if you damage them. Zipp has a great repair policy, but their cost to manufacture a rim is still much higher than something like a Mavic OpenPro rim. You certainly won’t “wear out” your wheels. But it’s that one giant pothole you miss that might end up being very upsetting. But they are more than strong enough to handle the normal wear and tear of everyday riding.
Outside of racing, I will only ride on my Zipp wheel set once in a while and the only thing that really stops my from using the Zipps more often is the thought of replacing an expensive tubular if I happen to flatten, but sometimes I just want to hear that cool sound that a full carbon wheel makes so I’ll go on cruise with the race wheels, but too often.
Jordan
Is this for both clincher and tubie?
Definitely. The only thing I might be a bit more careful of with the clinchers is that the aluminum rim strip seems a bit soft (perhaps it is a bit thin just because they are very good at machining it and making it very exact so that there is not a big weight penalty) so you need to be careful mounting your tires in terms of trying not to use levers (and definitely only use soft plastic ones if you have to), etc. Using a very thin rim strip is an important part of this, as the tolerances on the rim on very tight. This could also be a issue if you ever had to ride any sort of distance on a flat. It’s also probably a case of being more paranoid and careful with a wheel of this quality than you would with a typical training wheel. I would definitely say that the tubulars are probably the more robust training wheel, since there is no clincher rim to damage, but I know the clinchers are very strong wheels. Again, it’s just the value cost of damaging the wheels. I.e., you can buy a good set of training wheels for what a Zipp rim (just the rim) costs even at wholesale. It’s a very precise, high performance, made in the USA product. That will always cost more than wheel made just to take a beating…