Originally written in German. Translated to English by AI — please excuse any awkward phrasing.
Early this year I got a new wheelset from Zipp — the Firecrest 808 Carbon Clincher. The main reason was that I wanted to go back to clincher tires. OK, aerodynamics also played a significant role in choosing exactly this model.
What’s typical for the Firecrest profile from Zipp is the width of the rim — at 27mm it’s considerably wider than other rims on the market. And that was ultimately my problem, and also the reason I hadn’t mounted them yet, let alone test-ridden them.
Today I spent a full 3 hours swapping 4 brake pads on my time trial bike. The front brake was particularly problematic — I had to remove all the spacers and washers, file down the brake shoes and bolts a bit, and because that still wasn’t enough, also file down/cut away part of the rubber from the brand new brake pads:
That hurt my soul, but there was no other way to get the front wheel into the fork. The rear brake was thankfully much less of a problem — that one worked without any rubber-grinding.
Here’s what the time trial bike looks like now with race wheels:
The bottle cage behind the saddle will come off before the Challenge Kraichgau, which should make the whole thing look a bit more streamlined.
And then I’m really, really looking forward to the very first ride on them — hopefully it rides as good as it looks.