wind and wheels

[boyse7en]

My Summer bike - a rim-braked Neil Pryde - is fitted with Vision 42 carbon/alloy wheels.

While these are great most of the time, on windy days they are a nightmare at speed. Anything over 30mph and i feel like i have little control over where the bike is going. It wobbly and erratic, and frankly bloody terrifying if you go past a gateway at 40mph.

So I think i need some different wheels that are a bit more stable in crosswinds. Are newer deep-dish rims better in crosswinds than they used to be? Or should i be looking at some old-skool standard alloy rims?

[IroningMan]

I have found newer designs to be better - the combination of a wider bead and tyre plus a more oval profile with a less sharp trailing edge seems to deal with crosswinds better: I suspect because deep rims have become mainstream in the disc brake age, so there's more development effort going into making them forgiving - but you might struggle to find wheels like that for rim brakes and will also need to be careful about tyre clearance if the frame was intended for 23 - 25mm tyres.

I use 65mm rims from LightBicycle on my summer bike and they're reasonably good in crosswinds, with a fairly good profile, but I'm quite lumpy at 85kg: a lighter rider might not have the same experience.

[Julian Scott]

Echo the above

I've got two road bikes with 50/55mm rims and another two with 25/28mm

The Bora Ultras (50) are about 6yrs old, are tricky in crosswinds, pretty much as the OP describes. The newer bike has ENVE 4.5s (49 & 55mm rims) - they design of those, especially the front) means they are no less susceptible to cross winds my bikes with 25/28mm.

[LM240]

I ride with Roval CLX 50 on the front and 60 on the rear.

The 50 is fine in everything but the strongest of winds.

This was bought because the 60’s on the front were very difficult in winds. Few times nearly had the bars whipped out my hands.

I can see how the really light pros have weird looking accidents because of the wind, unlike my heavier weight on the bike.

[okgo]

Have you checked that they’re correctly weighted? Some ste wheels I had basically span and had a cam like effect due to the poor rim weight balance once tyres and valve were in. Made a huge difference to fix that.

But yes, if not that then not all deep wheels are built equally in the wind. Personally I wouldn’t bother buying a less deep set, I’d just buy box rims for those rare days.

[boyse7en]

okgo said:

Have you checked that they’re correctly weighted? Some ste wheels I had basically span and had a cam like effect due to the poor rim weight balance once tyres and valve were in. Made a huge difference to fix that.

But yes, if not that then not all deep wheels are built equally in the wind. Personally I wouldn’t bother buying a less deep set, I’d just buy box rims for those rare days.

By "weighted" do you mean balanced like you do with car wheels?
They are fine when it's not windy so I think they are ok on that front. Not checked them though.

[okgo]

Yes that’s right I suppose.

Spin the rear while it’s in mid air. If it spins smooth and there’s no movement it’ll be fine. If it bobs and has a rocking and almost feels like it’s not spherical then it may benefit from a wheel weight. Changed my Reynolds from deathtraps to at least stable and then the death was just the braking

[JayRidesBikes]

I used to have a set of 60MM deep Campagnolo bora WTO's and they scared the crap out of me in the wind, I was blown across the road into the opposite lane at one point, which is where I decided they were stupid and sold them.

I've now got a pair of Zipp 303 firecrests (40MM) and a set of Hunt carbon 30's. The Zipps are really good in all but the strongest of crosswinds, partly due to how wide they are I believe. The hunts however don't seem to be affected by wind at all, no that I've noticed so far anyway. They are again quite a wide design and combined with the shallower profile make for a really stable ride. I was descending from the top of quite an exposed, high hill yesterday in strong winds and they didn't even twitch.

[Steve vRS]

I've got the current disc Ultegra C50s front and back and have found them to be pretty good in cross winds - like others have said, much more stable than the Prime deep sections I was running for the last few years.

[Les84]

I have a set of Vel RSL 2’s 50mm and find they can attract the wind a little and you can feel it on the front, I am a light in weight and it can push sometimes.