Which Is Faster: TT Wheels Road Bike Or Road Wheels TT Bike?
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- čas přidán 23. 04. 2022
- We know that time trial bikes are fast and their super aero wheels are a big reason why. But what would happen if you rode a TT bike with normal road wheels? And, likewise, what if you were to put TT wheels on your road bike? Which would be fastest? It’s time for a race: road bike with time trial wheels vs time trial bike with road wheels!
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What did you make of this experiment? Has it changed how you think about TT bikes and wheels? Let us know in the comments below! 💬
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What did you make of this experiment? Has it changed how you view TT bikes and wheels?
Great vid guys
Intresting as a time trialist
Did not think it would make such a big difference
Great test, I've often wondered what the difference between the two would be so thanks for the experiment 👍
Please add a blank space between value and unit
Umm, why don't you use the drops on the road bike when doing these comparisons? I'm pretty sure that's what most riders do for maximum speed.
@@warrenyoung173 Actually the most aero and hence fastest position is with your hands on the hoods and forearms parallel to the ground.
TT-bike vs aero road bike with clip-on bars! Both with the same set of wheels and tires and both with the same riding position. I'm curious how much of a difference a TT-frame makes.
If you can get the same position on both then not a lot.
On the flat, barely any advantage to TT frame. Hills will have a distinct advantage to road frames.
I’d love to see that
i'd love to see that too!
Now that would be interesting!
"We've come to a racetrack...for a race."
Ollie is blowing my mind with all this sciencing.
🤣
Would be interesting to see how close you can get an aero road bike to modern TT bike levels with a set of wheels and other Temporary/clip on modifications.
A TT bike is the one bike type that I cant even fully justify to myself never mind my better half, except maybe a used older Ally one, so what would be even more interesting (to me) is to see if you could take a modern aero road bike beyond that of an older TT bike.
Just use a TT bike and throw road bars on it. I've been doing that since 2014, TT bikes make the best road bikes
Would be great to see how close you can get a road bike to a TT bike with wheels and clip on bars
I’ve always wondered this. It could be an interesting alternative to the the bike switch that we’ve seen in some TT stages.
Take a an already aero frame and completely TT optimize it, but while still having full range of vision. Install a TT wheelset, aero crankset, and something like Zipp’s Vulka Aero handlebars and Vuka shift that can be used in place of the traditional handlebars.
Essentially you’ll have a TT bike without the super aggressive positioning that has been questionably unsafe.
On a course like the 2017 World Championships , would this be a smart move as opposed to staying on a TT bike or switching to a road bike without TT modifications?
Most of all how small would the gap be in terms of aerodynamics?
Certainly would be an interesting experiment.
@@gcntech so will there be next episode showing it?
With eTap/di2 you can put shifters on the clip on bars as well as having them on the levers, so arguably a better setup than a TT which offers fewer hand positions.
@@Bethy177 Yep, those satellite shifters work a treat, especially good for a hilly or windy course
And the same experiment whith a clip on bar pinarelo will be so much closer 😅
I would like them to do the same test again with clip on bars on the pinarello for both runs.
Should have repeated the test at least twice by swapping the riders between the bikes to make the test fairer. Physiology plays a part in aerodynamics, and although Alex and Ollie look to be of similar height, Ollie looks to be generally of a slimmer build. Hence, 250W for Ollie in a TT position could be faster than Alex due to a lower cross-sectional area presented to the air (making the 'A' part of his CdA smaller).
Another test would be relaxed position/poor bike fit on a super bike vs aggressive position/good bike fit on a 20yr old bike.. this will reiterate body position affects overall cda more than bike frame and wheels..
I suspect GCN would never do this test as it would upset the sponsors (orbea frame and vision wheels) ???
Great stuff as always GCN - for the next time a modern aero road bike + clip on tri bars and bling wheels vs tt bike with bling wheels holding 300 watts on a beautiful sunny day! (please!) The people have spoken and therefore it must be done :-)
Thanks for these videos. What I was looking for
Those "road wheels" look like pretty good wheels too, so picking up .6mph or 1kmh seems pretty significant to me over what appears to be a decent set of wheels to begin with.
