On one long tour, our Continental Top Touring tires developed worrying bubbles
in the sidewalls.
Is that a Conti problem? I had similar issue with Gatorskins. Two failed
prematurely when their sidewalls started to give up.
Uhm... Hmm. I haven't read news in a few months, and now that I have and went to catch up on r.b.t, ... ...you are still (or again?) grieving about this.
I told you before; I'll tell you again: Just put a dab of gasket cement on it as soon as the fraying starts. I use Permatex #2 but that's because I use Permatex #2 for everything. I think I used superglue once and it worked fine.
And then you fret about my hose clamp fix :-)
And you fret about a-little-dab'll-do-ya ?
Next time take a pic; until then I'm marking this bug 'fixed'.
Gatorskins are better tires all around, notwithstanding your personal experience with sidewall damage.
He rode his roadbike on the gnarly trail to town and scraped them on rocks and admitted to it, each at least once.
My current Gatorskin: actually I took this tire, which has between 1 and 2 K miles, down from the attic where it had been for 2 years a few months ago. I put a few dabs of black gasket cement on the fraying spots, visible in these pics. Also visible, adjacent to each spot, is a new thread beginning to fray. It's to the left in the first two pics, to the right in the 2nd, in between them in the 4th, not present in the 5th.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1z270cz94b...30730.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ao5r35u5y7...30742.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ngfou1fr3r...30751.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3217iixox1...30912.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zopo2ac7uk...30957.jpg?dl=0
I think I usually apply it a bit more liberally and tried the minimum required this time, and I see that that is not optimal - now I have to do it again. Well, it only takes a minute, but I wouldn't have noticed yet if I hadn't taken the pics. From now on I'll go back to covering the entire sidewall for a couple inches on both sides of the frayed spot, and apply it a bit thicker.
I'll try coating all of both sidewalls of my next gatorskin when new.
-dkl