Aero Frame Or Aero Wheels | Which Makes You Faster?

which is faster a lightweight bike with big deep section wheels or an aero bike with lighter climbing wheels it's like the eternal question for anyone buying a new bike and we're going to answer that question once and for all with a real world experiment it's time for science oh and we're also going to test a lightweight bike with lightweight wheels and an aero bike with big deep aero wheels as well i genuinely can't wait to find out the answer i'm excited i'm looking forward to that i don't know which way it's going to go before we go any further which setup do you think will be fastest overall so i'll tell you what let's have a poll will it be the aero bike and aero wheels aero bike with lightweight wheels the lightweight bike with aero wheels or the lightweight bike with lightweight wheels head over to the gcn app and get voting i should also point out that the result we got was not the one that we were expecting and i'm sure many of you will expect either so we reached out to some experts and engineers and we do have an explanation as to what we think may have happened something which we're looking to verify in a future video now we don't spoil the result for you and keep watching to find out what that is but more on that later i'm going to outline our experiment beginning with the equipment so for our lightweight climbing bike i've brought this along it's my canyon ultimate cfr it's amazing just a total lightweight pure climbing machine the total bike is 6.3 kilograms making it firmly uci illegal but they have no jurisdiction here now the wheels we've put in it are the zip808s these are our aero wheels that we're going to be swapping between the bikes and they're 1870 grams a pair so a little bit heavy but very very aero 82 millimeters deep and this is the aero frame and at the moment i've got it in with the lightweight wheels which are zips 303 firecrest wheels coming in at 350 grams of the pair and 40 millimeters deep we're going to of course be swapping the wheels between the bikes to compare them and the interest of science we're also using the same with handlebars and we're going to be using shimano's power meter cranks the air road is over a kilogram heavier than the ultimate but the ultimate is nowhere near as aerodynamic so it'll be really interesting to see that if when we add in these really deep aero wheels the ultimate can make up the aerodynamic shortfall it has and with the lighter wheels in the more aerodynamic arrow can that make up the weight shortfall that that has and we could have used lighter wheels for our lightweight set we could have had some crazy one kilogram a pair tubulars but we feel that most people don't use tubular wheels anymore and certainly most of you guys watching at home probably don't use tubulars and most bikes don't even come with them so we felt that it was of greater value to show some lightweight clinchers now for our experiment we're going to ride all of the setups on a special gcn test course just outside gcn megabase it's a 14 kilometer long lap and features a couple of climbs some flat and a rapid downhill section riding this course will not only tell us which setup is the fastest overall but also allow us to isolate the climbs the flats and the descents to see how that setup compares on those specific sections first off i'm on the aero bike and the lightweight wheels we're going to be riding as consistently as we can and ollie's going to start a minute behind me and ride as consistently as he can too count me in ollie there's a bit longer than necessary but i thought i'd just roll with it been a minute i'm gonna set myself up god it's hard not to race i just want to race him [Music] so he said we're going to test the lightweight bike in the aero bike in real world conditions and that's certainly valid there today it's starting to rain hard now we've got quite strong gusting winds to really test out our bike handling skills as well as the ride characteristics of the bikes we've got [Music] we're coming up to the big descent now and again to make this as consistent as possible there's a point that we've marked off and every time we hit that point we stop pedaling and we freewheel in the drops on the descent to the finish just to make it consistent with the first lap of the course completed we quickly swap over the wheels and begin lap two right lap two underway here we go aero bike aero wheels let's see what we've got i'm on the steepest part of the course and in theory this setup should be the fastest here but overall this setup should be the slowest in theory i really want to know the answer [Music] two laps done now time to swap the bikes it's amazing how light it is i know it's amazing it is amazing [Music] oh there we go [Applause] [Music] this is my first time riding this bike and i can't wait to see what the results actually say but the perception of speed is definitely there it feels like a rocket ship halfway all right how's that i think um i hit my highest speed today going down there on this yeah it felt quick that does feel quick on the descent but this is super like responsive on the climb you get out of the saddle and it's gone well you're not supposed to get outside well i've been going consistently lightweight bike aero wheels run four let's go don't even want beeps no beeps don't even want beeps now in this bit of the course where it plateaus there's quite a bit of crosswind and it'll be interesting to see what difference that makes but with the deeper wheels in you notice it with the shallower ones i don't really notice it to be honest [Applause] this is a real test of self-control here ollie's come past me and he's what 30 meters in front but i'm having to stick to my power output i promised everyone at home that i wouldn't ride more than 250 watts on the flat and that's what i'm doing 250 watts and it's so tempting to want to press on and catch him but i've got to sit tight and hope that this combo the lightweight bike and aero wheels comes into its own at some point on this course and we can regain that time [Music] coming up to the final descent now this bike is definitely been faster on the flat but will it have made enough back against the lighter bike on the climb can't wait to find out we're back at base we've warmed up and crucially we've computed the results and they're rather interesting and not at all what we were expecting um so let's reveal the results and then after that we'll discuss why we think we're seeing the results that we're seeing um but the first thing to point out is and something that's quite reassuring is that the order of what was fastest and what was slowest was the same for both of us yeah that's actually pretty important from this test result isn't it yeah just kind of validate the testing procedure to a certain degree anyway um alex reveal the results the results are in we've done the calculations and in fourth place is lightweight bike and aero wheels what so expecting that one to be the fastest well there you go it's in fourth place unfortunately same for both of us and third place we've got aero bike and aero wheels shut the front door i was hoping that would be one of the fastest but unfortunately not so second place we've got lightweight bikes and lightweight wheels which means in first place we've got aero bike and lightweight wheels quite a ton of events but we need to try and rationalize these results don't we yeah yeah i mean my power was really consistent alex not quite as consistent still good though thanks that's right um but it is a source of error and we need to acknowledge it the other thing is that we were testing outside in real world conditions which is nice it's the real world but one of the reasons why people often test indoors and in wind tunnels and velodromes is because you eliminate those variables and you're trying to eliminate as many variables as possible and you probably could tell on the footage today how changeable the weather conditions they're changeable and you know this can undoubtedly affect the results and i think the other thing was it was pretty windy when we got on the top of our test loop and that crosswind definitely felt like it was affecting the deeper wheel more like a lot more you can feel it than the shallower ones and onto the climb because we've isolated this section of our circuit and quite surprisingly the lightest weight setup compared to the aero bike with the lightweight wheels wasn't a vast difference between it for both of us they're pretty light for light and this well this suggests that um that the the aero is still mattering at the speed that we're going up that climb which is around 15 kilometers an hour but to such a point that the added weight of the aero frame is being clawed back by that that did surprise me a little bit actually it did surprise me as well um but on the descent we see a much bigger gap so on the descent the aero bike is significantly quicker and with the aero wheels the deep wheels performed best on the descent um you know we see significantly faster speeds and um yeah it's just noticeably quicker but that is what we were kind of expecting a little yeah so overall when we isolate the wheels be that whether we use the lightweight wheels or the aero wheel set the aero bike does come out on top it does yeah so that's you know the aero bike and the lightweight bike both with the 40 millimeter wheels or the aero bike and lightweight both with the deeper 82 millimeter wheels yeah everybody's fastest but perhaps the biggest surprise is that pretty much across the board the 40 millimeter wheel in our test outperformed and was quicker than the 82 millimeter wheel it's only on the descent that we saw higher speeds with with the deeper wheel and i mean there's a number of things that could be going on here and we mentioned before that there were the cross winds up at the top but i feel we need to talk about tires we've got to address this we do yeah now an oversight on our part and one that is likely to have contributed to the 303 outperforming the 808 on the flat here's the tyres and in our rush to get ready for this experiment we fitted the 303 with a 28 millimeter pirelli p0 tubeless tyre pumped up to 65 psi however on the 808 we used a 25 millimeter pirelli 4s winter tire with a butyl tube that we've humped up to 90 psi yeah sorry about that well we reached out to both pirelli and zip to see what they thought about this and well pirelli replied telling ears that the difference between the 4s winter tire and the compound used in the p0 summer tire was around four watts in rolling resistance in addition they reckoned that the difference between using a butyl tube and the tubeless setup was again around three to four watts in favor of the tubeless setup and they also suggested that the 28 millimeter p0 combined with the hookless 303 rim was a slightly superior tyre rim combination with regards to aerodynamics in the way that the entire rim interface is on that combination but they did say that this was a very very small amount yeah so we've got a narrower tyre a slower compound and a higher pressure we've not done very well with that zip looked at our test course and they made the observation that the flatter section of the course was was quite rough on the road surface it was a big contrast to the climb and the descent which was like buttery smooth perfect tarmac and in theory the flat section should give an advantage to the deeper more aero wheel but because the road surface was pretty crap we unwittingly gave an advantage again to the wider tire at a lower pressure as this was able to roll better and absorb the imperfections more than the narrow attire pumped up to a higher pressure and then in addition to that also when you look at the average speeds of our test runs they were typically around 35 kilometers an hour which again does start to swing it slightly towards the wider 28 millimeter tire and make that advantageous yeah that's right traffic can also have a significant impact on tests like this so when we take into account all these sort of theories and speculations that we've put out well we're going to go out we're going to have to repeat the experiment again but this time round we're going to use the same tubeless tyres on both the wheel sets pumped up to the same pressure and we're just going to see what happens yeah we need to do that yeah however our experiment did work and give us some interesting results it suggests that an aeroframe trumps a lightweight frame overall on a rolling course and also suggests that even the best wheels in the world may only be as good as the tyres that you fit onto them yeah that's right let us know your thoughts on this down in the comments section and if you found this video interesting make sure and give it a big thumbs up but rest assured we will do that follow-up we will we will be back

