So go then; why don’t they?
The front wheel and fork are two of the biggest bike aero factors (no, I don’t have numbers, feel free to flame) and I’m willing to bet that their interaction has more effect than switching between a TT and standard chain ring (ditto previous).
The prime candidate is surely planet X as they make full bikes and wheels, but presumably Bontrager and Trek could get together? Cervelo and Zipp?
Is there something fundamental that I’ve missed?
Real Design, Reynolds, Easton & Blackwell comes to mind. There must be others?
Sorry, I’ve missed your point; do they actually make forks designed for specific wheels or were they just more fork& wheel manufacturers?
On the Blackwell site they talk about how their forks are designed with the spinning wheel in mind. I am sure they used there own wheel designs in testing.
"forks designed for specific wheels or were they just more fork& wheel manufacturers? "
I’d suspect Blackwell has researched this. Not sure about the other companies. Certainly an area that deserves attention.
this will probly be evo X of the latest techno revolution. now bike companies are using non interchangeable forks to work with their frames, and soon these forks will be “enhanced” to run certain front wheels. OVAL and BR are the first to offer slotted forks that are supposed to reduce drag for deep section wheels, and now that the standard min depth for a tt wheel is close to 60mm I guess it willnot be long befor the likes of Easton, Reynolds, and the rest to follow suit.
of course you also ahve to ask the question, how much of this is marketing? Look at the rear wheel cutout that was most popular and effective on the P3, and is now found on most highend frames. The only problem is that most of the cutouts are ‘me too’s’ and do not allow that rear wheel to move close enough to the tube to actually account for decreased drag (see the LOOK frames). I’m sure that we will see more sloted forks that just look more aero.
I just stumbled on this and thought I might shed a little light. Certainly there are some great wheel manufacturers that do also make aero forks. Our designer, John Cobb began work on aero forks years ago and came up with a UCI legal fork for Oval Concepts. The goal was to build a fork that would fit into the UCI rule box that would be better than the old Kinesis Carbonaero fork that was being used by Trek and several others at the time. None of these forks were as fast as the Lotus fork that was very popular until the UCI banned anything over 5cm wide. The competition the Oval Jetstream had at the time was the Reynolds Ouzo Aero and a “universal” aero fork made by Advanced in Taiwan. These forks are still spec’d on several leading bike manufacturer’s frames. The Jetstream was just a little faster, like 3-4 seconds on a 40k, but it helped manage the airflow from the front wheel better. Blackwell’s first aero fork, The Flow was designed in 2005 to specifically help deeper sectioned front wheels. It iwas not UCI legal because it was 60mm wide, but it was faster than the others by a margin of about 8-10 seconds on a 40k. We couldn’t get the weight where we wanted it so we designed our current aero frok, The Time Bandit. The Time Bandit incorporates the new Monocoque molding methods and is totally badass. It’s 70mm wide, NOT UCI legal, and is definently the fastest fork out including the old Lotus fork. This fork further improves the wheel air flow mangement to reduce wheels watts an average of 5-7 watts and have greatly added to the steering stability of the overall bike. It’s pretty light, about 390g and we have been selling them for about 9 months. Over a standarad aero fork equipped on most aero tt frames, this should be worth 15 seconds on a 40k, but at Ironman races with deep section race wheels it could total 5-6 minutes. This is a function of the watts saved by the wheel and the speed accumulates over a greater distance. Again, this fork doesn’t just work with Blackwell wheels. It was truly designed for deeper sectioned aero wheels of any brand (although we like to think they work better with BR products 