On 2018-04-12 23:57, Doug Landau wrote:

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


The defect on the left clearly shows that several of the threads have
been compromised or are frayed. Gasket cement does not fix that, it just
masks it. Such a tire on the front wheel is an accident waiting to happen.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/ao5r35u5y7...30742.jpg?dl=0


See the tear that starts developing at the 5 o'clock position of that
patch job? I would not want that tire on my front wheel.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/ngfou1fr3r...30751.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3217iixox1...30912.jpg?dl=0


Yikes! No thanks.


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.


With a $45 tire I do not expect to have to constantly correct mistakes
that the manufacturer made. As I said, my solution has been found: Use
Asian tires with sturdier sidewalls. So far they only last 1000mi versus
the 2500mi I got out of Gatorskin. However, when comparing $11-15
against $45 I won't complain about that. I am quite certain I'll soon
find a tire that lasts a little longer, maybe 1500mi.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/