Channel: GCN Tech

Views: 257,387

Rating: 4.8172684 out of 5

Keywords: tubeless, clinchers, lightweight, aero, aerodynamic, gcn science, science, test, downhill, uphill, climb, descent, flat, fast, fastest, wheels, frame, power, speed, rolling resistance, light, weight, experiment, top speed, wind, cross wind, crosswind, shallow, deep, section, deep section, lightweight rims, rims, upgrade, best, best upgrade, GCN Tech, GCNTech, Bike Tech, Cycling Tech, Road Bicycle, Retro Tech, Retro Bike, GCN Cycling, ஔ, 4241, Ҫ, Ѩ, sca15, gc21s, r1, c1, ꗶ, n1, ホ, ፕ15, ଙ, ସ, Ղ, ሙ

Id: DMKl8dcg2z4

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Elvis_Precisely]

So I just watched that whole video and they reveal at the end that it’s all a waste of time because they “forgot” to run both bikes with the same tyre set up. Great.

[u/yurimow31]

aero wheels... for the looks... which is the only thing that matters, really.

[u/tom_luc21]

Aero frame, with aero wheels...

[u/BD59]

Aero wheels can be added to any bike at any time, but an aero frame requires getting it at the time of purchase of the whole bike. Since I'm not in the market for a new bike, I'd choose a wheel upgrade.

[u/HereToLearnEverybody]

Something about aero wheels really only Mattering above 20mph but that heavier wheels (deep section wheels are heavier) help smooth out the “power ramp” of small road undulations by carrying momentum.