Quote from Kwijybow on Apr 30th, 2009, 9:33am:regarding crosswinds Rich Pinto says the Bacchettas do so well because the side pressure ends up acting on the bike closer to the rear wheel contact patch or something like that, and that it actually improves with a rear disc and normal front wheel. That and the superman position gives better leverage on the bars. I think I've paraphrased that correctly. My experience bears that out. I prefer not to have the deep dish front aero wheel on in the wind though.
Take Care,
Nelson.
I read that also and it makes sense with what I've observed. I ran a Jet60 on the front Corsa for about 9 months and there wasn't much of a difference compared to the stock rim in crosswinds but a big improvement in speed. Then I put a HED3 on the front (was running one on the rear) and while crosswinds are more of an issue, speeds are even greater and there have been a few times where the sail effect of the front HED3 was obvious. Heading up to Waco last week I was going uphill slightly when the access road curved around and my speed jumped up until the road straightened back up and I lost the wind thrust (from the crosswind), so the HED3 isn't coming off anytime soon if I have anything to say about it. Was pretty cool going uphill at 27mph against a crosswind on ~40 lbs of bike and gear and barely cranking. When I put the HED3 on the rear early last summer the bike really stabilized overall but I think that was mainly due to the wheel flexing less. It's an old HED3 so my next rear wheel might be a disc.
Quote from evblazer on Apr 30th, 2009, 12:09pm:With dual Ortlieb rear panniers it wanted to pickup the rear wheel and sometimes did.
Thanks for saying that. Almost every time I told someone that the wind lifted the rear wheel of my Corsa up off the ground when I had the coroplast panniers mounted I had the feeling they didn't believe me, though it was a little hard for me to believe since I was packing about 25 lbs of gear on the rear of the Corsa when it happened both times. It was a weird effect as the bike didn't really go unstable. The rear end just up and moved over and I kicked out of the left cleat to stabilize, more out of instinct than need, I suspect.