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#121
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Power on hills.
On 17/12/2018 9:45 a.m., jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 5:16:03 AM UTC-8, duane wrote: On 16/12/2018 8:50 p.m., jbeattie wrote: On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 3:20:48 PM UTC-8, news18 wrote: On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:28:42 -0800, jbeattie wrote: I do those three times a week. And them I'm not too good to ride with the old and slow group. I did a ride before the big fires here where I generated 340 watts for almost 10 miles. That may not be much around here but it sure as hell is a great deal more than you loud mouthed experts. Me too, when I won the Cat 2 districts this year. Do you actually own a power meter? Also, you need to tell us how long you were holding 340 watts. Distance doesn't tell us much. Oh Jay, it was downhill, obviously. BTW, I gave that number to my son and told him it was a 74 year old recreational rider, and he said "nope," not at 180-190lbs. He looks at power data day in and day out as a job. https://stagescycling.com/us/support/ I think Tom shared with us that he is 180lbs, to which I say, kudos. I'm about the same height and 15lbs more. But assuming 180lbs, that's about 82kg for about 4.15 watts/kg for 20 minute power, which places him solidly in Cat 2 -- at age 74. Scary. If I were him, I'd skip the whole return-to-high-tech thing and round up some sponsors for Masters Worlds. My brother was in Master Worlds DH in his 60s and couldn't knock out those kinds of watts, although his thing was going down hill. I don't care about power since I'm not training for anything. Today, my power meter was "faster than one guy, slower than another." Everything hurt after a hard ski yesterday and too much Christmas cheer last night, but I managed to hang in for a nice rain ride on my made-in-USA HED Ardenne disc wheels which roll really well. Great mid-weight road and gravel wheels. I have the Ardennes SLs and 23s and they've been great. At around 40,000km I have not had to have them trued and this is on Quebec roads. I came home and sprayed off the bike with a hose, which is SOP -- notwithstanding the hose-fear expressed on this NG. Riding a dirty bike is like driving a dirty car I guess. Though I'm more apt to wash my bike than my car... I use fenders, and they get packed with leaves/needles and mud, so it's nice to blow them out. The bike I rode yesterday has hydraulic discs and Di2, so cable stick is not an issue. I could let that bike get pretty muddy, and only the chain would suffer. I was being sarcastic. I wash my bike when it gets dirty. If it's just splash from road crap I have been know to hose it off. Otherwise I actually wash it. Gives me time for a recovery beer after the ride anyway. Speaking of discs, they're great in the rain. One of the guys I was riding with yesterday was on a Kona CX bike with cantis/STI and aluminum rims. The brakes howled and didn't stop him. On one downhill, he had to bail out into a parking lot because he couldn't get the bike to stop at the bottom. Getting cantis and STI just right takes a lot of fussing, and they never stop that well IMO. I've had an occasion where the rain was so hard that the brakes couldn't displace enough water to get a grip. Discs would have been handy. But at the moment, I don't have disk ready wheels or frame. Maybe next bike though I don't ride in the rain that much so I'm not sure the maintenance required would warrant it. I change brake pads every couple years now so the maintenance is pretty low. |
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#122
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Power on hills.
