Are my Wheels strong enough

[Yellow Saddle]

Strength. "The wheels don't break when you sit on the bike." And does stuff expected of a wheel when you ride.
Durability. "Durability only shows up over time and is in direct correlation with spoke count and rim weight." And stress relieving of the spokes.
Light. Depends on the weight of hub/spokes and rim (obviously) All modern wheels are lightweight and weight should never be an issue when choosing a wheel. Colour is more important than weight. I've filled riding buddies' tyres with water without them knowing and they never noticed the extra 2kgs in the wheels. Try it, you'll be surprised.
Feel. ("sprightly and rolled well") Depends on wheel build but @Spoked Wheels and @Yellow Saddle can provide authoritative comment (the latter if his 'Japanese' phase has passed). There is no "feel" in a bicycle wheel at all. Unless they rub on the frame or fork *usually brake calipers), you cannot feel any flex laterally. Radially they flex less than the thin tyre rubber compresses. I'm not talking about pushing the tyre in by finger, I'm talking about the rubber itself squashing flatter. That's how little a wheel flexes when loaded. You can't feel it. If you say you can, I'll make you ride blindfolded over a piece of printer paper lying flat on the floor. I'll repeat the experiment with and without paper and see if you can feel that. That's approximately how much a wheel flexes.
Dimensions. Right diameter, rim width and hub OLD.
Braking. Disc or rim (or hub)
Type of rim: Tubular, clincher or tubeless
Hub; Quality, in particular, for CX, of seals; and type of bearings
Cost. ££

 

[Newman8]

Just another thought - not sure if this is 100% true, but just going from my own experience when I had some 'aero' wheels a few years ago (original shiny Campag Shamals which were very much loved for their looks, but not as practical as some other wheels I've had).
1. Deeper section rims seem to be stiffer than shallow rims so you can get away with considerably fewer spokes.
2. That's ok until you get a small dent or a bend in the rim which could be more easily straightened/trued on a shallow rim, but is more difficult on deeper rim.
3. Deeper (more aero) rims may be faster in wind-free conditions - but in typical English blustery conditions - can feel unstable when a cross wind hits.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Just another thought - not sure if this is 100% true, but just going from my own experience when I had some 'aero' wheels a few years ago (original shiny Campag Shamals which were very much loved for their looks, but not as practical as some other wheels I've had).
1. Deeper section rims seem to be stiffer than shallow rims so you can get away with considerably fewer spokes.
2. That's ok until you get a small dent or a bend in the rim which could be more easily straightened/trued on a shallow rim, but is more difficult on deeper rim.
3. Deeper (more aero) rims may be faster in wind-free conditions - but in typical English blustery conditions - can feel unstable when a cross wind hits.

What you write is true. I'd just like to add one thing to point 1. With fewer spokes you have to have more spoken tension which puts more stress on the rim around the spoke hole and dramatically reduces rim durability.

 

[User6179]

What you write is true. I'd just like to add one thing to point 1. With fewer spokes you have to have more spoken tension which puts more stress on the rim around the spoke hole and dramatically reduces rim durability.

Would you agree an aero rim is stiffer but less durable ?

 

[Spoked Wheels]

All modern wheels are lightweight and weight should never be an issue when choosing a wheel. Colour is more important than weight.

Some lighter than others and definitely lighter than the old stuff.
Weight it's an issue for racers thought, durability or reliability is not..... they have a car following them with a dozen spare wheels

I've filled riding buddies' tyres with water without them knowing and they never noticed the extra 2kgs in the wheels. Try it, you'll be surprised.

I don't want to start an argument but that is the second time you say that and I still don't buy it.

 

[Ajax Bay]

Weight it's an issue for racers thought, durability or reliability is not

Think you have it half right there - but forgive me if I 'quote' you, moving an apostrophe: "Weight is an issue for racers' thought" - ie as opposed to actually. How many extra watts does a wheelset 100g more require on a crit, say? Bikes are down to UCI limit anyway so it's only the rotational losses during acceleration which will have the adverse effect. But surely 'racers' ie with following support vehicles want reliability in significant measure, even if durability is further down the 'requirements heirarchy' as, of course, is cost.

 

[Spoked Wheels]

Think you have it half right there - but forgive me if I 'quote' you, moving an apostrophe: "Weight is an issue for racers' thought" - ie as opposed to actually. How many extra watts does a wheelset 100g more require on a crit, say? Bikes are down to UCI limit anyway so it's only the rotational losses during acceleration which will have the adverse effect. But surely 'racers' ie with following support vehicles want reliability in significant measure, even if durability is further down the 'requirements heirarchy' as, of course, is cost.

