Shimano Dura Ace C50 Clincher Wheel – Balancing exceptional quality and price

If you are looking for a new set of wheels for this upcoming triathlon season then take a minute to look at the latest Dura-Ace wheels from Shimano. We have been lucky enough to be riding on the new Shimano Dura Ace C50 WH 9000 clincher wheel set for just over two months now. These are exceptional wheels with many new features that make it hard to argue against them.

There are cycling and triathlon geeks who will narrow things down to the smallest differences but if you fit in to the  majority who don’t get in to the finer technical details of equipment and are looking for a high quality wheel that you can train and race on, then read on.

The new Dura Ace C50 comes in both a clincher and tubular models. With more and more people choosing to race on clinchers this new wheel set is going to appeal to many. We have been riding the clinchers. Normally we race on tubulars but have raced on these wheels and would happily choose them over our tubulars. They are incredibly responsive, have class leading hubs, new technology spoke weaving, new wider rim and more improvements that you can check out on Shimano’s website. Shimano have even designed the nipples to be hidden in the rims to add further to the aerodynamics (and look).

These wheels are also 11 speed compatible and come with and extra spacer to accommodate your current 10 speed cassette.

Shimano have gone with an aluminium braking surface on this wheel. To go to a full carbon clincher would mean a lot more engineering and a much steeper price. Why would you have full carbon? To save weight in this instance. But we are talking about 40grams here so we would rather save a considerable amount of money and not have a couple of ice creams leading in to a race. This means no changing brakes pads when you swap wheels.

This new range of Shimano aero wheels sees the company take a more serious approach to aerodynamics and the end result puts these wheels firmly up against the leading wheels on the market currently.

The speed that most age groupers ride at will not push these wheels to the limit. In most cases it is getting the balance between the best equipment possible at the best price possible. These new Shimano Dura-Ace wheels fall in to this category.

We have used these wheels in both training and race conditions and they have been brilliant. We raced the NSW Team TT Champs Challenge on them and ended up on top of the podium. Because of the wheels? Not sure but they helped!

All the technology aside the one thing we love the most about these wheels is riding them. They are sweet! They sound great and move so smoothly. Rough roads are smoother on these wheels than our other wheels and when we have to give them back it is going to be a sad day.

Price wise if you search for these wheel sets in Australia you can find them for just above AUD$2100 well below the RRP. This is a long term purchase that will give you a quality set of wheels.

Possibly one of the highlights of these wheels are the hubs. They are, as Dura-Ace hubs always are, class leading. They are easy to service, have no known issues and from all accounts bike mechanics say they are not causing any problems.

The new spoke finish makes the wheels look great.

These wheels are perfect as a ‘one solution’ wheel for anyone wanting a training and race combo wheel. The quality is impeccable and you should be hassle free for a long time.