On 12/17/2018 9:45 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 5:16:03 AM UTC-8, duane wrote: On 16/12/2018 8:50 p.m., jbeattie wrote: On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 3:20:48 PM UTC-8, news18 wrote: On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:28:42 -0800, jbeattie wrote: I do those three times a week. And them I'm not too good to ride with the old and slow group. I did a ride before the big fires here where I generated 340 watts for almost 10 miles. That may not be much around here but it sure as hell is a great deal more than you loud mouthed experts. Me too, when I won the Cat 2 districts this year. Do you actually own a power meter? Also, you need to tell us how long you were holding 340 watts. Distance doesn't tell us much. Oh Jay, it was downhill, obviously. BTW, I gave that number to my son and told him it was a 74 year old recreational rider, and he said "nope," not at 180-190lbs. He looks at power data day in and day out as a job. https://stagescycling.com/us/support/ I think Tom shared with us that he is 180lbs, to which I say, kudos. I'm about the same height and 15lbs more. But assuming 180lbs, that's about 82kg for about 4.15 watts/kg for 20 minute power, which places him solidly in Cat 2 -- at age 74. Scary. If I were him, I'd skip the whole return-to-high-tech thing and round up some sponsors for Masters Worlds. My brother was in Master Worlds DH in his 60s and couldn't knock out those kinds of watts, although his thing was going down hill. I don't care about power since I'm not training for anything. Today, my power meter was "faster than one guy, slower than another." Everything hurt after a hard ski yesterday and too much Christmas cheer last night, but I managed to hang in for a nice rain ride on my made-in-USA HED Ardenne disc wheels which roll really well. Great mid-weight road and gravel wheels. I have the Ardennes SLs and 23s and they've been great. At around 40,000km I have not had to have them trued and this is on Quebec roads. I came home and sprayed off the bike with a hose, which is SOP -- notwithstanding the hose-fear expressed on this NG. Riding a dirty bike is like driving a dirty car I guess. Though I'm more apt to wash my bike than my car... People vary. I wash my bike about as often as I wash my car, which is not very often. But I have a friend who keeps his motor vehicles so pristine that the outgoing message on their phone is "I can't get to the phone, and Fred is _probably_ outside washing his truck..." I use fenders, and they get packed with leaves/needles and mud, so it's nice to blow them out. I use fenders, but I must ride in much cleaner surroundings. I cut though our little forest park pretty often, but that's mostly on gravel paths so the bike doesn't get very dirty. Speaking of discs, they're great in the rain. One of the guys I was riding with yesterday was on a Kona CX bike with cantis/STI and aluminum rims. The brakes howled and didn't stop him. On one downhill, he had to bail out into a parking lot because he couldn't get the bike to stop at the bottom. Getting cantis and STI just right takes a lot of fussing, and they never stop that well IMO. I wonder what pads he had. Most of our bikes have Kool Stops and they work well in the rain, IME. The guy's howling brakes may give a clue to his problems. I'll admit, cantis are fussy to set up. Perhaps he just botched the job. But there's never been a time in my life when I could have justified switching from cantis to discs. My only memory of being unable to stop in the rain was about 1974 or so, when our "ten speeds" had hard rubber pads scraping on dimpled chrome steel rims, cheap Balilla center pull brakes, and we were riding in a waterfall of a thunderstorm. Most of those conditions are never going to be repeated. And almost all of my braking is gentle enough that having to squeeze slightly harder in the rain is no big deal. Now, there is one hill around here that my wife refuses to ride down. The only time she did it with me, she said it was painful to have to squeeze the brakes that hard. Perhaps I would have trouble if I descended that in a thunderstorm? I don't know. It's easy enough to skip that situation. -- - Frank Krygowski |
#123
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Power on hills.
