The Takeaway: The Aeolus 51 is an exceptional wheelset delivering speed, stability, and comfort.
- No weight limit
- Tubeless-ready and optimized for wider (racing) tires
- More aerodynamic and stable, with lower rolling resistance than the previous generation
Price: Aeolus 51 Pro $1,300/set; Aeolus 51 RSL $2,400/set
Weight: Aeolus 51 Pro 1,621g/set; Aeolus 51 RSL 1,424g/set (measured on my scale)
View Gallery Buy Aeolus 51 Pro Now Buy Aeolus 51 RSL Now
Bontrager dropped a whole buncha new carbon road wheels today. Joining the Aeolus 37 that launched with the new Trek Emonda (Trek owns the Bontrager brand) are the Aeolus 51, Aeolus 62, and Aeolus 75. As you likely surmised, the number refers to the rim’s depth in millimeters.
Bontrager only makes the 62 and 75 in its highest-end RSL (Race Shop Limited) trim, while the 51 (and 37) come in RSL and the lower-cost Pro trim.
Reflecting the current state of affairs, all the wheels are disc brake-only (CenterLock mounting standard), clincher-only, tubeless-ready, and have an inner width of 23mm.
Faster and Faster
Trek calls the new Aeolus wheels, “Our fastest wheels ever.” No surprise there—Who launches a new aerodynamic wheel that’s slower than the previous generation?
The twist here is it’s not just improved aerodynamics that makes the new wheels faster than Bontrager’s that have come before. The wheels also boast reduced tire rolling resistance due to increased width and greater stability in crosswinds thanks to a refined shape.
Graham Wilhelm, Trek’s director of wheels and tires, explained that supercomputers and a more detailed design process helped them improve the wheels’ speed.
“In the past, design technology was limited to two-dimensional modeling in a single plane. But today we run the whole design process in three dimensions. Now we can account for every gram of drag in every direction through every plane across all aspects of the wheel.”
That modeling also factored in rolling resistance. According to Claude Drehfal, a wheel design engineer at Trek, after much testing and iteration, the modeling showed that a 23mm inner width provided the best balance of aerodynamics and rolling resistance. Note that the modeling was done with a 25c tire, the width Trek-Segafredo’s athletes typically use in races.
The company claims that at 28mph and wrapped in a 25c Bontrager tire, the new RSL 51 has a 10 percent overall performance improvement—a combination of aero and rolling resistance gains—compared to the outgoing 47mm deep Aeolus XXX 4 wheel (when tested at the same speed and with the same width tire).
That works out to 6.3 watts of savings—4.3 watts of aero and 2 watts of rolling resistance. In a bit of bad news for traditionalists, those rolling resistance gains are based on comparing the outgoing wheel with a tubular to the new wheel with a tubeless clincher.
Bontrager claims even bigger gains for the new RSL 62. It says that in a 1,500-watt sprint finish, the outgoing Aeolus XXX 6 tubular gives up 34 watts (30.6 watts aero and 3.3 watts rolling resistance) to the new RSL 62 with a tubeless clincher.
Bontrager Aeolus 51, 62, and 75 Wheel Details
The new Aeolus wheels sell individually, so the rider can mix or match depths depending on their needs and conditions. Bontrager says its Trek-Segafredo team riders will ride mixed wheel depths often this race season.
RSL front wheels sell for $1,150 and RSL rear wheels sell for $1,250. That’s $2,400 a set if you’re not math savvy.
The Pro wheels (37 and 51 only) go for $580 (front) and $720 (rear), or $1,300 a set. The Pro 51 wheel uses the same drilling (24 hole front and rear) rim shape and rim dimensions of the RSL, but is made with lower grade carbon and heavier hubs.
Claimed wheelset weights are:
Aeolus Pro 51 - 725g front, 865g rear, 1,590g total
Aeolus RSL 51 - 645g front, 765g rear, 1,410g total
Aeolus RSL 62 - 700g front, 820g rear, 1,520g total
Aeolus RSL 75 - 765g front, 880g rear, 1,645g total
The RSL wheels use Bontrager branded DT-Swiss hubs—a 180 front and a 240 rear—with the company’s new Ratchet EXP system. The Pro wheels use Bontrager branded DT-Swiss 350 hubs.
