Another Case of those safe CF bikes

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 3:55:02 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 6/27/2017 5:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/27/2017 12:23 PM, wrote:


You can get the latest Michelin Power Endurance tires for
only a little less than the Gatorskins. So far the Pro4
Endurance tires have impressed the hell out of me.

https://www.merlincycles.com/micheli...YaAlsK8P8 HAQ


What impresses me the most is that I've gotten only one
flat and it was from a goat's head thorn. The traction is
a LOT better on the road than Gatorskins are. Though the
long term wear I can't tell yet.

A serious question about traction: What sort of road riding
lets you know one make of tire has better traction than
another?

I know how to evaluate traction only by exceeding its limit;
that is by skidding when braking, or by sliding out when
cornering.

But I've hardly ever skidded when braking except when doing
parking lot exercises to teach quick stopping to other
cyclists. And one of my (only two ever) on-road falls was a
slide out, but it was due to winter road salt. I doubt any
tire would have maintained traction.

Granted, I'm very conservative with cornering. I don't ever
look like this:
http://www.trentobike.org/Countries/...y/tiretest.jpg


So do others regularly take their cornering to the limit,
then note how the tires behave?



Harder tread compounds feel odd in corners as compared to
Michelins.

Absolute traction /in extremis/ is a different matter; I
don't know. I assume other factors outweigh tread material
at that point because pretty much any two-wheeler can skid
with normal braking force.

Personally, I have two spots where I test tire traction in wet weather -- the chute into my garage with a tight turn (which is smooth cement) and a short, steep section on my way home -- going up seated and sanding. It's easy to gauge traction at that spot because your rear tire slips out, and moving fore-aft doesn't make a difference. Going down the chute, you can feel how much sliding you get with hard braking. Misjudging in both cases is fairly low consequence, although a guy in my building crashed and broke his him on the chute. Then they put in non-skid, which wore off about 15 years ago. I crashed there on a pair of early Michelin colored tires with a clay based pigment. Downside of sale table finds. I can't tell the difference in traction between two quality tires -- say a Pro4 and a Conti 4000, but some sale table tires are like riding on banana peels, even after break-in.


-- Jay Beattie.

On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 09:23:32 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 7:44:33 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-06-25 21:00, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, June 25, 2017 at 7:57:00 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/25/2017 7:38 PM, jbeattie wrote:
Final descent was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqllO_J9_wA The bike didn't
explode.

I will say, I find fast descents in dappled bright sunshine to be
scary. It's very hard to spot potholes in time, at least with my
old eyes.

Scarier with dark sun glasses, which I was wearing today
(prescription, not fashion). Germantown Road is well paved, so it's
pretty low consequence except for the cars. No close calls. No heroic
stories, although I could make some up.

My son had an eventful day. He was doing all these spur roads off of
Big Cottonwood Canyon in SLC and had a rear-tire blow out. He didn't
notice that he had a sidewall cut and went through two tubes and all
his CO2 before he figured it out. Life lesson. Luckily, he got a ride
from a nice stranger to the bottom of the canyon and then a friend
picked him up. He was on expensive Conti Grand Prix which I think are
prone to sidewall damage. I know people disagree, but I don't buy
them because I got sidewall cuts and Pro Race are so much cheaper.


My experience with Conti Gatorskins is similar. Aside from being
undersized and a bear to mount onto shallow rims I had too many
premature side wall failures. These are not cheap and when you have to
trash an otherwise perfectly good tire at 1000mi because the side wall
is gone that is sad. When one held I could milk 2500mi out of them on
the rear before the tread was through.

I switched to CST Conquistare but their tread wears much faster. Cost
less than half though. Way better side wall sturdiness.

You can get the latest Michelin Power Endurance tires for only a little less than the Gatorskins. So far the Pro4 Endurance tires have impressed the hell out of me.

https://www.merlincycles.com/micheli...YaAlsK8P8 HAQ

What impresses me the most is that I've gotten only one flat and it was from a goat's head thorn. The traction is a LOT better on the road than Gatorskins are. Though the long term wear I can't tell yet.

If I remember correctly all of my tire "punctures" were on gaterskins.
In this case "puncture" refers to something sticking through the tire.
The first was a small nail, a "brad" that penetrated the tread area
and then bent and penetrated the side wall, from the inside.

