Lance Armstrong rides aged tubulars

Hi MIke,

Lance doesn't get flats... period. He's known for having rather exceptional
luck that way. But it's not because his tires are well-aged.

Aged tubbies are obviously a red wine herring. Why are they so few
flats on Planet Lance?

Kirby.

Quoting :
wrote:
If there's any data showing that 7-year-cicadas--er, tires
have a lower rolling resistance, that would be interesting,
but it's unlikely that the difference would amount to 10
seconds in a stage.
There have been breakaways that were either caught 10 seconds before
the finish or whose finishing margin after being away for half the
stage was 10 seconds.

Yes, but that's not the difficulty here; the difficulty is that that
figure of 10 seconds has been pulled out of Carl's posterior.

That finishes are to within 10 seconds would only make a 10 seconds/stage
difference in RR significant if riders rode completely isolated from each
other. When a breakaway's made right at the finish, the rider behind
hasn't been gradually slipping backwards by 1 second every 20 kilometres
because of high tyre RR...
--
David Damerell Kill the tomato!
Today is First Saturday, Presuary - a weekend.

Mike Krueger wrote:
..

I began this thread because I found the it interesting that a
documentary which focused the "scientific" aspects of Lance's
performance attempted to promote a notion that is usually disspelled
here, that is that "aging" rubber tires somehow improves them, like
fine wine. I did not post the mechanic's specific assertion that aging
the tire made the rubber softer, because it made such little sense to
me when I heard it that I thought I had misinterpreted what he said.
But, the same Belgian mechanic, name of DeVriese, is also mentioned in
the book, "Lance Armstrong's War," by Daniel Coyle, and the same point
is made. It says aging the tires in his basement at least two years
adds to their suppleness and strength. Now, I'm wondering which is it?
How can the tire magically become more supple and stronger at the same
time? Which leads to an even more interesting question, does Lance
Armstrong put his trust in a charlatan?

Why does it matter? If some here, like Jobst, thinks it's bugle oil, ya
think Julien is going to stop?

Bicycles in europe have enjoyed a rep for over a century as a great
machine that does many amazing things. Cyclists are things of legend,
known to all in Europe and it's not surprizing that things like aging
tubies and tying and soldering wheels(remember Indurain's bikes? all
had T&S wheels)is mentioned.
Don't be surprized that in the US, w/o Lance, nobody would even know
there is a 'Tour of France', and the bicycle is just a toy that youi
have as a kid and then you look at it hung in the garage as an adult.

So I'm not surprized there are 'old Italian's, Belgian's, French's'
tales about the bicycle and what makes them better.Geeezzz, I never
hang a bicycle wheel or complete bike so the hook is at the label
either, so what.

OBTW-I keep my tubies in a warm garage, date them so I use the oldest
first.

... does Lance Armstrong put his trust in a charlatan?

Who, Carmichael or Ferrari ? :-)

Qui si parla Campagnolo wrote:

Geeezzz, I never
hang a bicycle wheel or complete bike so the hook is at the label
either, so what.

Hadn't heard that one. Weak spot? Don't want a "mark" where it's more
likely noticed?

OBTW-I keep my tubies in a warm garage, date them

What a man does in the privacy of his home...

Avoiding imagery, Bill S.

Lance doesn't get flats... period. He's known for having rather
exceptional
luck that way. But it's not because his tires are well-aged.

Aged tubbies are obviously a red wine herring. Why are they so few
flats on Planet Lance?

They say that good luck is often created, and that might be the case with
Lance. Smarter (and strong) riders position themselves closer to the front
of a pack, where there are fewer crashes and you've got better visibility of
the road (so you're less-likely to hit something). Stronger riders are also
less likely to be blindly following the wheel in front of them (and
surprised when a pothole suddenly appears).

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:

We could look at something as simple as grease on crank axle surfaces, which
I would not allow done in our shop, ever. My experience, from the old days
of BMX, was that greased cranks became loose & failed far more often than
their non-greased cousins. The sample size for this was fairly large, the
accuracy very hight (easy to verify grease vs non-greased) and the amount of
time it happend over fairly small (due to the extremely-abusive conditions
the cranks operated under, any failures or problems would show up quickly).

However, Jobst Brandt, in the FAQ on the subject, states that it shouldn't
matter if the cranks are greased or not. For reference, the FAQ is here-
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/bicycles-faq/part4/;

Yes, JB says the greased tapers will soon make metal-metal contact with
the crank. But where greasing "matters" is (quoting from that link):

Regardless, whether grease or no grease is used, in use the spindle
and crank will make metal to metal contact and cause fretting
corrosion for all but the lightest riders. The purpose of the
lubricant is to give a predictable press fit for a known torque. If
the spindle is completely dry this cannot be said, and even with
marginal lubrication, some galling may occur on installation.
Lubrication is only used to guarantee a proper press because the
lubricant is displaced from the interface in use. Taper faces of
spindles show erosion and rouge after substantial use, evidence that
the lubricant was displaced.

