2018 Zipp 303 NSW Carbon Front Road Wheel Clincher

The 303 nsw is no ‘race day only’ wheelset to be tucked away in a wheel bag until a race number is pinned to the rider’s jersey. It’s built to take the abuse of everyday training rides. Zipp has achieved this reliability at a lighter weight with a revised carbon fibre layup developed through testing on the famed cobbles of the arenberg forest with the world’s fastest riders.

• With the cognition™ hubset’s axial clutch™ technology, Zipp have reduced this drag by disengaging the ratchet mechanism when coasting. So you can approach corners at higher speeds, and ultimately, save time. A star-flanged straight-pull hubshell design on the rear hub distributes the load placed on the hub flange away from the bearings. They’ve also developed a unique scalloped edge hubshell design for our front hub. This scalloped design maintains the bearing bore diameter when high radial spoke tension is applied. That means you get bearings that quietly stay in place, roll faster, last longer, and provide a laterally stiffer hub.
• They’ve employed Zipp’s Impress™ graphics technology, which prints graphics directly on the wheel, to help allow the dimples to do what they were designed to do – control vortex shedding, the rate at which air sheds off the wheel. Managing this is crucial to stability. Like the 404 and 808 nsw, impress graphics give the 303 nsw a distinctive stealthy look while keeping the rims as light as possible.
• The new Sawtooth dimple design consists of 12 nodes that are precisely clocked to start aerodynamic shearing at a rate of 50hz at a rider speed of 20mph. Sawtooth accomplishes this by inducing small sheet vortices that shed at a low magnitude, but at a higher natural frequency, thus decreasing the laminar bubble effect on the aerodynamically shielded side of the rim’s profile to further reduce high yaw drag and improve crosswind stability. That crosswind stability imparts peace of mind in gusty wind conditions while saving watts that would have been expended while attempting to hold your line.
• When it comes to braking, “good for a carbon rim” wasn’t good enough for nsw. We wanted braking performance that was better than aluminium rims and any other carbon rim, and they’ve achieved that goal. The industry leading silicon carbide showstopper™ brake track delivers unmatched stopping power and modulation regardless of weather conditions or the length of the descent. With showstopper braking performance, you’ll need to find another excuse not to ride on rainy days.