To start, Mad Fiber claims that they're the second coming of the sweet baby Jesus for road wheels. Their philosophy it to take all of the individual parts of the wheel (rim, spokes, nipples) and just make everything one part. The cool part is that they mold everything together, and tension is applied by pulling the spokes away from the center of the hub until they're in tension. Ideally, they will never go out of true, and you never have to true them, partly because you can't.
The demo pair are clinchers which Mad Fiber claims to weigh 1,300g. They feel much lighter than that, but I haven't weighed them yet. Here's what I do know, my bike weighs 15.4lbs in its current state. By just swapping wheels the bike dropped down to 14.3lbs. That means that my CX wheelset is over 1,853g and are just fucking cows. In case you're wondering, a 14lb bike is startlingly light. I almost hit myself in the face with my saddle when I went to hang it up.
I've know about Mad Fiber wheels for a few months now, and I saw a pair when I was out with Ted on a bike shop tour of Portland, and I just thought they were ugly. I still think they are, but they look better on a bike. They're also unacceptably noisy in my opinion. You get a bit of the cool *whoosh* noise, but most of the time it sounds like the carbon is about thirty seconds away from just exploding, or the rattle from the valve hitting the rim is driving you bonkers. Even the hub makes too much noise, no one behind me could hear anything I was saying, or anything anyone near me was saying. They're also not Kings, so I don't like the way they feel because I'm spoiled. That's not a knock on Mad Fiber, I just really like how Kings engage.
At 60mm deep in the front, and 66mm in the rear, they are a bit twitchy for no reason. Their website claims they're "so aerodynamically slick" blah, blah, blah, but they're just a deep V and aerodynamically aren't anywhere near companies like HED, Zipp or Enve. They are more Aero than a normal alloy rim, but they don't seem to have any attention paid to crosswind stability. It, thankfully, wasn't windy tonight, but my front wheel would still jerk to the side from time to time. There's additional force required to turn the wheel too, but it isn't any different than any other aero wheelset.
The wheelset comes with light weight ti skewers, cork brake pads, a spacer for cassettes, and a big ol' bag for storing them. I needed the spacer for my cassette, and swapping the pads takes two minutes. I was impressed with the braking in the dry. It was about 90% of the Swiss Stop green pads that come with SRAM brakes and alloy rims, in the dry. Isaac rode them yesterday in was was left of hurricane Isaac and they were abysmal. Again, not any different than any other carbon wheelset with cork pads in the rain, just not as good as braking with alloy rims.
My real question with carbon wheelsets is "are they worth it?" Well, the clincher Mad Fiber wheels weigh 100g less than a set of Chris King R45s/Stan's Alpha 340 wheelset for $1,900 more. The tubulars cost the same amount as the clinchers, which is nice, and weigh a claimed 1,085g for the pair. For the same amount of money you can have a set of Enve SES 6.7 built with King R45s that will weigh a little more, but are much faster. However, another very cool thing about the Mad Fibers is that they have no rider weight limit and a 4 year warranty with crash replacement plan.
So, are they worth it? If you're looking for a unique looking wheelset that is faster aerodynamically than your current box rim alloy wheelset, and money is no issue, you race and are a bit of a fatty, then yes. Absolutely. If you have to have the fastest wheelset on the market, I would look some place else. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the wheelset, but it just made me want to build up a set of Enve SES 3.4s with King R45 hubs even more.
1 comment:
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