Around we go. --TP

On 01 Jul 2005 13:40:49 +0100 (BST), David Damerell
wrote:

Quoting :
wrote:
If there's any data showing that 7-year-cicadas--er, tires
have a lower rolling resistance, that would be interesting,
but it's unlikely that the difference would amount to 10
seconds in a stage.
There have been breakaways that were either caught 10 seconds before
the finish or whose finishing margin after being away for half the
stage was 10 seconds.

Yes, but that's not the difficulty here; the difficulty is that that
figure of 10 seconds has been pulled out of Carl's posterior.

That finishes are to within 10 seconds would only make a 10 seconds/stage
difference in RR significant if riders rode completely isolated from each
other. When a breakaway's made right at the finish, the rider behind
hasn't been gradually slipping backwards by 1 second every 20 kilometres
because of high tyre RR...

Dear David,

Er, let's plug some figures into a calculator, shall we?
This one agrees well with others, is metric, and offers the
fields of interest:

http://w3.iac.net/~curta/bp/velocityN/velocity.html

Let's say that Lance is out for a typical 100-mile jaunt
somewhere in France at his typical 25 mph average, which
we'll set to 160 km, achieving 40.002 km/h by using the
defaults and reducing the frontal area to 0.3165 m^2.

The prediction is 239.9877 minutes, which sounds like
239:59.26, give or take moment.

Reaching into my posterior, I must now decide how much
sitting on a shelf for 7 years would improve the rolling
resistance of a tire. That is, how much should we reduce the
rr field from 0.0050?

Well, let's look at Jobst Brandt's tire test figures:

http://www.analyticcycling.com/Force...esistance.html

Notice that the best 7 tires tested end up within about 25
grams resistance of each other in the middle of the 220-270
gram section--7 different brands, each differing from its
neighbor by about 3-4 grams.

(If you move leftward toward lower pressures, the spread
widens, but the absolute value rises, too, so the
percentages are likely to stay the same.)

So if aging one brand of tire for 7 years improved its
rolling resistance enough that it became as good as the next
superior brand on the graph, it would change about 4 grams
drag out of about 225. Let's round up to 5 grams out of 250,
which gives a drop from 250 to 245 grams of drag.

That would reduce the default 0.0050 rolling resistance on
the calculator to 0.0049. Plugging that value in, click on
calculate . . .

http://w3.iac.net/~curta/bp/velocityN/velocity.html

.. . . and the predicted result for Lance's 160 km ride drops
to 239.677 minutes--239:40, a full 20 theoretical seconds
faster in 4 hours, not the mere 10 seconds that I guessed!

Feel free to pull some figures out of your posterior to
increase my error.

If it's any help, losing 20 seconds over 100 km is about the
same as losing 8 seconds over 40 km--which can be achieved
by reducing the same tire's pressure from 120 psi to 112.5
psi on Tom Compton's rolling-resistance comparison
calculator:

http://www.analyticcycling.com/ForcesTires_Page.html

I'm sure that posterity will thank us for this sort of fun.

Carl Fogel

"Mike Krueger" wrote in news:1119988071.166866.292550
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

Discovery Channel aired a TV documentary yesterday entitled, "The
Science of Lance Armstrong". In one segment, Lance's longtime Belgian
mechanic was profiled. He took the camera crew down into his "wine
cellar", where he stores scores of tubular tires for the pro team. He
had stacks of tires specifically designated for Paris-Roubaix, the
other spring classics, and, of course, the Tour De France, for which he
claimed the tubular tires had been specially *aging* for up to seven
years to improve their performance characteristics. This guy's been a
pro mechanic for 40 years, so he might know something about the
subject.
Comments?


I think Lance and Discovery are having some fun with us for mis-information
puposes. That mechanic *said* that he aged the tires but it was probably
just to keep all Lance's competitors guessing. They did the same thing a
few years ago with the whole emphasis on stretching and how important that
was. Notice there was not one mention of stretching in all these pre-tour
Lance/Discovery/Nike/Giro/Trek/HED commercials/shows they've been running
like crazy.

In article .com,
"bfd" wrote:

Terry states:

Summary: rubber products get worse with age, not better.

This is true. But, the FAQ also states "tubular tires bought in advance
should be sealed tightly in airtight bags and kept in the dark,
optimally in a freezer." I would guess that this GURU pro mechanic's
"wine cellar" is pretty much dark and cold and probably as good as way
as any in storing his tubulars....

Storing in a cool, dark place is certainly better than leaving out
in the sun.

But unless the "wine cellar" is pneumatically sealed, it will allow
ozone to attack the rubber. Sealed in a bag is still the best way to
store rubber products.
--
terry morse Palo Alto, CA http://bike.terrymorse.com/