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 10:09:48 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/17/2018 9:45 AM, jbeattie wrote: On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 5:16:03 AM UTC-8, duane wrote: On 16/12/2018 8:50 p.m., jbeattie wrote: On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 3:20:48 PM UTC-8, news18 wrote: On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:28:42 -0800, jbeattie wrote: I do those three times a week. And them I'm not too good to ride with the old and slow group. I did a ride before the big fires here where I generated 340 watts for almost 10 miles. That may not be much around here but it sure as hell is a great deal more than you loud mouthed experts. Me too, when I won the Cat 2 districts this year. Do you actually own a power meter? Also, you need to tell us how long you were holding 340 watts. Distance doesn't tell us much. Oh Jay, it was downhill, obviously. BTW, I gave that number to my son and told him it was a 74 year old recreational rider, and he said "nope," not at 180-190lbs. He looks at power data day in and day out as a job. https://stagescycling.com/us/support/ I think Tom shared with us that he is 180lbs, to which I say, kudos. I'm about the same height and 15lbs more. But assuming 180lbs, that's about 82kg for about 4.15 watts/kg for 20 minute power, which places him solidly in Cat 2 -- at age 74. Scary. If I were him, I'd skip the whole return-to-high-tech thing and round up some sponsors for Masters Worlds. My brother was in Master Worlds DH in his 60s and couldn't knock out those kinds of watts, although his thing was going down hill. I don't care about power since I'm not training for anything. Today, my power meter was "faster than one guy, slower than another." Everything hurt after a hard ski yesterday and too much Christmas cheer last night, but I managed to hang in for a nice rain ride on my made-in-USA HED Ardenne disc wheels which roll really well. Great mid-weight road and gravel wheels. I have the Ardennes SLs and 23s and they've been great. At around 40,000km I have not had to have them trued and this is on Quebec roads.. I came home and sprayed off the bike with a hose, which is SOP -- notwithstanding the hose-fear expressed on this NG. Riding a dirty bike is like driving a dirty car I guess. Though I'm more apt to wash my bike than my car... People vary. I wash my bike about as often as I wash my car, which is not very often. But I have a friend who keeps his motor vehicles so pristine that the outgoing message on their phone is "I can't get to the phone, and Fred is _probably_ outside washing his truck..." I use fenders, and they get packed with leaves/needles and mud, so it's nice to blow them out. I use fenders, but I must ride in much cleaner surroundings. I cut though our little forest park pretty often, but that's mostly on gravel paths so the bike doesn't get very dirty. This is the MUP on the way back to my house through Tryon Creek State Park. https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/me...all-colors.jpg Lots of maple and some fir needles, blow-down and the like. I don't have a lot of fender clearance with 28mm tires on my Synapse, so the fenders can get packed-up, but not enough to lock up the wheel. The Sunday ride also involved some brief gravel, mud, single track stuff, but not a lot. Speaking of discs, they're great in the rain. One of the guys I was riding with yesterday was on a Kona CX bike with cantis/STI and aluminum rims.. The brakes howled and didn't stop him. On one downhill, he had to bail out into a parking lot because he couldn't get the bike to stop at the bottom.. Getting cantis and STI just right takes a lot of fussing, and they never stop that well IMO. I wonder what pads he had. Most of our bikes have Kool Stops and they work well in the rain, IME. The guy's howling brakes may give a clue to his problems. I'll admit, cantis are fussy to set up. Perhaps he just botched the job. Could be. He's not a great wrench. But there's never been a time in my life when I could have justified switching from cantis to discs. My only memory of being unable to stop in the rain was about 1974 or so, when our "ten speeds" had hard rubber pads scraping on dimpled chrome steel rims, cheap Balilla center pull brakes, and we were riding in a waterfall of a thunderstorm. Most of those conditions are never going to be repeated. I've been unable to stop on cantis while pulling my son in a trailer. I've been unable to stop with cable discs because I failed to adjust the pads as they wore -- which was a terrifying object lesson coming down a sled hill in the rain. My cantis of various brands from high-end Pauls to el cheap-o DiaComps never worked that well with STI levers. Certain pads and adjustments just made them suck less. I could justify changing to discs just to save the cost of replacing rims. Rim brakes in wet dirty conditions are like lathes. Even if I wasn't wearing out rims, discs are so superior in wet weather that I would make the switch anyway. No great benefit in dry weather, but worth the added expense on the wet weather bikes. Hydraulic discs on a road bike are a luxury item. You don't have to worry about pad adjustment, cable drag or weak return springs, which is nice but perhaps not worth the fuss to some. A nice pair of cable discs with fresh pads still stop really well. I'm all hydraulic now. -- Jay Beattie. |
#124
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Power on hills.