When the last gaterskin failed I replaced them with cheaper tires and
my puncture rate did not increase. My opinion is that the kevlar layer
in Continental tires is largely an advertising feature.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On 6/27/2017 9:47 PM, John B. wrote:
My opinion is that the kevlar layer
in Continental tires is largely an advertising feature.

I still think that kevlar belts make tires slower. Perhaps not as much
slower as they did in the 1980s, but slower. Do others agree?

It's a tough thing for me to judge for sure without doing coasting
tests. I suppose I should start recording data using the downhill right
outside my driveway, but it's due to be repaved in the next couple years
(I hope). I'm sure the improvement in smoothness will wreck any data I
collect and try to use for future reference.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 13:43:48 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote:

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 9:58:48 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 6/24/2017 3:50 PM, wrote:
The 2017 Tour of Flanders....

This rider was involved in a single rider crash on a city street lined with people and NO obstructions to run into.

The Bahrain Merida Pro Cycling Team rides Merida bikes, specifically the Scultura Team and Reacto Team model bikes. Both are full carbon fiber.

I have a picture but of course we cannot post pictures here.

Use Tinypic.com and post a link.

The bike broke about 5 inches above the bottom bracket on the down tube and about the same distance from the seat tube on the top tube. It appears that he was uninjured which suggests that he fell into the street lining crowd.

We know that anyone that rides a CF bike is more interested in saving a couple of lbs rather than his own safety but then that is a problem that will solve itself.

This is unusual since racers typically replace their bicycles often, so
they don't experience the failures that occur after the frame has been
subjected to events that would lead to CF failure. There must have been
a hidden defect in that frame.

There's no hard and fast rule, some carbon frames break after just a
year, some can go for a decade or more, but the conventional wisdom is
to replace the frame and fork every three years to be on the safe side.
Otherwise you're going to spend more trying to detect flaws that it's
worth, both in time and money/

http://isolatecyclist.bostonbiker.or...isconceptions/

I used the same set of CF forks on two different aluminum bikes for 15 years. The aluminum bikes broke. I gave the forks away. I put some cheap $69 Nashbar forks on an old steel frame, and the frame later broke. I gave those forks away, too. Both were 1".


-- Jay Beattie.

Reading about broken bicycles has always made me wonder what happened
"before".

In my very early youth I learned to ride a bicycle by coasting, on my
mate's new bike, down an incline, around a Conner and on to a flat
section of the driveway where we would stop.

In those days all "American" bikes had coaster brakes and I was small
for my age and thus braking was a bit of a problem for me and in my
last foray I ran head on into a trash barrel - a 55 gallon drum full
of garbage. The crash was severe enough they it threw me off the bike
and over the front wheel (and the barrel).

Had that been a CF bike and had the forks failed the next day while
pedaling down to the store for a quart of milk I suggest that the
headline would have been "My forks broke while I was riding at 5 MPH
to the store" and the fact that the bike had been ridden straight into
an immovable object at 10mph the day before would have been ignored.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Wed, 28 Jun 2017 09:13:45 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 13:43:48 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote:

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 9:58:48 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 6/24/2017 3:50 PM, wrote:
The 2017 Tour of Flanders....

This rider was involved in a single rider crash on a city street lined with people and NO obstructions to run into.

The Bahrain Merida Pro Cycling Team rides Merida bikes, specifically the Scultura Team and Reacto Team model bikes. Both are full carbon fiber.

I have a picture but of course we cannot post pictures here.

Use Tinypic.com and post a link.

The bike broke about 5 inches above the bottom bracket on the down tube and about the same distance from the seat tube on the top tube. It appears that he was uninjured which suggests that he fell into the street lining crowd.

We know that anyone that rides a CF bike is more interested in saving a couple of lbs rather than his own safety but then that is a problem that will solve itself.

This is unusual since racers typically replace their bicycles often, so
they don't experience the failures that occur after the frame has been
subjected to events that would lead to CF failure. There must have been
a hidden defect in that frame.