You are right about reliability, a racer doesn't need wheel failures. As far as the weight is concerned, for a racer, the marginal gain of saving a couple of hundreds grams can mean a few seconds over a race..... nothing the average rider would notice.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Some lighter than others and definitely lighter than the old stuff.
Weight it's an issue for racers thought, durability or reliability is not..... they have a car following them with a dozen spare wheels



I don't want to start an argument but that is the second time you say that and I still don't buy it.

And this is the second time you have not tried it.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Would you agree an aero rim is stiffer but less durable ?

A rim on a tensioned bicycle wheel is analogous with the beam of a bridge span. Obviously the thicker the beam the stiffer the beam. And, the thicker the beam the further away from each other the bridge pillars can be. But each pillar will then carry more weight (but we'll leave that for another discussion).
However, and here's the detail that matters; the rim's stiffness is irrelevant. As soon as the rim's thickness (and therefore stiffness) has reached a point where it can sustain the spoke tension (which is 3200 metric tons on a 32-spoke wheel with tension of 1000kg in each spoke), the amount of radial deflection in the wheel from rider weight is in the order of the thickness of a sheet of paper.
You can play with this fact and say but...but...but what about deep section rims...surely this and surely that. I'll give that argument some acknowledgement here and say yes, of course there is a difference. On a 50mm section rim the deflection is like riding over an 80gms piece of paper and a thin box section rim it is like riding over a 100gsm piece of paper. Which one will you feel most?



Fill in your answers in blank space provided above. But keep in mind that your tyre is deflecting by 5mm. And your saddle padding by another 5mm.

Edit: And why do people say flex as if it is a bad thing. The only bad flex in this system is tyre flex because of the relatively low return of energy with flexing rubber. Aluminium flex as in wheels is returned elastically with much less energy losses than similar flex in rubber with high hysteresis.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

You are right about reliability, a racer doesn't need wheel failures. As far as the weight is concerned, for a racer, the marginal gain of saving a couple of hundreds grams can mean a few seconds over a race..... nothing the average rider would notice.

No. Road races are not won on time. They are won on strategy and an important part of that is reliability. All things being equal, it is not the rider on wheels 100g lighter that wins the race but the one making the right decisions, being at the right place in critical moments and with the right team around him/her.
I see lots of people buying wheels based on weight but unfortunately I don't see much discussion here about peloton strategy and bunch riding skills.

 

[Spoked Wheels]

No. Road races are not won on time. They are won on strategy and an important part of that is reliability. All things being equal, it is not the rider on wheels 100g lighter that wins the race but the one making the right decisions, being at the right place in critical moments and with the right team around him/her.
I see lots of people buying wheels based on weight but unfortunately I don't see much discussion here about peloton strategy and bunch riding skills.

Yes, racers don't care about wheel weight

Reading your post again, you just have to watch the last tour de France TT event and see how riders where changing wheels for different types of terrain. Marginal differences do count and whether it is weight or aerodynamic, it all adds up.
You tell a racing rider, wheel weight should not be a concerned and you put him on a set that is a 200 or 300 grams heavier than what the rest of the riders are using and regardless of strategy or any energy savings through drafting, that rider won't be up there with a chance.
I agree with you that weight should not be an important factor for the average rider, however, when compiting then you can't expect a rider to compete with 200 or 300 g heavier wheels than anybody else.... all else being equal of course...... specially in a hilly race.

 

[Spoked Wheels]

And this is the second time you have not tried it.

I don't have to. This winter I changed my 200g tyres for Marathon Plus tyres at 600g each..... so I'm carrying an extra 800g.
On a 50+ miles ride, the extra effort is hardly noticeable at the beginning, after a few hills and on the last part of the ride I could not keep up with a riding mate and I just had to drop off.
Before I changed the tyres and doing the same ride, I was always riding in the front but with the new tyres an extra weight I couldn't manage leading the whole ride. The difference, I have to allow for rolling resistance which the M+ aren't too bad at all, much better than I expected but the weight, undoubtedly, played a major role on the hills.