On 12/17/2018 1:44 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 10:09:48 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote: On 12/17/2018 9:45 AM, jbeattie wrote: On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 5:16:03 AM UTC-8, duane wrote: On 16/12/2018 8:50 p.m., jbeattie wrote: On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 3:20:48 PM UTC-8, news18 wrote: On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:28:42 -0800, jbeattie wrote: I do those three times a week. And them I'm not too good to ride with the old and slow group. I did a ride before the big fires here where I generated 340 watts for almost 10 miles. That may not be much around here but it sure as hell is a great deal more than you loud mouthed experts. Me too, when I won the Cat 2 districts this year. Do you actually own a power meter? Also, you need to tell us how long you were holding 340 watts. Distance doesn't tell us much. Oh Jay, it was downhill, obviously. BTW, I gave that number to my son and told him it was a 74 year old recreational rider, and he said "nope," not at 180-190lbs. He looks at power data day in and day out as a job. https://stagescycling.com/us/support/ I think Tom shared with us that he is 180lbs, to which I say, kudos. I'm about the same height and 15lbs more. But assuming 180lbs, that's about 82kg for about 4.15 watts/kg for 20 minute power, which places him solidly in Cat 2 -- at age 74. Scary. If I were him, I'd skip the whole return-to-high-tech thing and round up some sponsors for Masters Worlds. My brother was in Master Worlds DH in his 60s and couldn't knock out those kinds of watts, although his thing was going down hill. I don't care about power since I'm not training for anything. Today, my power meter was "faster than one guy, slower than another." Everything hurt after a hard ski yesterday and too much Christmas cheer last night, but I managed to hang in for a nice rain ride on my made-in-USA HED Ardenne disc wheels which roll really well. Great mid-weight road and gravel wheels. I have the Ardennes SLs and 23s and they've been great. At around 40,000km I have not had to have them trued and this is on Quebec roads. I came home and sprayed off the bike with a hose, which is SOP -- notwithstanding the hose-fear expressed on this NG. Riding a dirty bike is like driving a dirty car I guess. Though I'm more apt to wash my bike than my car... People vary. I wash my bike about as often as I wash my car, which is not very often. But I have a friend who keeps his motor vehicles so pristine that the outgoing message on their phone is "I can't get to the phone, and Fred is _probably_ outside washing his truck..." I use fenders, and they get packed with leaves/needles and mud, so it's nice to blow them out. I use fenders, but I must ride in much cleaner surroundings. I cut though our little forest park pretty often, but that's mostly on gravel paths so the bike doesn't get very dirty. This is the MUP on the way back to my house through Tryon Creek State Park. https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/me...all-colors.jpg Lots of maple and some fir needles, blow-down and the like. I don't have a lot of fender clearance with 28mm tires on my Synapse, so the fenders can get packed-up, but not enough to lock up the wheel. The Sunday ride also involved some brief gravel, mud, single track stuff, but not a lot. Speaking of discs, they're great in the rain. One of the guys I was riding with yesterday was on a Kona CX bike with cantis/STI and aluminum rims. The brakes howled and didn't stop him. On one downhill, he had to bail out into a parking lot because he couldn't get the bike to stop at the bottom. Getting cantis and STI just right takes a lot of fussing, and they never stop that well IMO. I wonder what pads he had. Most of our bikes have Kool Stops and they work well in the rain, IME. The guy's howling brakes may give a clue to his problems. I'll admit, cantis are fussy to set up. Perhaps he just botched the job. Could be. He's not a great wrench. But there's never been a time in my life when I could have justified switching from cantis to discs. My only memory of being unable to stop in the rain was about 1974 or so, when