Flo Wheelset - First Impressions

[Felt_Rider]

I received my order of Flo 60's a couple of days ago and added my first impressions of the wheels on a blog entry yesterday. This is not a review, but I thought I would add give those of you that have not yet heard of this fairly new business.

It will be a few weeks before I can actually get out and give them a try on the road. I ordered some Michelin Pro 4's 23mm yesterday from Probike Kit and that may take a few weeks to arrive. Plus I have a new (slightly used) Quarq to add to the TT bike before I get it ready for the first road trial.

I had a few reasons why I selected this particular wheel and some of that is noted on the blog entry. I was real close to going with a set of Boyd 58's with a powertap hub, but ended up going this route and switching to a crank based PM. The Quarq that I got will be interesting as well since the previous owner has 52/36 chainrings on a 110 BCD. That puts it just slightly between compact and full. I will be interested to see how that works out.

I posted some pictures and thoughts on the link below.
For some reason I am unable to attach a picture to this post at the moment.

http://thecyclingaddiction.blogspot.com/2012/10/flo-wheel-initial-thoughts.html

 

[Felt_Rider]

 

[alienator]

Unfortunately, Flo doesn't show any testing against other aero wheels, so claims of being among the fastest wheels don't really hold water. That's not to say they're not aero wheels or not good wheels, but I think if they want to make an impact on the market they're going to have to test against models from the big companies--at least Zipp and Edge--and publish the results. Have you weighed your wheel set? They certainly are nice looking wheels.

 

[Felt_Rider]

I have not weighed them. I had seen pictures posted from buyers on the first order for the weights and was content. The weight in picture was close to what is listed on Flo's website. I cannot remember what they were at the moment.

On the aero aspect I gave a link to their data on my blog, but it wasn't a selling point for me. What caught my attention was more to do with the positive comments from buyers using the wheels in time trials and triathlons.

The real test for me is when I get an true opportunity to get them a try on a particular course that I use to measure my performance, but that probably will not come until next spring. From this point forward I will probably be all confined in warmer cycling clothes and I don't perform as well.

I currently use a Kinlin 30mm rim wheelset with a powertap hub on the rear. To be honest I am not sure if it is going to be an improvement, but at least I will have less than $1K in the wheels as opposed to one of my friends that purchased a set of Zipp FC 404's last summer for over $2K. So for me it was looking for another wheelset to supplement training. To be honest these wheels are probably not much more expensive than what I spent to have my Kinlin wheels built a few years ago.

Having this wheelset allows me to start using my Kinlin PT wheel on the trainer with a cheaper tire. At the moment I have been avoiding the KK trainer mainly because I did not want to wear out an expensive tire prematurely. I have been using this wheelset on the e-Motion rollers, but it also has taken some life off an expensive tire. Most of my training is indoors because of a limited schedule.