The rims have hooked beads and are tubeless-ready with Bontrager’s excellent snap-in tubeless strip (60g each) and aluminum tubeless valves (six grams each for the 51 rim’s valves) installed. If you prefer riding with tubes, you can save some weight and use the Bontrager’s 22g rim strip instead of the tubeless strip. The tubeless strip, valve, and non-tubeless strip are all included with the purchase of a wheel.
The new Aeolus wheels have external nipples for easy service and no rider weight limit. They carry a lifetime warranty and are backed by Bontrager’s Carbon Care program, which provides, within the first two years of ownership, a free replacement for any wheel damaged while riding.
Bontrager Aeolus 51 — How They Ride
I got in a pair of Aeolus 51 in both the Pro and RSL trim ahead of today’s launch. I wrapped the RSLs in 25c Bontrager R3 tubeless-ready tires and gave them to one of the local hammers to pound. The Pro 51 I wrapped with 28c Bontrager R3 tubeless-ready tires and installed them on my Allied Alfa Allroad and did my less hammer-y thing.
Michael, the hammer, is a strong and fast A-group rider and experienced racer who puts in how-can-he-do-that-with-a-full-time-job-and-a-wife miles (over 15,000 in 2020, with 4,000-plus in 2021 so far). His daily driver is a Cervelo R5 that rolls on a Zipp 303 Firecrest Tubeless wrapped with 25c tires. The Zipps came off and the RSL 51s went on.
Now the Zipp 303 tubeless is a fine wheel, but Michael was effusive in his praise for the Bontrager RSL 51. “They are the best wheels I’ve ridden—no contest,” he said.
Michael rides with a power meter and is very attuned to his metrics. The Aeolus 51 RSL wheels made him faster.
“On my easy days, they want to go fast. On my hard days, they helped me go faster. In just the first week that I’ve tested the wheels, I’ve set a number of Strava PRs—a number of them on climbs—and had multiple top-three segment times for routes I ride quite frequently.”
Michael offered further insight on their stability “Don’t tell the UCI, but every time I slipped down into the super tuck the wheels were rock solid. They are also extremely stable in crosswinds. We’ve had an extremely windy spring in Durango, and the wheels don’t seem to have the same problems gusty winds cause similar deep-section wheels (e.g. my Zipp 303s).”
They also endured Michael’s gravel riding exploits unscathed and survived the kind of surprise that you often find on a fast unsanctioned group ride on public roads, “During a downhill sprint to the city limit sign on our local Tuesday night club ride, the riders leading out the sprint split on the road in front of me, darting around a two-inch diameter branch that I hit at full speed. The wheels absorbed the hit, I stayed on the bike, and they seem to have no damage from the impact,” he said.
He did have one interesting bit of criticism of the wheels: “You’re so quickly up to speed on downhills that you really need to stay on top of driving the bike. A fair trade-off for the speed, but they’ve made me nervous a few times.” I suspect this feeling will abate as he gets used to the wheels.
My rides on the Pro 51 were notably less speedy than Michael’s, but my impressions are similar. In a bit of serendipity, I also pulled Zipp 303 Firecrest tubeless wheels off my bike to install the Aeolus 51s, though my rims were wrapped with 35mm Pirelli Cinturatos.
I’ve long loved the comfort of Bontrager’s wheels—I’ve found them to be among the smoothest around—and I was happy that these wheels offered the same good feels I’ve come to expect from the brand’s wheels.
It’s a smooth, shock-absorbing wheelset, but it gives nothing up in lateral stiffness or snappy acceleration. It’s noticeably fast feeling too, punching through the air well. Aerodynamics are tough to judge by the seat of the pants, but I’ve ridden enough aero (and not aero) gear to have a decent sense of when something is slipperier than average. And the 51s are much slipperier than average.
As Michael noted, it’s been unusually windy and gusty in these parts recently, so I had plenty of opportunities to feel out their stability. Which is, to put a single word on it, exceptional.
Overall, this is a well-balanced and high-performing wheelset for racing and all-around fast road (and road-ish) riding. And with no weight limit, a great warranty, and tubeless compatibility, it’s one of the smartest buys you can find in the mid-depth wheel category.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
The Link LonkApril 15, 2021 at 10:00PM
https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/a36113148/bontrager-aeolus-51-review/
Bontrager Aeolus 51 Review | Best Cycling Wheels 2021 - Bicycling
https://news.google.com/search?q=Wheel&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment