I'm in the process of getting together the parts to put together a TT bike. I have a pair of lurvley Goldtech hubs in the pewter anodised finish but I'm agonising over rim choice and colour. The Open Pros on my Pompino commuter seem to be really good but I was thinking something a bit more aero may be in order. I can't afford and don't want carbon, but I want something durable enough so that I can use the bike as a summer/nice weather road bike too. I guess the obvious choice are Deep V's or those new deep section rims that BLB(?) are selling (H.Son or something), or maybe one of those on the front and an Open Pro ceramic on the back.

As for colour I should probably have gone for black hubs in hindsight and then black rims would have looked cool. Being not very artistic at all I can't visualise the hubs with coloured rims so any input there is greatly recieved too.

Cheers

Peace

Kurt

yea them new h+ rims blb have are quite nice, think there 47 quid too which aint too much
i like the mavic cosmic elite rims too

navigator pista seems an ok off the peg wheelset.

In terms of rims, I cant really help with any specific advice. But worth mentioning (obvious sorry) that less spokes will make a wheel more aero.

The navigator seem to have the golden number of 28, which is plenty durable for a training/everday bike, while still light weight & aero.

I recently changed from Deep-V to Open Pro and certainly wouldn't change back.

I'd have thought Deep-v would be somewhat weighty for TT.

My hubs are drilled 28 front and 32 rear. I was going to go with 2 cross front and 3 cross rear with DB spokes. Open Pros really were my first choice, I was interested in whether the aero advantages of a deep rim outweighed the weight penalty.

@ all who have posted-Thanks for the input so far

Peace

Kurt

Deep sections might give you a small edge if you're in the sub-hour for 25 mile class. You could always get some CXP33s - don't weigh much more than Open Pros.

You'll save a lot more time if you get some tribars, and do some specific training with them. In fact, even wearing a skinsuit will save you more time than deep sections.

perv

Not according to this..
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/a...rodynamics.htm

But i agree with most of the rest. Your body is the least aero part of the equation and also the motor so training and tuning an aero position will save masses more time than funky wheels. Funky wheels come when you're 'almost' winning your TTs and want to beat the fecker in the funny hat on the funny bike. You can buy speed, but what's the point, unless you're almost winning races on ability alone?

how much faster are you if you shave your legs?

5 seconds over 40k

It's in the list on here..
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/a...rodynamics.htm

Hmmm thanks. I never really thought about it like that. You're right of course. However the engineer inside me loves well designed, nicely machined and well finished 'bling' for the want of a better word. And in reality my current fitness level is much below where I was at nearly twenty (bloody hell, I only just realised that!) years ago. I'd almost decided on Open Pros purely on my past experiences with them, maybe with aero spokes

I've got some cheap aero bars and bullhorns on the Pompino which looks a bit odd to some, and I've been commuting regularly 25 miles round trip, and getting out for 30-35 miles at a time on off days on a fairly spinny gear at the moment.

Thanks to all as ever

Peace

Kurt

i do personally think its all about personal strength and fitness, time to raise the weights at the gym perhaps?

Weight lifting isn't going to do much for TTing, unless that was a figure of speech or something?

hahaha yea it was, im sure just getting on the track and training will be the way forward, altho wieghts probs will help a lil too

Hardly seems worth it really. If one is that desperate for an extra 5 seconds then they should train harder. Blokes should not be shaving legs!

From experience, weights won't do squat (pun intended).

Better to do 'on the bike weight training' - muscle tension stuff, standing starts, seated surges, blah.

TTing is all lactate threshold stuff, so it's good to get a HR monitor or whatever (if you can't do it by perceived exertion) and ride lots of 5% over LT / 5% under LT sessions and stuff like that - there's probably millions of sessions detailed on the web, like the cptips site.

Sheldon doesn't look like a tester to me. I still reckon a skinsuit is worth more than aero wheels, except rear discs at 27/28mph+.

It wasn't Sheldon's data though, he'd got it from some German dude I think.

