Carbon Wheels
Compare, Find and Buy Carbon Wheels for your Cycling
Carbon Wheels for road, time trial, triathlon and track cycling
This site is designed to help you select, find and buy carbon wheels and wheelsets
We have also listed the top cycle shop stockists for each wheel
We have covered the main aspects of choosing an appropriate wheel for your racing and have listed summaries of the best selling carbon road wheels from the main manufacturers, including the main specifications for each wheel. You can also find many of the more specialised carbon wheels.
There is a large range now available and our pages includes full carbon and carbon / alloy composite wheels, tubular and clincher versions where available, together with the various rim profiles available for different cycling disciplines.
Looking for a particular brand ? - Use the left hand menu for lists & prices
Advantages of carbon wheels
The use of carbon fibre in wheels for competitive cycling has had an enormous impact as it has with other sports equipment. For cycle wheels there have been two main driving forces for its use.Firstly, carbon wheels can be made significantly lighter while having the same or higher strength and rigidity as alloys.
Secondly, carbon fibre can be used in different forms as weave and interconnecting longitudinal layers, giving a wide variety of end result shapes. This has and still is pushing the boundaries of aerodynamic performance for carbon bike wheels.
Carbon Tubular wheels
These are the most common type of carbon wheels as a result of the design being more straightforward to accommodate a tubular tyre than a beaded tyre. This is partly because the tyre rim does not have to act as an air seal or resist the high direct pressure and stresses exerted by a bead.This is an issue for carbon fibre, which is naturally resistant to longitudinal stress but less so for side stress; hence the risk of pinch flats and leaks has to be overcome for a clincher. On the other hand, carbon tubular wheels can safely have full carbon construction of rim and profile, leading to large reductions in wheelset weight over traditional alloy models.
Carbon Clincher wheels
You will find that there are quite a few of these are available using an alloy rim bonded to a carbon flange profile, which removes the problem of bead sealing and rim strength while benefiting from reduced weight.Increasingly there are also clinchers which use carbon for both the rim and flange. Many of the cycle wheel manufacturers include clincher versions of their wheel ranges. Initially, these were just available for higher profile wheels where the size of the rim and flange had sufficient strength to cope with a beaded tyre.
Recently even low-profile wheels have been introduced as the technical design of carbon clinchers has become more advanced.
Carbon Aero wheels
In events where consistent high speeds are common there has always been a demand for low drag wheels. The use of carbon fibre has enabled high-profile Aero wheels built with light weight and high rigidity.The flexibility in design that carbon gives has also allowed advances to be made in the shaping of the Aero wheels for maximum efficiency. Combined with wind tunnel testing, this is a constant area of cycle racing wheel development.
Braking with carbon wheels
This is one of the main problems that has been faced by designers. Metal is a good heat conductor, so a metal rim naturally dissipate heat quite readily; however carbon rim does not and this can potentially give poorer or erratic brake performance.Therefore new materials technology has to be used to produce braking surfaces that will provide consistent and smooth braking on carbon wheels. Currently the limitations of carbon in low-profile wheels are being removed by the use of high-tech developments and more models are becoming available each year.
