Wheel (Disc) Covers - Anyone Tried?

[Rolling Along]

I noticed on Strava that Matthew Lefthand used an EZ Disc Cover for his rear wheel. Has anyone tried one on their V20 or V20c? How much difference did it seem to make?

 

[Andrew Wilson]

When I was training for the Sr Games I put a rear wheel cover on from AeroDisk. I had a power meter at the time and did several test runs on a 10 mile flat loop that I had set up. I saw no speed increase nor reduction in power required to maintain a set speed. But it looked cool

 

[Mathew Fy]

You could make your own:

Rojoracing Style DIY Carbon Wheel Covers

Ok so this is happening today and I'll taking lots of pictures as I go along so maybe I'll actually post a DIY thread here for everyone to learn. This is going on the drive wheel of my Enve for use on the rear of the Trek but the process is the same no matter what wheel you want to make covers...

forum.cruzbike.com

Cruzbike did some wind tunnel testing that included comparing wheels:

Cruzbike at the A2 Wind Tunnel

February 6, 2017/ Jim Parker After ten years of making bicycles, we decided to test our fastest model, the Cruzbike V20 performance recumbent bike, in a high-tech wind tunnel in one of the USA’s motorsport hubs, Charlotte, North Carolina. Cruzbike designer Jacob Bouchard flew in from Brooklyn...

cruzbike.com

I think @LarryOz has done some studies showing some improvement at speed but you can get pushed around with side winds.

 

[Frito Bandito]

Yes, they do look cool. I saw a slight increase in speed on a home made Oracover (heat shrink) but apparently they help on zero or low wind days, or when the wind is either a head wind or tail wind. When the wind comes from the side disc wheels do affect handling so you spend some effort fighting it which slows you down the harder it blows. What I noticed on windy days when I was trying to go as fast as possible was that the wind would push me off my intended track (shortest distance between two points) which I think also increased rolling resistance, but also 2 other things. One of those was increasing the total distance covered because I was weaving all over the place, but the other was that I would let up on the power ever so slightly while fighting the wind. So, how much difference a disc wheel (or dual discs) helps depends a lot on the wind during that ride. I don't think it is 1mph but in some cases maybe so. On windy days a dual disc almost knocked me off my bike at least 2 times that I can remember.