The difference is close, I'll admit and if you added overshoes and funny hat to your skinsuit you'd be faster than running funky wheels for 1/10th the cost.

The engine is still more important than all the kit. Train.

but training is hard and buying new toys is fun! please, mr hippy, let me spend my cash!

achieving success (whether it be in races or just personal performance) is satisfying when it's a result of training.

new bits are nice, but the novelty soon wears off and you still need to train.

re leg shaving: reckon I was the only bloke at HH on saturday with hairy legs. as it's only 5 seconds I don't think I'll bother getting the mach3 out.

++ for open pro's. On high flange hubs they build into really nice light, tight wheels and have good braking surfaces too. Been using 'em for just over a year and they're going strong. Built countless sets up for peeps too.

The novelty of knocking 5 minutes off my time for a 25 due to using £5 second-hand tribars the week after riding the same course in similar conditions in (wide) drops still hasn't really worn off.

Mind you, the satisfaction of beating loads of sci-fi testers that first week still feels good too.

Have a look at this page before thinking about Open Pros for TT (great rims otherwise, though).

http://www.cbss.ca/tip11.htm

When you can fill this bucket with your own vomit (from turbo sessions, not binge drinking) then I'll let you buy one piece of go faster kit, one!
The second piece will come when you show me you can bleed from your eyeballs doing hillsprints.

I don't get it. I skimmed that and all I can see is that it is saying that aero wheels are more aero than non-aero wheels = no shit. But, how much time will it save you in a TT compared to cheaper mods like removing bottle cages, shaving, wearing a skinsuit, etc.

Aerobars?

Cheat.

It was suggested that Open Pros with fewer spokes may be the way to go, and the article indicated that fewer spokes on a box section rim does not help at all. Aero rims are definitely the way to go for TT speeds, regardless of the weight difference. Maybe this article would answer things a bit more definitively.

http://www.cervelo.com/content.aspx?...i=Aerodynamics

I think the suggestion is that it's an expensive way to save not very much time compared to other options.

Of course, if the exercise is just to find a 'scientific' excuse to buy Deep Vs for the bling, then have at it.

Open Pros aren't box rims though :S

Get used track Shamal's ? :)

weird question thats loosely related spotted a mavic cxp30 wheelset on bumtree, think the seller has got them set up with tubs but was wondering if they'll take inners and tyre, been looking around for info but the search has proved fruitless :s

tubs are glue on only, sadly you can't put clinchers on them.

It seems to be lodged in my head that there is no aero advantage for rims that are less than 40mm deep, so using deep-v's / CXP30's / CXP14's etc has little bearing. I do ride CXP30's however because they look nice and are pretty robust. Have the goldtech's in pewter also, they are sweet! Not too impressed with my spindles knurling over though as I can't get the caps off to change the bearings.

I think I'd use the wheels you have and concentrate on training and tribars to get your time down, good luck!

I see although I didn't suggest Open Pros for a TT machine. I suggested clothing choice, positioning and training has much more impact on your TTing and it would be better (and far cheaper) to worry about these aspects before shelling out on expensive aero wheels. BMMF suggested CXP33s which would seem to offer a suitable advantage for little cost difference compared to Open Pros. Since you could leave these built as 32h rather than silly low spoke count, they'd be fine for most riding rather than TT-only wheels.

[FONT=Tahoma][SIZE=2]Paul Merlo's results indicated that the box shaped rim is very inefficient aerodynamically and it is hard to improve the characteristics of this type of wheel by changing the spoking pattern. Using aerodynamic spokes and reducing their number will decrease the drag on this type of wheel slightly, but using a standard aerodynamic rim such as the Campagnolo Omega or the Velocity aero has a greater influence on reducing drag. For instance, a wheel with 32 round spokes in a Campagnolo Omega rim had less drag than a wheel with 16 round spokes in a box shaped rim.[/SIZE][/FONT]

That's a much more succinct version. :)