DT Swiss launches endurance wheelset with Swiss Side

Ad Hynkel wrote:

Thanks for the video link part_robot, interesting stuff. Agree with the inconsistency part. Does seem a roll of the dice on something as potentially catastrophic for personal health as a front wheel rim. On the heat build up risk in carbon rims he talks about, do we have descents long enough in the UK to get carbon rims up to these temperatures? Or is that just a risk on the longer descent off the Alps, Dolomites etc.?

under normal circumstances you'd need a good few switchbacks to get that kind of heat, but obviously, if you're forced to brake hard on any descent it will push the temperature up

part_robot wrote:

Good old Chinese carbon debate again. Watch this video and all those by the same guy. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ET1jRVynOBA

And no, just because they are made "in the same factory to the same moulds" it absolutely does not guarantee the same layup, the same resins and the same materials. Certainly not the same warrantee. At least with a mainstream brand from an LBS you have backup if anything goes wrong.

As I always say, if you can't afford quality carbon just buy quality aluminium. Carbon for the sake of it - especially the low price stuff - is false economy and completely pointless.

5 Carbon wheel sets so far no problems, 3 sets for me (38, 50, 60mm tubulars) and 2 for a mate. Other than finding out that their bearings are crap. Which is something I change now before building my wheels. Skf abec7 if I find them otherwise abec5 at least.

My last set of wheels:

http://s32.postimg.org/8uvtek6l1/IMG_20160501_111246.jpg

CXR94Di2 wrote:

Too pricey by far. I know what goes into making carbon products, yes they take a bit more time to produce than aluminium wheels. Not by a factor of 5. Hunt make a pair of aero carbon disc wheels and don't charge anything like these. Pays your money takes your choice

Too pricey? Too pricey for you for a set of wheels, but £2k for being at the cutting edge and having what could be the fasting wheels available doesn't sound like too pricy to me, particularly when you consider the new Zipp wheels are £3k+.

Hunt wheels are excellent, and a perfect example of that middle ground between cutting edge high end but seriously costly and the cheap and chearful but nothing like as good chinese specials. They are also a good example of tech trickle down.

What Hunt can do now is because of companies like Swiss Side and DT pushing the boundaries in the preceding years, but pushing those boundaries costs which is why stuff like these wheels cost amounts us average Joes can't justify.

So, don't knock the price just because you aren't willing to pay it.

CXR94Di2 wrote:

Come on, I can buy 5 pairs of chinese wheels for the same price!   

you can buy four or five decent chinese cars all at once and still have a little change from the same price of a VW GTI or Ford Focus RS, but guess which perform best.

Getting tired of the sheer number of people judging everything purely on price. The R&D and intelectual property is an important part of the price. If people stop appreciating the value of that progress will stall.

Can't justify the price of the these swiss-side/dt wheels personally, but I wouldn't buy a set of cheap no-name chinese wheels either.

I do wish though that more companies were as open as Swiss Side with regards their R&D and data release - I'm almost as fed up of companies saying 'our [insert product here] is [insert factor here] faster than the best competitor' without naming names or providing a decent spread of data to back it up, as I am of people saying 'but I can get x pairs of not anything like as good chinese copies for the same price'.

joules1975 wrote:

Getting tired of the sheer number of people judging everything purely on price. The R&D and intelectual property is an important part of the price. If people stop appreciating the value of that progress will stall.

I suggest, any money they spent on R&D was wasted since they have come up with a pair of aero wheels that are less "aero" then the competition by their own figures.

As for IP being a significant part of the price, I see no patentable technology in these wheels.

What I do see, is a lot of marketing gibberish being regurgitated. Perhaps, DT's marketing dept is where the customer's money goes?

Progress? I don't think so. Unless you count new ground being broken by their marketing in bs AKA "rattling a stick in a swill bucket".

freebsd_frank wrote:

joules1975 wrote:

Getting tired of the sheer number of people judging everything purely on price. The R&D and intelectual property is an important part of the price. If people stop appreciating the value of that progress will stall.

I suggest, any money they spent on R&D was wasted since they have come up with a pair of aero wheels that are less "aero" then the competition by their own figures.

Slower than competition? On a par with Zipps for most of the yaw angle range and matching the zipps over a big part of it (but at a lower financial cost), and way better than the reynolds wheels at anything other then head on air flow.

Crucially though, if the wheels do what DT and SS state, they are much more stable, which means that you as a rider will be more comfortable and therefore able to keep the power on more effectively, and stay in the aero position more easily, meaning the 'whole system' of bike and rider will be faster.

Call that marketing bollocks if you like, but makes total sense to me. A similar analergy would be mountain bikes, or indeed larger volume tyres. They might be heavier and therefore on the face of it slower, but between the rolling resistance reduction and increased comfort, you go faster.

joules1975 wrote:

freebsd_frank wrote:

joules1975 wrote:

Getting tired of the sheer number of people judging everything purely on price. The R&D and intelectual property is an important part of the price. If people stop appreciating the value of that progress will stall.

I suggest, any money they spent on R&D was wasted since they have come up with a pair of aero wheels that are less "aero" then the competition by their own figures.

Slower than competition? On a par with Zipps for most of the yaw angle range and matching the zipps over a big part of it (but at a lower financial cost), and way better than the reynolds wheels at anything other then head on air flow.

Crucially though, if the wheels do what DT and SS state, they are much more stable, which means that you as a rider will be more comfortable and therefore able to keep the power on more effectively, and stay in the aero position more easily, meaning the 'whole system' of bike and rider will be faster.

Call that marketing bollocks if you like, but makes total sense to me. A similar analergy would be mountain bikes, or indeed larger volume tyres. They might be heavier and therefore on the face of it slower, but between the rolling resistance reduction and increased comfort, you go faster.

Are we looking at the same graph?  DT Swiss are within 1W of Reynolds out to about 8deg yaw then with a max advantage of 5-6W at about 15 deg yaw (averaged left and right traces).  Zipp 303 (the industry benchmark I suggest) are consistently lower drag than DT Swiss.  Not sure that I'd call 303's unstable either.

Reynolds are approx £1k, DT Swiss £2k, Zipps £2 - 2.5k depending on which iteration we're talking about.  Now, 5W = £1k might be an equation you're happy with, that's up to you.  But others might bear in mind that's close to the level of variation arising from different brands of tyre of the same nominal size.