our "ten speeds" had hard rubber pads scraping on dimpled chrome steel rims, cheap Balilla center pull brakes, and we were riding in a waterfall of a thunderstorm. Most of those conditions are never going to be repeated. I've been unable to stop on cantis while pulling my son in a trailer. I've been unable to stop with cable discs because I failed to adjust the pads as they wore -- which was a terrifying object lesson coming down a sled hill in the rain. My cantis of various brands from high-end Pauls to el cheap-o DiaComps never worked that well with STI levers. Certain pads and adjustments just made them suck less. I could justify changing to discs just to save the cost of replacing rims. Rim brakes in wet dirty conditions are like lathes. Even if I wasn't wearing out rims, discs are so superior in wet weather that I would make the switch anyway. No great benefit in dry weather, but worth the added expense on the wet weather bikes. Hydraulic discs on a road bike are a luxury item. You don't have to worry about pad adjustment, cable drag or weak return springs, which is nice but perhaps not worth the fuss to some. A nice pair of cable discs with fresh pads still stop really well. I'm all hydraulic now. Same here, maybe it's an Oregon commuter thing. I re-rimmed my cantilevered Univega commuter at least twice, maybe three times. But I learned the hard way to be careful after I left its first rear rim to grind away to the point of failure - a blowout peeling off about 18" of the top half of the brake track, fortunately at low speed. That was well /after/ switching to Kool-stop salmon pads, which seemed to wear rims less than the early ~1990 Shimano rim-eating pads. When the Univega died of old age*, I replaced it with a Surly Disc Trucker. The improvement in wet braking was astonishing. About 1/4 mile into my commute there's a steep downhill block with a stop at the bottom. On one rainy day I found myself reflexively "testing" the brakes at the top to sweep the rain off the rims. and smiled when I realized "I don't have to do that no more!" Mark J. [*] At ~24 years, the Univega developed large cracks in the unicrown fork, noticed only b/c the crown sagged and pushed the fender down onto the top of the tire. Angels look out for fools and children, so there was no crash. I /had/ crashed the Univega about 15 years before and had to realign the fork tips, but only about 1/2". If that caused the failure 15 years later, it sure took a long time. I'm not complaining, I got a lot of use out of that used-bike purchase. |
#125
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Power on hills.
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 7:42:09 AM UTC, wrote:
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 12:20:48 AM UTC+1, news18 wrote: On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:28:42 -0800, jbeattie wrote: I do those three times a week. And them I'm not too good to ride with the old and slow group. I did a ride before the big fires here where I generated 340 watts for almost 10 miles. That may not be much around here but it sure as hell is a great deal more than you loud mouthed experts. Me too, when I won the Cat 2 districts this year. Do you actually own a power meter? Also, you need to tell us how long you were holding 340 watts. Distance doesn't tell us much. Oh Jay, it was downhill, obviously. BTW, I gave that number to my son and told him it was a 74 year old recreational rider, and he said "nope," not at 180-190lbs. He looks at power data day in and day out as a job. https://stagescycling.com/us/support/ 340 Watts for 10 miles on a downhill is really hard. For that kind of power you need a fierce headwind or a climb. Lou I don't use a power meter because I realised I wasn't interested in the power I put out, but in the effect of the exertion on me. Instead I now use a heart rate monitor which tells me precisely when to stop pedalling or when to pedal harder to maintain my maximum target heart rate for building endurance, rather than sprinting. It's a surprisingly easily understood and managed tool, directly linked to its major desired effect. Andre Jute Shortcuts |
#127
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Power on hills.
