Have you wasted money on super light new wheels?

Well yes, there's no point spending money on product development then not telling anybody about it! Successful manufacturing companies like these need both an effective R&D function and an effective marketing department.

700c is right, sorry BBB but after 25 years you might not notice any effect due to all the other changes, but plenty of others do. Whether it is gyroscopic or psychological it is a real effect. And if you move from point A to point B, or even Point A to Point A faster than you did or could before then the purchase was worth it no matter how it was achieved.

PS to the O.P, some dealers offer a try before you buy scheme on certain wheels (Reynolds is one of these manufacturers) so just try them out and if you don't notice a difference in the real world then don't buy!

All the rest is just B.S. pseudo-science and speculation, frankly!

I'll give you £40 for your unbranded wheels then, if they are as good as £800 carbon Mavics!

It doesn't matter. You buy fancy shit because it makes you feel more awesome. This hobby is so much about the emotions. Performance is directly tied in to that. Feeling more pro is part of the fun.
The aesthetic of cycling is what makes it so wonderful. Down the generations there's things cyclists just do, because it looks right and because it feels right.
I'm as likely to buy a pair of shoes because they match details on my frame as I am to buy them for their performance. Genuinely, my new shoes made me faster because I felt great wearing them.
So you get the new ultra-lightweight wheelset. People pick up your bike to do that approving thing. Your bike's more awesome. You push yourself harder to do your bike justice. You look at your bike some more. You swap out your stem for one that works just a tiny bit better. You feel good. You push harder. You train more.
You're getting marginal gains all the time, not just physical but psychological too.

Any sport is as much heart as it is head. Just accept that shiny things affect your heart too.

Very emotional and well-put, bashthebox! There's nothing wrong with feeling good. If you think you'll get the benefit, go for it.

Ultimately, no-one wants to be seen as an idiot wasting their time on £4k of bike, so any upgrade makes you want to do it justice and not look like you have all the gear and no idea.

I'd suggest that in purely numerical terms there's basically nothing you can buy for your bike, performance-wise, where the money wouldn't be better spent investing in improving your fitness. With the possible exception of TT bars, if you TT.

we're emotional beings though, not robots. let us have our carbon bottle cages, dammit.

I agree with Dave Atkinson, getting fit is the best way to improve your performance. I have a twenty year old touring bike if I could afford a carbon wonder bike I doubt I would go any faster.

Sorry guys simple solution:

Running, there has been so many" innovations" with running, and yet its proven training gains far out way any performance clothing gains.... Most performance gains from clothing ie compression only give the perceived feeling of better performance.

To sum up, aero=feeling of less effort thus can push harder =actually going harder

Training's free.

The thread was about whether spending money on lighter and/or more aerodynamic wheels is worth it or not. All other factors being equal.

Wheel upgrades have made a difference for me, therefore it's worth spending money -to a point. This point will vary for everyone.

No amount of science or theory can convince though, you just have to try them out.

All this stuff about rotational weight/rotational inertia. Read what Jobst Brandt has to say about it:

http://yarchive.net/bike/rotating_mass.html

His engineering/physics is spot on. The point is, rotational inertia only causes any negative effect when accelerating significantly. It might even have positive effects at a steady speed.

The sensation of surging forward with each push on the pedals does not mean you're going faster - you might just be slowing down more between pedal strokes due to reduced flywheel effect!

It can be very hard to tell what is actually faster without timing things and having some evidence that you're putting out an equal effort (ie power meter). Even then you can't control for wind conditions and other factors.

What is more simple is that saving weight on the bike or on yourself means you can ride up hills faster at the same speed (terminal velocity is higher - try coasting downhill next to someone heavier than you). The steeper the hill, the bigger the effect. You'll also go down hill more slowly, but the net effect going up and down is that you'll be quicker.

Saving weight also slightly reduces your rolling resistance at any speed.

I think the maths is off in the first linked article because the speed uphill is high (I think because it isn't very steep). This makes the aerodynamics far more significant than it is when you're grinding up a steep hill at low speed. Weight becomes the dominant factor at lower speeds.

As Dave128 posted, swapping to much lighter wheels (Ksyrium Elite) allowed me to grind up the very steep hills in my area with noticeably less effort (before that, I could not even get up some of them without dismounting). On the flat though, I seemed to lose some flywheel effect. Changing to 28mm tyres at 90 psi made a massive difference in ride comfort over the appalling roads (breathtaking views though), ultimately making me 10% faster on typical 3 hour mountain rides.
I believe that wheel manufacturers have only scratched the surface, the advent of disk brakes, wider rims, tubeless tyres will increase their design freedom. 5 years down the road, our wheel/tyre combinations will look very different.
Summing up: lighter rims make a real world difference when climbing, same as wider tyres on comfort; aero gains probably kick in above 35 km/hr overtaking the fly wheel effect. The truly interesting times in wheel/tyre development lay still ahead.

On two occasions this year I have heard local guys banging on about their super light new wheels. One also has DI2. And you know what? They still aren't as fast as me.

Of course, if I had the money, no doubt I would be buying the same equipment.

I bought some Swissside Hadron deep section wheels based on as scientific a trial I could be bothered with. I tried a set for a week or two and rode the same short flat TT course numerous times with those wheels and measured them against what I could do on my old Askiums. I found I was around 1mph (21mph vs 20mph) quicker over the course with deep sections on, for the same HR effort, in reasonably similar wind conditions.

We're all individuals here, we make our choices and move on.

These discussions tend to go round in circles because those who want/can afford new kit justify it and those who do not want/can't afford argue against it. To paraphrase (incorrectly) Lance, it's a lot about the bike. Part of the enjoyment for many is the machinery, and nothing wrong with that. Even for the Eroica guys and gals, it's still about kit to a large extent

I like shiny things nothing wrong with a bit of Gucci on your bike

The physics is quite clear (wheel weight doesn't make much difference).

As a experiment I suggest people try seeing how much effort it takes to spin their front wheel by hand. It is laughably easy, pretty much effort free - and that is accelerating from a standstill, and the full weight of the wheel is being accelerated.

Most riding is mostly steady state and the difference in weights across different wheels is only a few hundred grams at most.

New wheels may look cool, might make a nice sound and make you feel like the king of the road but they won't make you much faster on their own.

As Dave said further up, tribars are probably one of the few equipment changes that will genuinely make you a lot faster. Like some other posters, I also like more expensive tyres, although I am happy to admit that to an extent they may just 'feel' better.

That doesn't mean that people shouldn't buy expensive wheels, just that they might be disappointed if the only reason for buying them is that they now think they will fly up the hills.

not totally bike related but Dr Hutch finds tests a aero bike and a regular road bike to see the difference at the same power.

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/how-much-faster-is-an-ae...

My zondas must be slowing me down, because I love to stop pedaling and listen to the awesome freewheel.

do get some good climb times on them though.

@BBB, your experience may be the exception rather than the rule..

But if you are correct, then thousands of us are being conned and the likes of Zipp, Reynolds, HED, fulcrum, Mavic etc should just give up and throw away the results of £millions spent on R&D!