Zipp’s Firecrest gets better – and much cheaper

Significant hub upgrade and another price drop for all-carbon wheelsets

Zipp 202 Firecrest clincher wheels are now £1680/$2100 a pair

Courtesy – Zipp

Warren Rossiter

Published: August 26, 2015 at 6:00 am
Zipp 202 Firecrest clincher wheels are now £1680/$2100 a pair - Courtesy – Zipp
The 202 is Zipp's aero climbing wheel –  these clinchers tip the scales at 1450g a pair - Courtesy – Zipp
The 202 tubular is the lightest wheelset in the Zipp range at 1180g a pair - Courtesy – Zipp
The 303 Firecrest is a 45mm deep 'all-rounder' wheelset priced at £1680/$2100 - Courtesy – Zipp
The 303 Clincher is availble with both all-black or white graphics (as shown here) - Courtesy – Zipp
The 303 Firecrest is Zipp's all-rounder and, the company claims, a useable everyday wheelset - Courtesy – Zipp
The 58mm deep and 26.5mm wide 404 is one of the fastest road wheels around - Courtesy – Zipp
The 404 clinchers' price has been reduced down to £1680/$2100 a pair - Courtesy – Zipp
The tubular version of the 404 weighs 1505g a pair - Courtesy – Zipp
808s are super deep at 82mm and seriously wide at 27.5mm, the clinchers are priced at £1920/$2400 - Courtesy – Zipp
The 808 clinchers weigh in at 1885g a pair… - Courtesy – Zipp
…and are available in both white-on-black or black-on-black - Courtesy – Zipp
The tubular 808 meanwhile weighs 185g less at 1700g a pair - Courtesy – Zipp
The tubular wheelset is cheaper too at £1840/$2300 - Courtesy – Zipp
The 28mm wide Tangente Course tyre is made around a 120tpi casing - Courtesy – Zipp
Both the 28 and 30mm wide Course models feature puncture protection - Courtesy – Zipp
All of the new wider Tangente tyres feature this water siping tread - Courtesy – Zipp
The Speed version of the 28mm Tangente uses a higher thread count casing and significantly softer rubber too - Courtesy – Zipp

Zipp's Firecrest wheel line (202, 303, 404, and 808) pioneered wider rim design along with the blunted aero shape that rivals have sought to emulate for its aerodynamic stability.

When the Indianapolis-designed-and-built wheelsets debuted, they genuinely raised the bar for performance carbon road wheels. While the Firecrest line is no longer the pinnacle of Zipp’s designs (that’s reserved for the 404 Firestrike, which is wider), it’s still the series that new wheel designs are benchmarked against.

Related: Check out more news from Eurobike at our Eurobike homepage

For 2016 the Firecrest line for caliper brakes has been revamped, following on from the introduction of the new disc hub earlier in 2015. The new 77/177 hub pairing features revised flange geometry and spoke hole attachment. This has optimised the torsional and lateral stiffness of the Sapim CX-Sprint spokes found throughout the range (bar the lightweight 202 Tubular which comes with lighter CX-Rays).

The 202 tubular is the lightest wheelset in the zipp range at 1180g a pair:

The 202 tubular is the lightest wheelset in the Zipp range at 1180g a pair

The hub body is also reshaped with much more alloy cut away by CNC tooling – and plenty of polished alloy on show. The hubs have oversized 17mm axles to increase stiffness, plus an all-new quick release design to go with them. The bearing fitments have been reworked so they require no adjustment whatsoever, addressing a criticism levelled at the original Firecrest hubs.

The new 177-rear hub is also compatible with SRAM’s XD driver body (with no need to re-dish the wheel) so if you wanted to go over to a 1x drivetrain with a wide cassette of up to 10-42t you can do so with the 2016 wheelsets.

The biggest improvement, however, isn’t in materials or design but in the retail price. When Firecrest first launched the wheels retailed at nigh on £2500; we’ve seen a significant price drop since then to £2150, but the new revised Firecrest wheels all retail for less than £2000/$2500.

All the new wheels will be available in September 2015 – see below for full price listing and wheel specs.

Zipp has also added to its Tangente tyre line with new 28mm and 30mm rubber. They’re available in Course spec in both sizes, which is a 120tpi nylon casing with a protective central strip and a water siping tread pattern.

The 28mm wide tangente course tyre is made around a 120tpi casing:

The 28mm wide Tangente Course is made around a 120tpi casing

The 70a durometer rated rubber has been tested to offer 33.15 watts of resistance at 40kph (using a Zipp Butyl inner tube). The 28 tips the scales at 260g with the 30 at 306g. The 28mm model is also available in a Speed version with a 220tpi casing in softer 60a durometer rubber, tested with a much lower rolling resistance of 21.97 watts at 40kph. The Speed version tips the scales at 216g. No price information on the tyres is available yet.

Zipp Firecrest 2016 wheelset specs

Array

Warren Rossiter

Senior technical editor

Warren Rossiter is BikeRadar and Cycling Plus magazine’s senior technical editor for road and gravel. Having been testing bikes for more than 20 years, Warren has an encyclopedic knowledge of road cycling and has been the mastermind behind our Road Bike of the Year test for more than a decade. He’s also a regular presenter on the BikeRadar Podcast and on BikeRadar’s YouTube channel. In his time as a cycling journalist, Warren has written for Mountain Biking UK, What Mountain Bike, Urban Cyclist, Procycling, Cyclingnews, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike and T3. Over the years, Warren has written about thousands of bikes and tested more than 2,500 – from budget road bikes to five-figure superbikes. He has covered all the major innovations in cycling this century, and reported from launches, trade shows and industry events in Europe, Asia, Australia, North American and Africa. While Warren loves fast road bikes and the latest gravel bikes, he also believes electric bikes are the future of transport. You’ll regularly find him commuting on an ebike and he longs for the day when everyone else follows suit. You will find snaps of Warren’s daily rides on the Instagram account of our sister publication, Cycling Plus (@cyclingplus).
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