On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 5:50:22 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 3:20:48 PM UTC-8, news18 wrote: On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:28:42 -0800, jbeattie wrote: I do those three times a week. And them I'm not too good to ride with the old and slow group. I did a ride before the big fires here where I generated 340 watts for almost 10 miles. That may not be much around here but it sure as hell is a great deal more than you loud mouthed experts. Me too, when I won the Cat 2 districts this year. Do you actually own a power meter? Also, you need to tell us how long you were holding 340 watts. Distance doesn't tell us much. Oh Jay, it was downhill, obviously. BTW, I gave that number to my son and told him it was a 74 year old recreational rider, and he said "nope," not at 180-190lbs. He looks at power data day in and day out as a job. https://stagescycling.com/us/support/ I think Tom shared with us that he is 180lbs, to which I say, kudos. I'm about the same height and 15lbs more. But assuming 180lbs, that's about 82kg for about 4.15 watts/kg for 20 minute power, which places him solidly in Cat 2 -- at age 74. Scary. If I were him, I'd skip the whole return-to-high-tech thing and round up some sponsors for Masters Worlds. My brother was in Master Worlds DH in his 60s and couldn't knock out those kinds of watts, although his thing was going down hill. I don't care about power since I'm not training for anything. Today, my power meter was "faster than one guy, slower than another." Everything hurt after a hard ski yesterday and too much Christmas cheer last night, but I managed to hang in for a nice rain ride on my made-in-USA HED Ardenne disc wheels which roll really well. Great mid-weight road and gravel wheels. I came home and sprayed off the bike with a hose, which is SOP -- notwithstanding the hose-fear expressed on this NG. -- Jay Beattie. Wouldn't that be nice if I could always know when I'm going to be up? I was approaching an uphill and two people caught up with me - some guy who pretty obviously had just finished an organized century that I had entered but not attended and some other guy who had a Triple Crown windbreaker on. The century guys was going pretty slow and I was going to ride him back in to the end. The Triple Crown guy you could tell had just put in 10 miles and pulled around us and shot up this 4% hill. That was pretty impolite in my book and I dropped it down a couple of cogs and passed him at 24 mph and then hit a section where the hill flattened and I took it up to 28 mph. I stopped at the top and he went passed without looking at me. I waited for the other guy and rode back in with him to make sure he was OK In several years I've only done that hill that fast twice. And on Redwood Rd. which is 7% I would get ****ed at the front guys dropping everyone else and once in awhile I would let them get 200 or more yards and then run them down and beat them to the top. But the last time I tried that I could only catch them and ride in with them. The 10K happened when I showed up at the starting point and we normally do a 1 1/2 miles back past my home and continue another 10 miles to the coffee stop. I had just changed stems and it started slipping just a short walk from my home. So I went over and got a different bike and took off after them hoping to catch them. But I had taken too long to get the bike and they had just gotten to the coffee stop when I got there. And they are dead slow on good days. It was dead flat, into a reported 20 mph headwind and I set the timer on my speedo. Gribble's calculator actually said 340 watts but for a half of a mile I rode cross wind. So I took the estimation of 300 watts. I was holding a dead steady speed and the wind was steady. My idea had been to go as fast as I could without blowing up. And it worked but the ride home wasn't that much fun. Though down wind so was I. |
#128
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Power on hills.
On Mon, 17 Dec 2018 13:09:43 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote: On 12/17/2018 9:45 AM, jbeattie wrote: On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 5:16:03 AM UTC-8, duane wrote: On 16/12/2018 8:50 p.m., jbeattie wrote: On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 3:20:48 PM UTC-8, news18 wrote: On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:28:42 -0800, jbeattie wrote: I do those three times a week. And them I'm not too good to ride with the old and slow group. I did a ride before the big fires here where I generated 340 watts for almost 10 miles. That may not be much around here but it sure as hell is a great deal more than you loud mouthed experts. Me too, when I won the Cat 2 districts this year. Do you actually own a power meter? Also, you need to tell us how long you were holding 340 watts. Distance doesn't tell us much. Oh Jay, it was downhill, obviously. BTW, I gave that number to my son and told him it was a 74 year old recreational rider, and he said "nope," not at 180-190lbs. He looks at power data day in and day out as a job. https://stagescycling.com/us/support/ I think