wrote:
Carl Fogel writes:

Who still rides tubular tires, and why?

I stopped in a bike shop yesterday. I asked the owner what they use
in track racing. I trust he knows. I asked specifically about tires
and pedals. He said they use special clipless pedals and clincher
tires.

If clincher tires are good enough for track racers, I can't think
of a practical purpose for tubulars any more.

Responding to the person who stated this. Clinchers may be used at the
local velodrome by some. But at the upper levels, tubulars are used on
the track. If you look at the wheels the pros use, Mavic disks and
Campagnolo Ghibli disks, Campagnolo Pista wheels, Mavic 5 spoke wheels,
these ONLY come in tubular. No clincher verison of these track wheels
exist in the world. There is no question about whether these riders
are using tubular or clincher.

Do a Google search for the Mavic and Campagnolo websites and you can
determine for yourself that the disk wheels and track wheels are only
available in tubular.

Go over to the www. cyclingnews.com website for pictures of various
professional track events around the world and look at the wheels being
used.



Most of the Tour de France is ridden on tubulars.

This is often claimed but I haven't seen evidence of that among the
professional racers in similar events that I had the opportunity to
inspect. I have not seen TdF bicycles at close enough range to
determine what sort of tires they had.

www.cyclingnews.com website has pictures of bikes used in the Tour de
France. And other professional races. I guess one could always claim
the bikes in the pictures are not really the ones being ridden during
the race itself and the tubular wheels shown in the picture are changed
out for the superior clinchers before the race.

In many of the Tour and other race pictures you see riders using
Campagnolo Bora wheels, Lightweight wheels, ADA wheels, etc. These are
all carbon wheels ONLY available in tubular. There is no clincher
version of these wheels. How can the racers in the Tour pictures not
be riding tubulars?


Because it's glued to the rim, you can continue riding a flat
tubular while waiting for the support car and mechanic to rush up
and slap in a new wheel. (A flat clincher is much harder to ride.)

I don't believe you are speaking from experience. I have ridden many
miles on both flat tubulars and clinchers, on pavement and dirt roads,
and found there to be no significant difference. I believe this story
is propagated from hearsay.

You also expect to have fewer impact flats, even at lower and more
comfortable pressures, because the tubular tire and rim don't tend
to pinch things like a clincher rim. Pros like the idea of a more
comfortable, more reliable tire, and they have someone else to take
care of gluing up a dozen spare wheels.

The lower pinch flat rate that some tubular tires have is achieved by
the use of thin latex tubes, thin latex tubes having many times the
stretch limit before perforation than butyl tubes. So if you were to
hammer on a tube inside a tire casing lying on a smooth surface, it
would take several times the force to perforate the latex tube. It
has nothing to do with the rim; the rim never contacting the tube that
lies inside the tire casing.


My Continental Sprinter tubulars have butyl tubes. I suffered very few
if any pinch flats with them. I have pinch flatted clinchers with
butyl tubes. The tubulars were ridden at lower pressure too.



The term "snake bite" flat originated at my Wednesday tubular repair
sessions in the1960's and -70's because the holes were so small, the
second on often invisible without inflation that pinch flats were
scrutinized for the second "snake bite" hole... before patching and
sewing the tire casing only to fins a slower leak at the same
location.

People also talk about handling, weight, rolling resistance, and
other somewhat dubious matters, but fewer flats, more comfortable
pressures, and the ability to keep going when flats do occur seem to
be the practical reasons.

This sounds much like the leg shaving excuse where riders claim they
do it for crashing to prevent subsequent hair entrapment in their
precious bodily fluids.

No personal experience, but I have heard getting a massage on smooth
hairless skin is preferable to hairy skin. I believe professional
racers get massages quite frequently.



Of course, outside such races, tubulars are popular for reasons of
tradition, fashion, and the love of fooling with sticky, tricky
stuff.

That can be reduced to "me-too", the pros do it.

Jobst Brandt