Shimano RS80 Wheels

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of having to employ special brake blocks usually associated with carbon wheels. A lot of riders now spend time swapping brake blocks over from carbon race wheels to alloy training wheels. With do-it-all wheels like these, life will be a bit easier and all you need to worry about is tyre wear. The rim is just under 21mm wide and has a handy rim wear indicator to give you warning of when you need to think replacement and rebuild. Tyres went on and came off the rims easily, so changing a puncture shouldn’t be an issue.

Extending from the red alloy nipples at the rim are 16 stiff stainless steel, butted and bladed spokes up front, with just 20 at the rear. Internally the hubs are fairly old school in design, with nine of Shimano’s proven steel ball bearings mated to polished races, a steel front axle and a 7075 alloy rear axle, and double contact sealing to keep everything clean. Externally the hubs are very modern, with attractive clean lines and the usual attractive blue alloy Ultegra finish. Strangely when they turned up they were done up a bit tight, but loosening off the cones produced one of the smoothest pair of hubs I have ever encountered.

Weight wise they are competitive at around 1500g for the pair. Ours actually weighed near enough 1500g bang on without skewers though other reports seem to indicate anywhere from 1480 to 1520g.

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So how do they perform out on the road? Well we swapped out wheels costing twice the price for these mid-level hoops and despite not expecting that much, the performance was immediately fantastic. The first thing to note is that they are quick to get up to speed, accelerating away from lights and cresting hills with ease. Light rims like these, when combined with the right tyres, encourage you to spin faster and jump around more in a race or when training. This marks them down firmly as a great road race and an outstanding crit wheel.

They are also pleasantly stiff with no trouble with rubbing against the brake blocks. However, whilst they are stiff laterally they are also stiff vertically so a lot of the road buzz comes back at you and that is the difference between these wheels and the likes of the Ksyrium or the Remerx Alcyon we previewed recently. The ride is much busier with these wheels, less of the road undulations are absorbed by the wheels and the springier nature so the steel spokes means that everything moves about a bit more.

Aluminium spokes absorb much more of the road’s transmitted energy and therefore return less of that energy to the rider, which can lead to claims of a dead, wooden ride, just as many people used to say about aluminium frames. Importantly though this can help leave you much fresher at the end

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Robust reinforcement around the spoke eyelets

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