Hoi ,
Ik kan het toch niet nalaten om een deel van een test gedaan door
Cyclingnews.com jullie te laten lezen !
Het gaat hier om de fabels,of de 404 wel of niet méér breken dan andere wielen.
Ik hoop dat jullie een beetje engels kunnen lezen.
Wear
I put a couple of thousand kilometres on the wheels during the test, and they held up just fine, as one would hope. But, as mentioned above, I was wary of taking them on too many cobbled roads. There's something about carbon and cobbles that makes me uneasy. I did find out from Team CSC, who were using the 404s and 303s, that they broke something like 20 rims during the spring classics, including eight in the Tour of Flanders alone. I contacted Zipp about this, and they confirmed the breakage rate, but also put it into perspective.
Pro riders are incredibly hard on equipment, far more than an amateur hack like me, and CSC actually broke half as many rims as normal during their spring campaign. This is not only due to the faster speeds, rougher roads and more stressful conditions in most pro races, but also the number of crashes. Zipp's tech expert Josh Poertner explained that most of their wheel breakages were as a result of crashes, not failures. "In fact, the only catastrophic type failure we are aware of was a rim that had previously been damaged in an accident where the mechanics had filled the crack with a mixture of epoxy and carbon shavings," said Poertner. "This technique is somewhat common in minor frame repair which is where the mechanics learned it, but the result was a crack in the rim that continued to grow under the epoxy filler until the rim basically folded in that area."
Poertner added that because of the ProTour induced need to run an extra truck, the team was using wheels that were saved from the previous year, including some spring classics and Tour de France wheels that had done over 10,000 km of racing. "The data we have from the team shows that many of the problems we had this year were simply related to product that was worn out and meant to be retired, plus we have made three laminate/material changes in the last 16 months adding roughly 15 additional strength to the wheels, so there are other advantages to having new wheels than them just being new," he explained.
Unlike most other wheels ridden by pros, the Zipps ridden by CSC and Phonak are identical to those available to the general public, i.e. the pros don't get any extra laminates or materials, or special quality control. "We really feel that every product going out the door is a pro calibre product, so there is no need to discriminate between them," said Poertner.
How does all this scale for the average consumer? "As with any manufactured product, there will be some rims made with problems, but our yearly warranty rate combined with crash replacement (our low cost no-fault replacement program) runs at less than 1 percent of production," Poertner pointed out, explaining that if a design fault is found, it can be easily rectified within a couple of days.
The bottom line? If the wheels are abused or crashed, they will eventually break. But the same goes for any wheels, particularly carbon wheels. Zipp acknowledges this, but at the same time points out that their rate of failure is much lower than many of the other wheels used by professional teams, in particular.
Overall
Considering all the criteria for a perfect set of racing wheels, the Zipp 404s come very, very close to meeting them. They are very aerodynamic for a rim of this depth, quite light at under 1300 grams/pair, and comfortable to ride on. I found them to handle remarkably well in crosswinds as well, which I can't say for most deep-sectioned wheels I've tried. As for durability, I'd recommend using them for racing on smooth roads and to avoid crashing!
Om de volledige test eens na te lezen ga dan naar deze link:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/tech.php?id= ... s/zipp_404
Dus lijkt het mij niet zo verstandig om een product af te zeiken terwijl je niet voldoende geïnformeerd bent over de achtergronden.
Ciao.