Flo Cycling Wheels (Page 12)

I had been thinking I would want a 60 front/90 rear combo. Now I'm wondering is there a reason to go with the 90 over the 60 (other than the "looks cool" factor)?

Any idea what the weight difference might be on the disc vs the 60 or 90?

Our FLO DISC is a lenticular shaped wheel.  The curved section of our FLO DISC is based off of the FLO 90 profile.  This means if you put a wheel cover on our FLO 90, I would assume you would get nearly the same aero advantage as a FLO DISC.  That would be one reason to choose the 90 over the 60 as a rear wheel.  Weight wise our current estimates are...

FLO 60 Rear: 1085 grams

FLO 90 Rear: 1165 grams

FLO DISC: 1400 grams

I'll also mention that both the 60 and 90 are very aero wheels.  They is only a NDRV difference of 3 grams of drag.  That is really small when you think about it.

I think either wheel would be a great choice.

Thanks for the support.  We are planning a trip to China in June and hope to open the pre-order shortly after our return.  We are down to the final details.  It feels like we haven't come up for air in about a month.  It's been very busy!

Take care,

Thank you for the kind words.  I am happy that you like what you are seeing.  We are currently coordinating 5 factories and a trip to China.  It's easier said than done   We'll be opening the pre-order as soon as possible. 

Thanks again for the support and patience,

Chris,

Just a question, why the decision to mfg the wheels in China, please don't say cost as there are thousands of well equiped machine shops & composite shops in the USA that are dying !!

Our wheels were tested by themselves only.  The introduction of a frame, rider, water bottles, components, etc will change the results.  We only tested the wheels simply because there are too many different options to test when introducing other factors.  A P3 frame will behave differently than a Felt B2, or a Cannondale Slice.  A size 54 will behave differently than the same frame in a size 56.  This becomes a logistical nightmare.  I think you'll see even when looking at the aero results of other wheels, that the industry standard is to test only the wheel.  

I hope that makes sense,

Cost is the reason.  It is also the reason that a large majority of other cycling companies use overseas manufacturing.  I'm sorry if this upsets you but after nearly 2 years of searching for the best prices to keep our costs low, the simple truth is that America does not have the most competitive manufacturing costs.  Would we like our wheels to be 100% American made?  Of course, but our goal of manufacturing "affordable" aerodynamic race wheels would become manufacturing aerodynamic race wheels. As a side note, we are using 6 factories in total, some of which are in America. 

I hope you understand,

It does make sense.  Although it does seem to be industry standard, my question was more of a "where do you go from here?" kind of question.  I agree that different frames create different flow (no pun intended) characteristics, but eventually people will start making wheels to match frames, don't you think?  I would be surprised if the next step wasn't to introduce all of those factors and try to make wheel options that would work for them.  Maybe plans for the future for you guys??

I would imagine that you could makes wheels to fit certain bikes.  For FLO in the near future that will not be one of our plans.  There are many reasons, but here are few of the main reasons.  The cost involved to create a custom fairing shape from scratch (design, CFD, molds, wind tunnel testing, prototypes, redesign etc) is very expensive.  Creating a special fairing for every unique frame and each size of that unique frame would cost a fortune.  We simply don't have that kind of money.  Even if you did create unique wheels for every frame on the market I'm not sure you'd ever sell enough of each wheel to make it worth your while.  On top of that, stocking all of these unique wheels would be very very difficult.  How many size 52 Kestral Airfoil wheels will we sell?  How many size 54 Felt DA 60's, 90's, and DISCs will we sell?  That's almost impossible to say.  I think we'd be out of business in a hurry simply due to cost if we took that approach.  

Take care,

Yeah.  That's an interesting idea.  You certainly shouldn't do it, but I can imagine a bike manufacturer who already designs the frame around an integrated aerobar could also design it around an 'integrated' wheelset.  Then they simply spec their bikes with that wheelset and users would know that the combination of the best they can get.

They would want to do it around a fixed wheelsize of course (700c).  Because if they started designing around custom wheel sizes then they have to have tires and tubes and interchangeability....so there would be one wheelset across their frame sizes.

If this happens it's up to the bike manufacturers, not the wheel guys.

Our original thought was to use plastic in order to keep costs down.  After researching it just didn't work out cost wise.  Carbon is so popular it was actually more beneficial to go with Carbon.  Besides... who wants plastic wheels anyway

Good question though.  All the best,

Very true...I'm happy with my P2 C, not sure I would have pulled the trigger on a P2 P.

I just spent a few minutes looking over the Flo blog and have a couple quick questions.

Have you guys been out riding the prototypes? I know you've done a bunch of CFD and tunnel testing, but I'm curious as to what kind of reliability/lifecycle testing you have been doing?

Also, I haven't seen it anywhere yet (maybe I just didn't look hard enough), but what hubs will be on the wheels? Flo designed hubs? or another manufacturer?

Thanks! Looking forward to info on the group buy!