I had the full ride in the garmin and also the video so, at home, I put together the two of them. I don't have a power meter but I could tell that near the top of a longish but not too steep hil I ran out of energy. My heart was pumping ferociously and then my cadence drops down and the video footage captured my mate overtaking me. It was physically impossible for me to overtake him after that.
Would I notice 2kg of water in my tyres? My legs most certainly would

 

[Yellow Saddle]

I don't have to. This winter I changed my 200g tyres for Marathon Plus tyres at 600g each..... so I'm carrying an extra 800g.
On a 50+ miles ride, the extra effort is hardly noticeable at the beginning, after a few hills and on the last part of the ride I could not keep up with a riding mate and I just had to drop off.
Before I changed the tyres and doing the same ride, I was always riding in the front but with the new tyres an extra weight I couldn't manage leading the whole ride. The difference, I have to allow for rolling resistance which the M+ aren't too bad at all, much better than I expected but the weight, undoubtedly, played a major role on the hills.

I had the full ride in the garmin and also the video so, at home, I put together the two of them. I don't have a power meter but I could tell that near the top of a longish but not too steep hil I ran out of energy. My heart was pumping ferociously and then my cadence drops down and the video footage captured my mate overtaking me. It was physically impossible for me to overtake him after that.
Would I notice 2kg of water in my tyres? My legs most certainly would

You cite several easily explainable reasons for your tiredness here.
The first one is the placebo effect. You saw yourself putting heavier tyres on and therefore you feel more tired.

Secondly, you didn't perform any scientific measurements. A given cadence on a given day or video footage of someone overtaking you is hardly evidence.

Thirdly you say you don't have to do the experiment because you just know. Well, religion also works like this: I know, just because I know.

We have on numerous times here debated the actual wattage required to ride heavier wheels and have done the math. Simply plug in 2kgs and you'll see that
it doesn't make the type of difference you cite. Certainly not enough to make you have to drop from a big to small blade.

Finally, a tyre full of water has less rolling resistance than that very same air-inflated tyre. Tyres with thicker rubber have a huge rolling resistance, enough to feel. Just swap from a thin road tyre bike to a knobbly MTB tyre bike and you will notice it. That's not the same as weight. Rolling resistance works against you all the time, whether you are going uphill, flat or downhill. Weight (anywhere on a bike only works against you when accelerating (which a bicycle for all intends and purposes doesn't do) and when climbing.

The best way to do this experiment is one someone who doesn't know. I had ample opportunity to do it because friends used to let me work on their bikes and I had plenty of time to fill my Silca pump with water and inject it into the tyre and bleed off any air and fill it to the brim. Not a squeak from any of them and Strava didn't know any better either.

Don't allow your mind to play games with you.

 

[bonsaibilly]

Yes, racers don't care about wheel weight

Reading your post again, you just have to watch the last tour de France TT event and see how riders where changing wheels for different types of terrain. Marginal differences do count and whether it is weight or aerodynamic, it all adds up.
You tell a racing rider, wheel weight should not be a concerned and you put him on a set that is a 200 or 300 grams heavier than what the rest of the riders are using and regardless of strategy or any energy savings through drafting, that rider won't be up there with a chance.
I agree with you that weight should not be an important factor for the average rider, however, when compiting then you can't expect a rider to compete with 200 or 300 g heavier wheels than anybody else.... all else being equal of course...... specially in a hilly race.

I thought that while an aero wheel is heavier than its equivalent shallow-section wheel, aerodynamics have been shown to have a much larger % effect on speed than reduced weight?

At any rate surely ability and fitness top the bill, so if you take two exactly identical bikes and put a 1500g wheel on one and on the other an 1800g wheel, two identical twin riders in the same race one is bound to beat the other and it is more likely to be fitness than the wheels... BB

 

[Spoked Wheels]

I thought that while an aero wheel is heavier than its equivalent shallow-section wheel, aerodynamics have been shown to have a much larger % effect on speed than reduced weight?

In reference to the TDF TT event, riders would use deep rim wheels on the flat but switch to shallow rim and lighter wheels for the hilly section.

There is a lot of references on the net that aerodynamics plays a bigger role on marginal gains than weight. The figures shown leave no doubt, the problem I have with that is that most of the talks on the subject are based on mathematical models where things like speed and grade of inclination remains constant. In real life that is not so easy to achieve. How can we be sure a rider can maintain a certain speed over a certain length? Also, how many hills do you know that have a constant incline?

I don't doubt there is an advantage of using aerodynamics wheels, I'm just not sure there is any advantage when climbing.

My own wheels are built with balance in mind. Reliability, durability, aerodynamics, weight and cost. I could spend more money and build something lighter or more aerodynamic but I don't think I'd see any benefits.... that is not to say that nobody would benefit.