There's no hard and fast rule, some carbon frames break after just a
year, some can go for a decade or more, but the conventional wisdom is
to replace the frame and fork every three years to be on the safe side.
Otherwise you're going to spend more trying to detect flaws that it's
worth, both in time and money/

http://isolatecyclist.bostonbiker.or...isconceptions/

I used the same set of CF forks on two different aluminum bikes for 15 years. The aluminum bikes broke. I gave the forks away. I put some cheap $69 Nashbar forks on an old steel frame, and the frame later broke. I gave those forks away, too. Both were 1".


-- Jay Beattie.

Reading about broken bicycles has always made me wonder what happened
"before".

In my very early youth I learned to ride a bicycle by coasting, on my
mate's new bike, down an incline, around a Conner and on to a flat
section of the driveway where we would stop.


Around a corner ;-(

In those days all "American" bikes had coaster brakes and I was small
for my age and thus braking was a bit of a problem for me and in my
last foray I ran head on into a trash barrel - a 55 gallon drum full
of garbage. The crash was severe enough they it threw me off the bike
and over the front wheel (and the barrel).

Had that been a CF bike and had the forks failed the next day while
pedaling down to the store for a quart of milk I suggest that the
headline would have been "My forks broke while I was riding at 5 MPH
to the store" and the fact that the bike had been ridden straight into
an immovable object at 10mph the day before would have been ignored.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 22:10:22 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 6/27/2017 9:47 PM, John B. wrote:
My opinion is that the kevlar layer
in Continental tires is largely an advertising feature.

I still think that kevlar belts make tires slower. Perhaps not as much
slower as they did in the 1980s, but slower. Do others agree?

Frankly I can't tell the difference. I am currently using Bontrager
tires - LBS stocks them and I get a 15% discount - which are somewhat
like tubulars. Thin and supple. I also have a set of wheels with (If I
remember correctly) Panracer tires which I occasionally change to. On,
say a 50 km ride, I can see so difference in average speed.

Or perhaps a more accurate thing to say it is that temperature and
humidify have a far greater effect on my rides then tires :-)

--
Cheers,

John B.

On 27/06/2017 7:44 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 3:55:02 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 6/27/2017 5:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/27/2017 12:23 PM, wrote:


You can get the latest Michelin Power Endurance tires for
only a little less than the Gatorskins. So far the Pro4
Endurance tires have impressed the hell out of me.

https://www.merlincycles.com/micheli...YaAlsK8P8 HAQ


What impresses me the most is that I've gotten only one
flat and it was from a goat's head thorn. The traction is
a LOT better on the road than Gatorskins are. Though the
long term wear I can't tell yet.

A serious question about traction: What sort of road riding
lets you know one make of tire has better traction than
another?

I know how to evaluate traction only by exceeding its limit;
that is by skidding when braking, or by sliding out when
cornering.

But I've hardly ever skidded when braking except when doing
parking lot exercises to teach quick stopping to other
cyclists. And one of my (only two ever) on-road falls was a
slide out, but it was due to winter road salt. I doubt any
tire would have maintained traction.

Granted, I'm very conservative with cornering. I don't ever
look like this:
http://www.trentobike.org/Countries/...y/tiretest.jpg


So do others regularly take their cornering to the limit,
then note how the tires behave?



Harder tread compounds feel odd in corners as compared to
Michelins.

Absolute traction /in extremis/ is a different matter; I
don't know. I assume other factors outweigh tread material
at that point because pretty much any two-wheeler can skid
with normal braking force.

Personally, I have two spots where I test tire traction in wet weather -- the chute into my garage with a tight turn (which is smooth cement) and a short, steep section on my way home -- going up seated and sanding. It's easy to gauge traction at that spot because your rear tire slips out, and moving fore-aft doesn't make a difference. Going down the chute, you can feel how much sliding you get with hard braking. Misjudging in both cases is fairly low consequence, although a guy in my building crashed and broke his him on the chute. Then they put in non-skid, which wore off about 15 years ago. I crashed there on a pair of early Michelin colored tires with a clay based pigment. Downside of sale table finds. I can't tell the difference in traction between two quality tires -- say a Pro4 and a Conti 4000, but some sale table tires are like riding on banana peels, even after break-in.

How do you like the Conti 4000? I usually use Specialized Pro but my
favorite LBS is dropping Specialized so I'll have to find a replacement
tire. Specialized tires don't seem to be available online.
Do they have good flat protection? Grip? ...