Difference in the two riding positions would have been a huge factor as the drag is obviously proportional to the frontal surface area. Ollie’s result are possibly the most interesting showing just how much difference deep section wheels make. Another good vlog/film.
The most impressive thing in this fun video is that both Ollie and Alex can nail the 250 Watt average; despite my best attempts, I have never managed to keep my average power to anywhere near the desired level...
Position is still the most important and is the cheapest to do (much to the sadness of gcn sponsors)
An experiment with a person in street cloths on an aero as opposed to a person in their GCN kit on a road bike,.or even the same bikes would be interesting, just to see the impact of loose clothing. Great video👍
Great video. Very interesting outcome!
Very cool video, interesting to see the results.
Can’t believe that the king of aero isn’t ride in the aero position. Yes I get that it’s to see the difference between road and tt bikes but come on up right on the hoods?! Even GCN’s science shows the two other standard positions are way faster at the same power and are still standard “Road Bike” positions so to see Oliver ride up right is ridiculous
their test didn't show "is a TT bike faster" it showed are the *wheels* faster. So the rider maintaining a consistent position is the more important thing.
The title of the video is the only thing that doesn't really match between the test and methodology.
Would have been interesting to see you do this using an aggressive aero position on the road bike with a similar torso and hip angle. (Low on the hoods with arms parallel).
Thought the same thing. Pointless comparison. Of course the road bike is much slower when you ride in a totally relaxed hood position.
Great test 👍 I now use my road bike with Zipp 404 + Disk for TT, having upgraded to SRAM Red ETap to enable shifting on the clip-ons as well as levers. Best of both worlds!
Nice!
Hi GCN, love yall
always love how fun videos like these are
Those slow motion videos are dripping!
Literally and figuratively.
amazing content!!
it's just great what ideas you always have there😉
Very good interesting experiment guys thoroughly enjoyed watching this
Thank you!
to test this, you need to go an indoors track. Difference was so small that could perfectly be difference in wind during the laps since was a windy day with some rain.
At 2:40 he almost ate it. That twitch of the bars is terrifying haha
Ollie, thank you for being the first English presenter to say Llandow properly! 👍👍🏴
0:24 Ferra-race! That HAS to be fast! Vrooom!
First, what a fun test! Was it it superbly scientic, no. However, I think based upon the comments, many people were comparing the numbers between both riders instead of comparing the numbers of each rider between tests. Yes, there is a variable difference because the tires were not changed; however, over the length of this test the difference should be minimal. And, although this was not very scientific, the takeaway is that time trial wheels on a road bike will make a difference. It was also interesting to note, and very expected, that the stability on a time trial bike with time trial wheels was less than that of a road bike with time trial wheels due to the differences in hand position. It would be interesting to see, as others have mentioned, what the differences would be utilizing clip-on TT bars on the road bike with the time trial wheels versus a normal road bike setup.
So windy and rainy...what happens when you go to Wales 😉 You should of used an excuse and gone to Mallorca instead.
I got 55's they made my bike look so much better as any aero wheelset does
I can feel the difference going from standard rims with round spokes to 35mm rims flat spokes....i accelersste faster and less fatigued on my rides. Aiming to one day purchase 50mm rims, btw you have a grea t chanel gents.
Love it how Alex and Ollie only had one Allen key between them…pure comedy
I am glad about the weird coincidente, because I am designing a road bike with TT Wheels for myself. But cleaner visual, I will go for the sturmey archer kickshift hub because its the only one where I can change gears (I considered automatics also) and brake without cables or hand controls.
Steel frame, bullhorn handlebar, gates carbon drive. The Wheels that are a problem to me, this is a low cost project (I dont have The money for proper carbon TT rims and I need 32 holes for the rear hub), so I am going for aluminium médium profile Wheels. I probably will go for dt Swiss 511 rims, but if you guys have other sugestions around this price and that are more aero, I will love it. I will go for skinny tires and the rear wheel will have a cover.
