I could not justify spending $1500+ on a aero disc wheel, so I went with a more budget friendly alternative from the company EZGains. It is essentially a disc cover which can be attached to your existing wheel set with nearly identical benefits as a traditional disc wheel.
Below are some interesting statistics regarding disc wheels and these types of aero gains: (From EZGains website)
Tests 31st January 2023 using rim tape and a rider holding the exact position within the green lines set out from base ride.
The idea was to validate that putting one of these covers on your wheel actually makes you faster. Spoiler – it does! We had an array of quality carbon wheels of different depths with EZDisc covers for each, one aluminium box rimmed training wheel, one relatively cheap disc wheel and one relatively expensive disc wheel to play with. The test itself was with the wheels on my TT bike, with the wheels spinning, without a rider. Why? The rider adds far more drag than a wheel so unintentional movements can mask the differences the wheels make. We tested with wind speeds of 30, 40 and 50kmph, with wind angles of -15 degrees through to 15 degrees. The results were unequivocal! This graph shows lines, one per wheel, for the aerodynamic drag (the “CDA“), including the bike, against the wind angle (the “yaw”). It’s averaged across the wind speeds. The lower the CDA, the better. As you’d expect the training wheel performed worst (the top line in dark grey).Then there is a group of all the carbon wheels. Surprisingly the depths from 38 to 88 all performed similarly, with the deeper rims just outperforming the shallower ones at higher yaws. Then there is a grouping containing the real disc wheels and the disc wheels with covers. There’s very little difference between these. These distinct groupings show the disc covers improving the aerodynamics of the wheels up to the same performance as normal disc wheels! Bearing in mind these are a fraction of the cost, this is a pretty big finding! What do those figures mean in terms of racing? Plugging the differences between the wheels with and without the disc into a calculator or directly using the formula you can work it out the saving.