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 7:13:50 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jun 2017 13:43:48 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote:

On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 9:58:48 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 6/24/2017 3:50 PM, wrote:
The 2017 Tour of Flanders....

This rider was involved in a single rider crash on a city street lined with people and NO obstructions to run into.

The Bahrain Merida Pro Cycling Team rides Merida bikes, specifically the Scultura Team and Reacto Team model bikes. Both are full carbon fiber..

I have a picture but of course we cannot post pictures here.

Use Tinypic.com and post a link.

The bike broke about 5 inches above the bottom bracket on the down tube and about the same distance from the seat tube on the top tube. It appears that he was uninjured which suggests that he fell into the street lining crowd.

We know that anyone that rides a CF bike is more interested in saving a couple of lbs rather than his own safety but then that is a problem that will solve itself.

This is unusual since racers typically replace their bicycles often, so
they don't experience the failures that occur after the frame has been
subjected to events that would lead to CF failure. There must have been
a hidden defect in that frame.

There's no hard and fast rule, some carbon frames break after just a
year, some can go for a decade or more, but the conventional wisdom is
to replace the frame and fork every three years to be on the safe side..
Otherwise you're going to spend more trying to detect flaws that it's
worth, both in time and money/

http://isolatecyclist.bostonbiker.or...isconceptions/

I used the same set of CF forks on two different aluminum bikes for 15 years. The aluminum bikes broke. I gave the forks away. I put some cheap $69 Nashbar forks on an old steel frame, and the frame later broke. I gave those forks away, too. Both were 1".


-- Jay Beattie.

Reading about broken bicycles has always made me wonder what happened
"before".

In my very early youth I learned to ride a bicycle by coasting, on my
mate's new bike, down an incline, around a Conner and on to a flat
section of the driveway where we would stop.

In those days all "American" bikes had coaster brakes and I was small
for my age and thus braking was a bit of a problem for me and in my
last foray I ran head on into a trash barrel - a 55 gallon drum full
of garbage. The crash was severe enough they it threw me off the bike
and over the front wheel (and the barrel).

Had that been a CF bike and had the forks failed the next day while
pedaling down to the store for a quart of milk I suggest that the
headline would have been "My forks broke while I was riding at 5 MPH
to the store" and the fact that the bike had been ridden straight into
an immovable object at 10mph the day before would have been ignored.

--
Cheers,

John B.

So what you're saying is that a professional racing team crashed a bike and didn't replace it. I should have thought of that.

On Wednesday, June 28, 2017 at 7:03:26 AM UTC-7, Duane wrote:
On 27/06/2017 7:44 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 3:55:02 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 6/27/2017 5:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/27/2017 12:23 PM, wrote:


You can get the latest Michelin Power Endurance tires for
only a little less than the Gatorskins. So far the Pro4
Endurance tires have impressed the hell out of me.

https://www.merlincycles.com/micheli...YaAlsK8P8 HAQ


What impresses me the most is that I've gotten only one
flat and it was from a goat's head thorn. The traction is
a LOT better on the road than Gatorskins are. Though the
long term wear I can't tell yet.

A serious question about traction: What sort of road riding
lets you know one make of tire has better traction than
another?

I know how to evaluate traction only by exceeding its limit;
that is by skidding when braking, or by sliding out when
cornering.

But I've hardly ever skidded when braking except when doing
parking lot exercises to teach quick stopping to other
cyclists. And one of my (only two ever) on-road falls was a
slide out, but it was due to winter road salt. I doubt any
tire would have maintained traction.

Granted, I'm very conservative with cornering. I don't ever
look like this:
http://www.trentobike.org/Countries/...y/tiretest.jpg


So do others regularly take their cornering to the limit,
then note how the tires behave?



Harder tread compounds feel odd in corners as compared to
Michelins.

Absolute traction /in extremis/ is a different matter; I
don't know. I assume other factors outweigh tread material
at that point because pretty much any two-wheeler can skid
with normal braking force.