On behalf of GCN [I'm not even paid for that, uhum] everyone is asking to put TT clip-ons on the road bike. Listen to this: The objective was to keep the road bike a road bike and the TT bike a TT bike . . . and see what swapping the WHEELS would accomplish, in terms of speed, in either case . . . OK? Phew, now back to my coffee! Trolling for a good cause is never easy!
Yea… I don’t think you quite get it either. The general comment is not in critique of this test. But rather asking to take it one step further now. You’ve seen what TT wheels can do, now go further and also add clip-ons etc… the next test
@@ThisIsJoe07 "Yea… I don’t think you quite get it EITHER." 'Either' in your response says a lot. Sigh!
Perhaps rephrasing the question is required to help everyone concerned... Given that the test was to show the aerodynamic advantage of deep section wheels on a road bike vs a TT bike with road wheels, perhaps the next test could show the aerodynamic advantage of clip on bars and deep section wheels vs a TT bike with drop handlebars, and road wheels? No trolling or reverse trolling required 😉.
Sorry, but this makes no sense at all.
Consider the objective - does one set of wheels make a speed difference over another ... the fact that these are two different types of bikes (all other things staying the same) in theory would have no impact . . . you should SEE the same speed difference regardless of bike type, within reason.
. . . so now you want to see what difference the same wheel swap would make by changing other equipment ... because ??? . . . you think adding a diff type set of clip-ons will impact the wheel speed performance???
I'm quite confident that these "tests" are mostly for 'entertainment' . . . and the GCN staff enjoys the better part of that 👍
@@spikev5842 " . . so now you want to see what difference the same wheel swap would make by changing other equipment ... "
As I mentioned in the comments to another video, having El Alto do a time trial in 40 mph winds would be an interesting comparison with these.
Without having seen the results, I would guess the TT bike will be faster because the rider position matters more than the wheels.
👌👌Cool video guys
What cockpit is that on the TT bike? I have the Orbea Ordu as well and am looking to angle my bars more upwards like you have!
you guys gotta plan out your day a bit better haha.
lately every test video has been done where the commentary and analysis was done in spectacular sunshine.
but when you're on the actual track... its pissing rain.
Be interesting to see if Ollie was in a more aero position with the TT wheels how close he would've been to the TT bike with TT wheels. Like could you TT competitively on a road bike with TT wheels vs a TT bike with road wheels? And how much closer would the gap be with like wheels.
pinarello with tt wheels=amazing look!!
I must admit
what matters most is that you look fast even when you're not moving ... like mentioned, "bling bling"
My flash for those on a budget, just buy a front aero wheel, I rode a 90mm HED all year all winds & weathers Seattle area reamed in front rim brakes, have a 65mm Easton disc brake, not deep enough, the bow wave of the downttube seems why, bigger better in cross-winds.
Ymmv 🍺
If you put AERO bars on road bike I think it will same as tt bike 🤣🤣🤣
Road bike with tt wheelset looks looks cool as heck. TT bike with RB wheelset look weird as heck too lol
Did you do all of the videos that use this road track, on the same wet day, or does it really rain that often in the UK?
We went there to film a few on the same day but it is pretty normal weather for South Wales!
Even after Ollie has set off and appears to be on his way, I still can't help but suspect he's not fully clipped in. However, his second run was arguably one of his cleanest take offs. -->÷€-
A concave "scoop" shape is the worst possible shape for aero drag. that's basically the shape you make with your arms and torso with arms far apart. putting your hands together in front of your face is much better to break the wind.
Clip on arno bars on a road bike would be fast I have done it foundit bettering the turns and roundabouts cheaper than having two bikes as you can take off the aero bar's
Do the experiment most relevant for the everyday amateur cyclist on their own rides: what's the difference between riding on top vs drops? Does riding on the drops make you faster and if so, by how much?
There's already stuff on this. Drops with locked arms is slower than tops with bent elbows.
are those innertubes stronger? i didnt know regular tubes were butyl (sounds like futile)
Why would you do this without using exactly the same tires on both sets of wheels?!?
Hi gcn you guys should go to Gibraltar it's a really nice place with hard climbs and amazing weather
What's faster for a slightly hilly race: Zipp 808 with 25mm tires, or Zipp 202 with 23mm tires?