Tom shared with us that he is 180lbs, to which I say, kudos. I'm about the same height and 15lbs more. But assuming 180lbs, that's about 82kg for about 4.15 watts/kg for 20 minute power, which places him solidly in Cat 2 -- at age 74. Scary. If I were him, I'd skip the whole return-to-high-tech thing and round up some sponsors for Masters Worlds. My brother was in Master Worlds DH in his 60s and couldn't knock out those kinds of watts, although his thing was going down hill. I don't care about power since I'm not training for anything. Today, my power meter was "faster than one guy, slower than another." Everything hurt after a hard ski yesterday and too much Christmas cheer last night, but I managed to hang in for a nice rain ride on my made-in-USA HED Ardenne disc wheels which roll really well. Great mid-weight road and gravel wheels. I have the Ardennes SLs and 23s and they've been great. At around 40,000km I have not had to have them trued and this is on Quebec roads. I came home and sprayed off the bike with a hose, which is SOP -- notwithstanding the hose-fear expressed on this NG. Riding a dirty bike is like driving a dirty car I guess. Though I'm more apt to wash my bike than my car... People vary. I wash my bike about as often as I wash my car, which is not very often. But I have a friend who keeps his motor vehicles so pristine that the outgoing message on their phone is "I can't get to the phone, and Fred is _probably_ outside washing his truck..." I use fenders, and they get packed with leaves/needles and mud, so it's nice to blow them out. I use fenders, but I must ride in much cleaner surroundings. I cut though our little forest park pretty often, but that's mostly on gravel paths so the bike doesn't get very dirty. Speaking of discs, they're great in the rain. One of the guys I was riding with yesterday was on a Kona CX bike with cantis/STI and aluminum rims. The brakes howled and didn't stop him. On one downhill, he had to bail out into a parking lot because he couldn't get the bike to stop at the bottom. Getting cantis and STI just right takes a lot of fussing, and they never stop that well IMO. I wonder what pads he had. Most of our bikes have Kool Stops and they work well in the rain, IME. The guy's howling brakes may give a clue to his problems. I'll admit, cantis are fussy to set up. Perhaps he just botched the job. But there's never been a time in my life when I could have justified switching from cantis to discs. My only memory of being unable to stop in the rain was about 1974 or so, when our "ten speeds" had hard rubber pads scraping on dimpled chrome steel rims, cheap Balilla center pull brakes, and we were riding in a waterfall of a thunderstorm. Most of those conditions are never going to be repeated. And almost all of my braking is gentle enough that having to squeeze slightly harder in the rain is no big deal. Now, there is one hill around here that my wife refuses to ride down. The only time she did it with me, she said it was painful to have to squeeze the brakes that hard. Perhaps I would have trouble if I descended that in a thunderstorm? I don't know. It's easy enough to skip that situation. Not to start another "this is better/no that is better" argument but years ago I bought a 75(US)$ bike in Singapore to keep on the boat. By the time we sold the boat and moved ashore the bike was in pretty poor condition - all that salt spray, you know. Anyway, I decided to rebuild the bike and as I disassembled the bike I'd check each part and "Nope! Junk!" and finally ended up with a very nice aluminum hard-tail MTB sort of frame. I found a conventional aluminum fork and rebuilt the bike as a sort of 26" road bike. To make a long story short I fitted Shimano "V" brakes, probably Deore or one of the other Shimano low end sets. When I got the bike assembled and first rode it the brakes were really fierce, I had to keep reminding myself "don't squeeze the brakes hard". When the discussion of "rim brakes don't work in the wet" started I took the bike out in the rain and tested it. Coasting down a medium steep hill in a medium rain (rain drops only bouncing bout an inch when they hit :-) on a normal black top road I could skid either wheel (scary skidding the front wheel :-) or both at the same time. This bike had conventional aluminum rims and I was using what looked like Cool Stop but made in China pads. I've since passed the 26" bike on to a friend but I have two classic light weight steel frame 700c wheel bikes here (at our new country estate :-) and one of them has short reach Deore caliper brakes - sometimes difficult to match modern brakes with old frames - and, again with aluminum rims and Cool Stop like pads it stops rather abruptly. I haven't tried deliberately skidding he wheels but I suspect that I can. The point of this dissertation is that I suspect that rim brakes are suitable for road bikes whether rain or shine and most of the static about "I couldn't stop" is probably a problem of either poorly maintained brakes, ineffective pads or brakes with insufficient leverage. cheers, John B. |
#129
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Power on hills.
