New Wheels (for the dry days when they come)

If the wheels are going to be for general riding duties, I find the deep section of aero wheels tends to make them a real handful on breezy days.

Side winds can have you really hanging on and concentrating on just keeping a line, so the benefits of the aero section can also be a real drawback.

I am a fan of Mavic SL's (the ES replacement), my set are okay as far as aero dynamics go, the spokes are good, but the rim is pretty square so overall they are just okay in that respect. They are light enough to be a decent wheel on climbs, but stiff enough to corner and sprint well and extremely durable so that you can happily use them everyday and not have to worry about them going out of true. They also perform well on windy days, and don't drag you all over the place.

But then I really liked my R-Sys wheels despite what people seemed to say about them, that was until they morphed into a pair of Askium's! Roll on March 31st....

Apologies for butting in, but I have this conundrum too. I have a pair of robust and faithful open pros on ultegra, but I felt last year in the local road race league that something with a degree of aero-ness about them would have really helped. Plus, this year I'm doing the etape - and I think I'll need all the help I can get there

I think clincher is gonna have to be the way to go, but I can't decide if it is worth spanking cash on something 'aero' like the Reynolds Attack, or the Easton EC70s, or even the DA 7850's, or try to build my own up. I can build wheels pretty well, though I've pretty much only ever built 3x, my open pros are 36 spoke 3 cross (bombproof!), so if I got a nice rim and laced a pair up radial/half radial with low spoke count, bladed spokes, would they be comparable? Can you get 'aero' rims on their tod? I don't mind a bit of a fiddle.

Looked late September just after price increase to £550, Decided to wait until March as I wouldn't use them before then. TBH at £700 not sure I want to pay that much as I don't believe I am good enough. They were top of my list though. (Review on Bike Radar if you are interested)

I was having these same thoughts recently and was close to buying these:

http://www.hedwheels.com/productlist.kmod?ProductTypeId=1&contentid=18&c...

Just spotted that a year ago they were £500 and now £699 though.

I guess it depends what you're going to be doing with those wheels. Are you going to be racking up the sportive/training miles or d'you think they'll get a bit less time outside?

I've hand built wheels too – it's not the black art everyone seems to think it is – but generally speaking you won't save much money. you will get a nice, unique wheelset though. Chris Kings are super-nice, the lightweight Hope hubs build into excellent road wheels too, though the freewheel is a bit noisy.

If you're building your own, don't use Aluminium nippes. They round off too easily and save about 2g for a wheel, just not worth it. Good spokes *really* make a difference to the feel, my favourites are Sapim's CX-Ray though they ain't cheap.

If you've got £500-600 to spend then you're spoilt for choice, again it depends on both the riding you'll be doing and your own weight. Some are lighter, some are stiffer. I'm the wrong side of 100kg so I tend to favour stiff over light, though a good compromise is best. We tested Shimano's RS80 which I really rate as an all-round wheel, although it's Shimano/SRAM only. Then there's Fulcrum Racing 1s which are super stiff and better for racier riding, as well as your Campys and Mavics which are all good performers.