I would like to see what difference the frame makes. i.e. maybe an old school caad 12 or super six v the dogma, with the same wheel changes. Round tube profiles v shaped. Edit oops, you did that already.
I bet it was a good upper body/core fighting the wind with that disk wheel.
I'm just wondering when Giro is going to get you dudes some GCN logo'd Eclipse Sphericals
Cool video.....
Need to do eurobike with clips ons vs aerobike
He was holding an extremely relaxed (non-racing) position. It would be a more meaninful experiment if a more aggressive position was held on the road bike.
If anything, this shows how marginal (if not negligible) the differences are between the aerodynamics of aero road bike frames and TT specific frames.
Is the difference down to tyres only?
How much of that really is the wheels themselves vs faster rolling tires? Really you should be using the exact same tires on both bikes to see how much difference tt wheel set makes.
The other story is that better wheels do make a difference. My strava ride even tell me that when I have road wheelset on my gravel bike
How about the Euro bike with TT wheels? 😀
TT bike vs a triathlon super bike like the diamondbacks Andean or Cecelia Px or felt ia
Those road bike wheels are quite shallow. Wonder what the difference would be with the TT bike set up with mid-depth wheels, say 50 mm?
Where was the bike made?
1km/h faster is big enough but I want to see if that gap is even bigger with track specialist, because they are more used to them, right? What would Manon say?
The wind blowing the trees around at the end of you video looks imposing. Riding on really windy days is no fun but it really is good training. Did 20 miles yesterday in 35mph gusty winds only to have my drill sergeant mentality tell me to "drop and give me 20".
Every time I hear South Wales (as an American) I think of the Captain Mitchell and Webb sketch lol
The difference would have been bigger at higher power on that course
Yes, if only could produce said power.
It would be nice if Orbea would supply its customers with ordered MYO bikes.
It’s always about body position and wind conditions . I can ride faster sometimes on flat on the fulcrum zero wheels instead of the ursus miura 50mm carbon wheels on my road bike.
It's a pity a comparison with an aero road bike with clip-on aero bars wasn't also made. My gut feeling is that a TT bike wouldn't be very much faster.
How long ago have you been filming some of these videos? We've had like 3 weeks of hot sunny weather yet in every GCN video it's grey and or wet. Slightly depressing tbh...
If you're going to keep giving us the scientific tests could you please use the same tires on both bikes thank you.
Indeed, this test is invalid unless they are using the same tires. Come on guys.
Almost none of the GCN tests are properly tested scientific in any way whatsoever. It's primarily just entertainment.
As usual, great idea terrible realisation. You haven’t even tried the effort to ride the road bike in Aero position, that would have greatly reduced the difference with the TT and made things more comparable.
- are tt wheels able to compensate a full aero frame? We still have no clue
- are tt wheels a lot faster than relatively shallow aero wheels? Yes (shocking)…
Guys you could do really great with a bit more effort and less marketing!
Edit: just seen tires are completely different… how many variables can we mix together not to drive any conclusion?
I think "GCN does science" is always done tongue in cheek, meaning they don't pretend to do it properly, or they'd be spending millions on wind tunnels and double blind trials consisting of thousands of data points over hundreds of scenarios with peer reviewed results. The take away from this is deep section wheels are faster (no real shock) but by 1 second in a scenario like this with one data point. I have 88mm wheels which I'm sure make some difference I'll never notice, but they look awesome.
why aren't you in the drops in the RB?
What about expensive aero bike vs intermediate tt bike
you see it at GMSR in america road bike with TT wheels
@GCN Tech I’ve been riding YOELEOSPORTS SAT 88 MM Wheels on my Road bike for 5 years now in fact these wheels are so amazingly fast I bought an extra pair. Fast forward 5 years, I just purchased my Brand New Cannondale Synapse 2021 & I’ve just purchased a 3rd pair of Yoeleo SAT 88 MM Disc wheels. These wheels are 88 mm height / 25 mm width and are U shaped instead of the traditional V shaped wheels which allows air to flow over the wheel. Once up to speed these wheels go & I can stay consistent on climbs with my comrades too📌
Ive put aero rims on my road bike, and it made a world of difference, i used the super team brand full disk in the back, and 55mm front. Never liked the 80mm rim for the front, not very good with cross winds. A few seconds of time is the difference between kom, or not.
