Hour record equipment: wheels/bearings and tires

This is some important stuff, a real make or break equipment area for potential hour record guys/gals. I am embarrassed to admit how many hours of my life I burned on researching bearing efficiencies and tires rolling resistance (Crr), though not quite as much as I burned on drive train efficiency!

Wheels were actually the easiest choice, as I already had a set of FFWD disk wheels, this made the choice pretty easy. In reality there are very few choices in wheels for something like this, comes down to a Mavic setup (we are talking 7-8 grand, rules them out), a Zipp setup or an FFWD setup. The Zipp’s are lighter, but flat. The FFWD’s are lenticular but sort of heavy. Lenticular is “supposed” to be faster… I have not tested them head on, so I can’t make that call. Some hour record attempts have been made with wheels that have weight added to them, trying to achieve a sort of flywheel affect and stabilize the speed/inertia. SO, that is the tactic I was going to use a heavier wheel (made it easier as I already owned them as well).  Ondrej Sosenka is the current athletes world hour record holder (though he tested positive for EPO shortly afterwards at the Tour of Poland), he rode a rear wheel that weighed 10 pounds.  The topper is that the FFWD wheels feel great, I mean they carry speed and track good, a pleasure to ride.  The lenticular wheels “should” track a bit straighter as well, thus potentially being easier to control in the latter stages of an hour.

Bearings were an easy choice, the top rated ones in the world are made in Denmark by Ceramic Speed. My team mate Jon Davy owns the US distributorship for FFWD wheels and recently started bringing in Ceramic Speed, done.  Jon, hook up a brother up!  I have never felt cartridge bearings that would just spin for ever right in your hand, of course they offer a TT/Indoor oil that we lubed them with. MSRP is about 416 bucks on these babies, wow.

Tires… This took some real research! Crr is determined by weight/thread contact and contact patch (patch is also determined by the PSI in the tire). Basically a lighter tire with a high thread count will flex around miniature flaws in the surface that you are rolling over, these flaws potentially cause resistance to your forward motion. Higher thread count is more supple, thus absorbing these small flaws in the surface without slowing your velocity.  Amazingly a poor glue job can also cause a loss in Crr, you can read more if you feel the need.  Being that I am riding inside, I decided I wanted the lightest, narrowest and highest thread count tire I could get (and afford), that would not flat.

I narrowed my search down to 3 tires: Dugast, Vittoria Pista Evo CS or Tufo Elite 110’s.

The Dugasts are handmade with latex tread, the tread is only 15% the thickness of a normal tread and the sidewalls are un-protected.  Man these things look like they are made out of toilet paper with a bit of surgical tubing glued on one side.  They are super light and super hand/home made looking.

I have ridden the Vittorias for a few years, they ride great and feel fast.  I have flatted a few, for no apparent reason, but overall they are real nice.  They are also the standard for the world cup and elite level track guys for almost every event.

The Tufo’s come in an 18mm width, weight 110 grams, have a thread count of 320 and hold 220 PSI.

I ended up going with the Tufo’s for many reasons.  First they were the narrowest and held the most air as well as had the highest thread count – this all should equate to the fastest tire. These tires also appear to be pretty rugged, even though they are only 110 grams – last thing I need is a flat tire. The real topper was that my buddy KK used a pair to set 2 world hour records, he literally used a single pair for both the 50-54 and the 55-59 record, so they were apparently pretty durable and proven in the hour record arena.  KK  recommended them, done deal.  The real kicker was that he had a spare set and needed help with a website, quick trade and I had some real nice tires.

I must say that these tires all glued up (super solid glue job of course) on the  FFWD wheels with the Ceramic Speed bearings feels great, going from my training wheels to these feels like another world.

If you are interested in some FFWD wheels check out ffwd-usa.com use coupon code FAST20 to get 20% off!