Discus 45 | 32 LTD: WIDER, STRONGER, FASTER

The bike industry is great at optimizing and testing bikes and wheels with 21mm or 23mm tires. It creates impressive drag and weight numbers, but both suffer once you put realistic tires on.

We believe in RealFast, engineering and testing for the real world. 28-30mm tires are the smart choice for comfort and grip so the Discus 45 | 32 was engineered around those tire widths.

The chart shows the Discus 45 | 32 (red graph named C45 WIDE) is as fast as a deep rim (grey graph), using tires with the same measured, effective width. Note: due to the big inner width, a tire labeled “25mm" on the Discus 45 | 32 fits the same as a “28mm” tire on the deep rim. Same drag, comfort & grip, but of course the tire on the Discus 45 | 32 is lighter (50g for the pair).

The Discus 45 | 32 is the fastest wheel at this rim depth; in fact it tests as fast as other 60mm deep rims. So you have the advantages of a shallower rim, like ease of handling in crosswinds, and the speed of a deeper rim. The Discus 45 | 32 achieves this with its unique NoseTail design. By definition rim design is a compromise, because it whatever shape is aerodynamic on the front half doesn’t work so well 180 degrees later when it’s backwards.

The NoseTail shape developed by the legendary Dave Kennedy (an aerodynamics professional for over 50(!) years) and 3T’s Head of Design Gerard Vroomen actually sacrifices some performance on the front half of the wheel in favor of working better on the back half. Not only do the two effects cancel each other out, but the resulting shape also requires less rim depth and better guides the airflow from the rear of the front wheel onto the downtube.

If you want even more comfort on the road or plan to ride gravel, the Discus 45 | 32 has another trick up its sleeve: the rim shape is very insensitive to tire size.

So where the drag of the deep rim “blows up” once you get past a certain tire size (grey graph), the Discus 45 | 32 works great with oversized road tires (red graph) that are even larger than the ones mounted on the deep rim. In fact, you can see the oversized tire performs almost as well as the two wheels with the regular 29.5mm tires.