A Bicycle Wheel Comparison

Pinarello make some of the most beautiful looking and rideable bikes on the market at the moment. One lucky reader; Brian Ibrahim is buying a Pinarello Dogma 60.1 and is deciding which wheels he should go for. The choice isn’t so difficult, so here goes.

Question:
purchasing my new 60.1 Dogma and want to know if I should choose the Most lightweight clincher wheels or Zipp 303 or????

Hi Brian.

The Pinarello Dogma 60.1 must be one of the best bikes around and I must admit it’s a bike I would be very proud to own. The wheels on a bike like this are very important and the choice between these two sets is fairly easy as one set of wheels are the best you can get!

The MOST Lightweight wheel set is made by “Lightweight” and they are probably the best you can get, the rims are completely carbon, so you will need the carbon brake blocks, but if you are buying the complete bike then it should come with them fitted. You don’t say which set you are looking at they do deep and low profile rims and both wheel sets have carbon hubs and as the name suggests they are lightweight.

The Zipp 303’s are a great pair of carbon wheels, they have an alloy braking surface built onto the carbon 44mm rim, this means you don’t have to change your brake blocks for carbon specific blocks. The front wheel has 18 spokes and the rear has 24, so they are built for lightness and they do weigh in at 1613 grams. The rims are not too deep so they will be fairly stable in a cross wind. Very nice wheels.

There are many other wheels, Shimano, Fulcrum, Campagnolo etc. etc. The Lightweight wheels are without doubt amongst the best. Personally I would go for the low profile rim version because it has more uses in all different conditions. The deep section rims are very strong and rigid, but not so good in cross winds. The deep section rims will give a very responsive ride as they use very short spokes and have less “give” in them which can be quite harsh. Of course if you want fast wheels for time trials and/or triathlon racing then these are the wheels to go for.

Lightweight wheels used to be like gold dust as there was only a few pair made a year and were quite exclusive, these days the production is much higher and there are more available, the MOST versions are made for just for Pinarello.

Nice bike, Brian.