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 8:36:56 PM UTC-5, John B. Slocomb wrote:
Snipped Not to start another "this is better/no that is better" argument but years ago I bought a 75(US)$ bike in Singapore to keep on the boat. By the time we sold the boat and moved ashore the bike was in pretty poor condition - all that salt spray, you know. Anyway, I decided to rebuild the bike and as I disassembled the bike I'd check each part and "Nope! Junk!" and finally ended up with a very nice aluminum hard-tail MTB sort of frame. I found a conventional aluminum fork and rebuilt the bike as a sort of 26" road bike. To make a long story short I fitted Shimano "V" brakes, probably Deore or one of the other Shimano low end sets. When I got the bike assembled and first rode it the brakes were really fierce, I had to keep reminding myself "don't squeeze the brakes hard". When the discussion of "rim brakes don't work in the wet" started I took the bike out in the rain and tested it. Coasting down a medium steep hill in a medium rain (rain drops only bouncing bout an inch when they hit :-) on a normal black top road I could skid either wheel (scary skidding the front wheel :-) or both at the same time. This bike had conventional aluminum rims and I was using what looked like Cool Stop but made in China pads. I've since passed the 26" bike on to a friend but I have two classic light weight steel frame 700c wheel bikes here (at our new country estate :-) and one of them has short reach Deore caliper brakes - sometimes difficult to match modern brakes with old frames - and, again with aluminum rims and Cool Stop like pads it stops rather abruptly. I haven't tried deliberately skidding he wheels but I suspect that I can. The point of this dissertation is that I suspect that rim brakes are suitable for road bikes whether rain or shine and most of the static about "I couldn't stop" is probably a problem of either poorly maintained brakes, ineffective pads or brakes with insufficient leverage. cheers, John B. I think the major problem with rim brakes is that people are simply riding too fast for the conditions. Then again sand and grit on trails or pure off road can work like an excellent grinding paste if wet and one doesn't clean the pads and rims periodically. However, a friend of mine a number of years ago spent $1,500,00 Canadian on a DaVinci MTB with mechanical disc brakes and had nothing but trouble with them. Numerous bike shops were unable to find and correct the problem. he was really doing through brake discs on that bike. Many times on different rides he'd say look at this. He'd be riding along with the brake lever touching the handlebar. I never did figure out what the problem was or why he went through disc brake pads so quickly. I do know that he got fed up with the issues and not having strong braking when he wanted it. So much so that he swapped out the disc brake wheels for V-brake ones. He still rides that bike and is quite happy with it. I find that V-brakes are easier to set up and to keep adjusted than are cantilever brakes. Just a few millimeters in difference of the length of the straddle cable can make a HUGE difference in how power cantilever brakes are.. gthere's a sweet spot for that distance and if the straddle cable is too long or too short you might end up with a very spongy feeling brake. Cheers |
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Power on hills.
On 12/17/2018 6:10 PM, Mark J. wrote:
[*] At ~24 years, the Univega developed large cracks in the unicrown fork, noticed only b/c the crown sagged and pushed the fender down onto the top of the tire.Â* Angels look out for fools and children, so there was no crash. Wow. You were lucky. We had a crash when the front fork blades of our tandem simultaneously snapped off upon hitting some moderately rough pavement. Turns out the custom builder, Jim Bradford (of Georgia, USA, now supposedly living in Canada) had used track forks with wall thickness 1/3 of what tandem forks should have had. I got about five seconds of indefinite warning, the sound of the front fender lightly scraping the tire. Bradford had built the bike with insufficient fender clearance, so it was a familiar sound. I just didn't know it meant something serious this time. We did go down pretty hard, but we were riding only about 10 mph waiting for others to catch up, so no serious injuries. Do I complain to the angels for sleeping on the job, or thank the angels it wasn't worse? -- - Frank Krygowski |
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