Depends on the bike, I ride my 88mm front wheel on a custom fork with 28mm rake and it's barely noticeable in crosswinds.
@@galenkehler ive got a winged aero foil fork, so its really thin, but it has around a 4 inch depth to it. And compared to a 33mm front rim, to an 80mm rim, there is alot of difference. Especially when you're going down a -10° gradient doing around 45 to 50mph. Yeah ive had the wind completely knock my front rim out from under me, and go sliding down the road. But then again, where i live, its always windy during the day.
@@steve.o33 none of that really matters, it's all about the geometry. Put a lower rake fork and steeper the head angle and you'll be amazed. Like I said, I'm using a custom 28mm fork which really helps to balance the forces. 28mm moves the axle about 15-17mm closer to the steering axis, which is a dramatic change.
It also adds a lot of trail, on my 74⁰ head angle that's almost 70mm of trail, which also hugely stabilizes the bike.
@@galenkehler yeah it does matter, you go put a full disk rim on the front, and tell me how stable that is. I have the same exact set up, except i dont have a regular fork, i have an aero foil. Take a prop plane blade, and put a hole through the top of the blade, and you have my fork. Its 101mm wide. Thats what you're not getting i guess. Cause offset just means turning radius dude, closer offset, sharper turn radius, wider offset, longer turn radius. You go down a -15° gradient hill with a track bike, and watch how fast you wreck.
@@steve.o33 here's a helpful exercise you can check your bike so you can try and understand:
Take a straightedge and hold it up next to your bike, in line with the steering axis.
Now stand back and look at how much of your fork and wheel are in front of the axis and how much is behind.
While this is a gross simplification, it highlights what will happen when you get his by a crosswind, or localized instability in the air. All that extra surface area in front has to be countered by your own steering input.
Putting a lower rake fork moves surface area from the front to the back, helping the overall balance.
How do you cycle on wet roads??? I am always scared cycling on my road bike on rainy days because of less traction
You let some air out your tyres and say a prayer
@@Wabeery Yeah now I get it. You remove some air and the tire becomes some what flat and there will be more surface area. Thank you
@@Wabeery that's a lie, you need 2.5 payers, and learned braking skills
This is my first road czcams.com/users/postUgkxMesz3KOGEmwmvyKQfLfrRSUXLFzfVHZA and I have taken it out a handful of times and so far it is exceeding all of my expectations. I didn’t want to break the bank on a first bike and the herd is a great option for getting a fast bike with reliable components. I plan on riding this bike for many years to come. Thank you Sava!
Judging from the way the branches are blowing around the disk is going to be fun...
Disc is fine in the wind
Is 1km per hour a lot?
I bet the most aero bike is the one with Ollie on it XD.
I love the deep aero rims on my road bikes (77 & 88mm). I definitely think it makes it faster, but I don’t have a full disc rear.
I wonder in the same test what the difference between bikes is if you road in the drops instead of hoods.
How about calculating km/h saved per dollar of wheel cost. :)
Some people in a rush going straight to the results like me ? Turns a 9:15m video into a 30s one :)
Dear Dr Bridgewood, please correct those horrible "kilometers an hour" and "KMH" for proper SI units Kilometer per hour and the associated abbreviations km/h or kph or km/hr. Scientific regards
When you said 7:10 time vs. the time with road bike wheels I was following. As soon as the road bike times were given by Oly you guys lost me.
If he took a more aero position on the road bike with TT wheels it would have been much closer to the TT bike on road wheels.
Shit! How mush cooler Ollies Pinarello is with the time trail wheels!
Could you please repeat the test with the eurobike. It's kinda ridiculous to call the Pinarello F "just a normal road bike"... stick to something at 2000 pounds, euros, dollars max... ;)
Love how the presenters mix Km and Miles. 1.4 Km circuit with 40 mph winds??