When I purchased my P2SL a year and a bit ago it came with the Wolf TT fork. Although, it became apparent that the brake hole had been drilled off center on the fork, so my LBS sent it back on warranty. I received a Alpha Q Elios fork in return. It had taken over a month to get the new fork (I think my LBS had received it but didn’t call me) so I figured I would just live with it. I have had it now for well over a year and don’t have any complaints.
For next season I am going to pick up an aero wheelset (thinking HED 3C’s), and am wondering if it would be worth it to switch forks as well. Will I notice a benefit with an aero fork compared to the road one I have now?
Buy the fork with the widest internal dimension (distance between the rim and the brake surface) and the thinnest blades if you are going to run HED3 wheels. They will perform significantly better.
The biggest problem with the Hed 3’s is their aero-interaction with the fork legs. That thump thump sound that you hear is kind of like thunder as you get two air streams being compressed together every time one of the spoke blades passes between the legs. The narrower an opening you have between the wheel and the inner leg of the fork, the more turbulence and airflow disruption you get. Hence the Wolf, or any aero fork for that matter, having more narrow legs, and therefore more air clearance will behave better with something like the Hed 3. A normally spoked wheel with bladed spokes will not have as much of a turbulent effect with a narrower fork. Although, wider is almost always better.
Well, that all depends. Most windtunnel tests that we have done with this show good results with very narrow and very wide fork leg spacing, it’s the “medium” spacing that usually tests worse.
Do you think that if the opening is narrow enough, it forces the air around the outside of the leg, and doesn’t allow as much percussion? Conversly, if it is wide enough, it supports my theory, by allowing the air streams to pass through with a minimal amount of interface?
Indeed there is some effect like that, but it is much more complicated, especially near the crown. I always find it funny when for example companies put the brake behind the fork to “hide it from the airflow”. They don’t even realize that that’s exactly where the airflow will hit it. It’s some sort of armchair aerodynamics that I don’t really understand.