Personally, I have two spots where I test tire traction in wet weather -- the chute into my garage with a tight turn (which is smooth cement) and a short, steep section on my way home -- going up seated and sanding. It's easy to gauge traction at that spot because your rear tire slips out, and moving fore-aft doesn't make a difference. Going down the chute, you can feel how much sliding you get with hard braking. Misjudging in both cases is fairly low consequence, although a guy in my building crashed and broke his him on the chute. Then they put in non-skid, which wore off about 15 years ago. I crashed there on a pair of early Michelin colored tires with a clay based pigment. Downside of sale table finds. I can't tell the difference in traction between two quality tires -- say a Pro4 and a Conti 4000, but some sale table tires are like riding on banana peels, even after break-in.

How do you like the Conti 4000? I usually use Specialized Pro but my
favorite LBS is dropping Specialized so I'll have to find a replacement
tire. Specialized tires don't seem to be available online.
Do they have good flat protection? Grip? ...

The problem as I see it with the Conti is that they have a cross section somewhat like a square. The Michelin is round from one side of the rim to the other. I don't know if this is why they feel better but they most certainly do.

But with the Pro4 Endurance going out of production who the hell knows if the Power Endurance with be any different? That's why I bought a set.

On Wednesday, June 28, 2017 at 7:03:26 AM UTC-7, Duane wrote:
On 27/06/2017 7:44 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 3:55:02 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 6/27/2017 5:07 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 6/27/2017 12:23 PM, wrote:


You can get the latest Michelin Power Endurance tires for
only a little less than the Gatorskins. So far the Pro4
Endurance tires have impressed the hell out of me.

https://www.merlincycles.com/micheli...YaAlsK8P8 HAQ


What impresses me the most is that I've gotten only one
flat and it was from a goat's head thorn. The traction is
a LOT better on the road than Gatorskins are. Though the
long term wear I can't tell yet.

A serious question about traction: What sort of road riding
lets you know one make of tire has better traction than
another?

I know how to evaluate traction only by exceeding its limit;
that is by skidding when braking, or by sliding out when
cornering.

But I've hardly ever skidded when braking except when doing
parking lot exercises to teach quick stopping to other
cyclists. And one of my (only two ever) on-road falls was a
slide out, but it was due to winter road salt. I doubt any
tire would have maintained traction.

Granted, I'm very conservative with cornering. I don't ever
look like this:
http://www.trentobike.org/Countries/...y/tiretest.jpg


So do others regularly take their cornering to the limit,
then note how the tires behave?



Harder tread compounds feel odd in corners as compared to
Michelins.

Absolute traction /in extremis/ is a different matter; I
don't know. I assume other factors outweigh tread material
at that point because pretty much any two-wheeler can skid
with normal braking force.

Personally, I have two spots where I test tire traction in wet weather -- the chute into my garage with a tight turn (which is smooth cement) and a short, steep section on my way home -- going up seated and sanding. It's easy to gauge traction at that spot because your rear tire slips out, and moving fore-aft doesn't make a difference. Going down the chute, you can feel how much sliding you get with hard braking. Misjudging in both cases is fairly low consequence, although a guy in my building crashed and broke his him on the chute. Then they put in non-skid, which wore off about 15 years ago. I crashed there on a pair of early Michelin colored tires with a clay based pigment. Downside of sale table finds. I can't tell the difference in traction between two quality tires -- say a Pro4 and a Conti 4000, but some sale table tires are like riding on banana peels, even after break-in.

How do you like the Conti 4000? I usually use Specialized Pro but my
favorite LBS is dropping Specialized so I'll have to find a replacement
tire. Specialized tires don't seem to be available online.
Do they have good flat protection? Grip? ...

Conti 4000 are wickedly expensive and prone to sidewall cuts, IMO. Lou prefers them and can get a good deals in Europe. For me, they are always 20-50% more than Michelins. As for ride and grip, I think the Contis are a bit more plush feeling than Pro4s. I have a Conti front tire on my Roubaix; its 25mm nominal but looks and rides bigger.

Oddly enough, the Conti 4Seasons are heavier and have more rolling resistance than the Pro4s and the 4000, but I really liked them on my Roubaix winter bike. They're just too expensive, so I'm using Pro4 Endurance rear tire right now -- which are good, but I don't think they are as grippy as the regular Pro4s or the 4Seasons, but that impression could be effected by the fact that it's easy to skid my rear wheel on the Roubaix because the disc is so powerful.

Like I said, all the differences are subtle between the high end tires from Michelin or Continental.

-- Jay Beattie.