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Speedplay or Empires? There's a watt or two to be had with the full aero Speedplay setup, but I can't SLX Empires being faster than ACC.
umop3pisdn-
The new Speedplay cleats I meant, over the old v1 and v2 versions.
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The last of our Xmas questions is about the aero properties of pedals. Tim Kingston asks:
"Pedals - noticeable aero difference between brands eg. Speedplay, Look aero, Time etc.?"
Unfortunately with the rider on board it can be very difficult to establish aerodynamic changes when pedals have different stack heights and amounts of float, both of which can affect your whole body aerodynamics as it changes the position of the rider. Generally we aim for a lower stack height, as this is not only biomechanically more efficient, but also moves the rider closer to the ground where the wind speed is zero, which is often more aerodynamic as well.
However, we recently did some CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) work in our Virtual Wind Tunnel on a new pedal system from Speedplay, the Zero Aero.
This new pedal system has a special cleat which integrates with the underside of the aero pedal to create a seamless join. We tested a Bont Vaypor+ shoe equipped with a Speedplay Zero pedal first, followed by a Speedplay Zero Aero pedal and cleat set.
This test was just on a static shoe (with no rider!) as you can see on the photos, but at 30mph the shoe with the Zero pedal/cleat was creating 5.2w of aerodynamic drag, and with the Zero Aero pedal/cleat 4w. With a moving pair of legs and feet in the real world we'd expect to see a range of around 1.5-2.5w with both pedals and cleats upgraded to this new aero system.
Ensuring that even your shoes and pedals are aerodynamic is important to making sure you go as fast as possible!
hippy
Are they going to be any faster aerodynamically than the old ones? Did I imagine Xav posting a pic of them in test a while back. Why do I think I may have posted it here myself? Hmm