New Wheels!

I have been toying around with the idea of renting or buying carbon fiber race wheels for some time now. The cost of new wheels being around $2000-$2500 a set has really taken that option off the list, so that leaves either buying used wheels or renting them on race day. Race day rentals are brand new wheels which is nice but changing equipment on race day without having used them before is not something I want to do. That left me with buying used ones.

I had been looking at buying some old Zipp 404 Carbon Clinchers over at Race Wheel Rental for around $1300. This is about half the cost of new ones, but these are older wheels and have some miles into them so that is a little risky. Last month I stumbled onto a sale on Reynolds carbon wheels over at Performance Bike. I did some searching around on reviews and everything I could find was positive. I settled on a Assault/Strike combo, which is a 46mm deep wheel in the front and a 66mm rim depth in the rear. They were on sale for $999(now $1099) and usually listed for almost double that, so I jumped on it. New wheels for less than the cost of new ones…nice! Yeah they are not Zipps, but hey I am not Pete Jacobs either. I think any little bit will help.

I had the wheels delivered to the local Performance Bike shop and picked them up on the weekend after I ordered them. I also ordered a Shimano Ultegra CS-6700 10-speed cassette to go with it which matches the one on my current wheelset. I picked up the tires, tubes and tools I needed at the store while I was there and my Performance Points added up to cut that bill in half as well. Savings-O-Rama!

I eventually got around to putting things together about a week later. The installation of the cassette was pretty painless, which surprised me since I thought that would be most difficult. Fortunately, Shimano provides instructions which were helpful. Some men do read the directions. The biggest issue was the tubes, mainly the presta valve on the rear tire. See the longest inner tube valve size they had was a 60mm valve and the rear wheel rim depth is 66mm, so you can do the math. To solve the issue Reynolds provides these little black “valve extenders”. The problem is they provide absolutely no instructions on how they work and their website provides no help either. I could not even find a support email address either. I figured out that they screw onto the base valve and extend out where you can put the pump valve on. The problem was the air just came back out again.

I did some searching on the Internet and found others that had suggested using plumbers tape on the base valve to help make a good seal. The valve insert must be screwed out all the way to let air in. Despite doing this I was still losing air. I ended up emailing Reynolds warranty department and they did respond with some suggestions. They said what I did should work. I left it sit for a while and came back to it again the following weekend. Turns out the tube I purchased had a pinhole in it which was causing the leak! Doh! So I tried again using the 3rd backup tube I purchased and all was good. Ugh!

Next up I had to swap out the standard brake pads for the special, blue colored pads that must be used with Reynolds carbon wheels. This seemed like an easy task, but the little 2mm hex screws kept stripping on me and some I had to use vise grips to get out. I got the rear brake pads on and had to scavenge a screw from my road bike to do so. The front pads were totally hosed up and I left them out. Hopefully they don’t fall out!

I got the wheels on and took them out for a spin around town. I didn’t want to do my full ride on them since I didn’t have a spare tube and my wife(support crew) was working so I didn’t want to be stranded in Kutztown somewhere. The ride around was pretty nice and I could feel the difference already. The weight of the bike itself was substantially lower. I was afraid that crosswinds may cause issue, but I did get to one area where it was totally hitting me sideways and could not feel anything. It was also a very windy day too. Later on, riding with my old wheels actually seemed worse than the new ones.

I ended up tracking down some tubes at TriSports with 80mm  presta valves which may get me some more length. I also found some “deluxe” valve extenders that allow you to remove the valve insert from the original valve and add it to the extender which seems a little more robust. They should be in this week so we shall see how they go.

The bike portion of a triathlon is the most stressful since it is the longest and has the most chance of mechanical failure. Given my previous experience with this past, I really try to remediate this from happening again. It is one thing when you have to quit due to your body failing, but it totally sucks when your equipment fails.