A Cycling & bikes forum. CycleBanter.com

Go Back   Home » CycleBanter.com forum » rec.bicycles » Techniques
Site Map Home Register Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

What is the point of tubeless tires?



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #81  
Old January 15th 19, 12:45 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Roger Merriman[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 385
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

wrote:
On Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 2:21:54 PM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/13/2019 7:35 AM, Tosspot wrote:
On 1/12/19 6:46 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/12/2019 12:11 AM, wrote:
Seriously, what is the point of these things? What problem do they
solve and is it worth the extra maintenance hassles for non-racing
riders?

Part of the point is "churning." Bikes and bike parts are a
super-mature industry, and bikes and their products last decades. (My
favorite bike is from 1986.) So the industry tries to come up with new
ideas every year, just to entice you to buy _something_.

Going back to the 1970s, it was "Ten speeds!" then "Touring bikes!"
then "Aluminum!" then "Mountain bikes!" ... and on and on, with front
suspension, full suspension, 6 speeds, 7 speeds, 8 & 9 & 10 & 11
speeds, carbon fiber, electronic shifting etc. It goes on forever.

Currently it's disc brakes, tubeless tires and "gravel bikes." For
almost everyone who rides a bicycle, the improvements (if any) are
almost undetectable. We are deeply into diminishing returns, no matter
what miracles the supposed connoisseurs claim.

I take issue.Â* Indexed ergo shifters vs downtube friction shifters, LED
LiPo lights vs dodgy glow worms, and this is going to cause trouble,
yes, hydraulic discs vs cable rim brakes.

I see what you are saying, but people don't *buy* crap.Â* They buy it
because it's [marginally] better than what the had.Â* Eg. I could buy
this mountain bike

Â*Â*Â*Â*
https://www.walmart.com/ip/26-Roadma...Black/55376950

Or I could buy this;

Â*Â*Â*Â*https://www.damianharriscycles.co.uk...8-touring-bike

By your argument, the first is a clear winner, because it's every bit as
good as the latter and 600 bucks cheaper!


Sorry, but no. There's almost always a wide range of price and quality
in every consumer good. Nobody's saying a Roadmaster is equivalent to a
Dawes. And really, I'm not even saying that (for example) cable discs
are _exactly_ as good as hydraulic discs.

What I'm saying is that for almost all cyclists, the difference between
hydraulic and cable discs is negligible, and so is the difference
between discs and decent rim brakes. Really, what percentage of cyclists
really need absolutely perfect braking in heavy rain or deep mud? Are
there really many people here who have had significant brake problems
riding before the modern disc mania? Has a high percentage of the
world's bike riders had those problems? I very much doubt it. For me,
like most, braking more than gently is a rare event.

The same logic applies to 11 cogs vs. 10 or 9 cogs; to wheels that
differ in mass by 50 grams; to derailleurs moved by electricity vs.
steel cables, and more.

But the industry (including the publishing portion) pushes discs as THE
thing everyone must have, as if we're incredibly lucky to not have been
killed multiple times by our caliper brakes. Likewise, carbon fiber is
purported to change your life; tubeless tires will make you wish you
never saw an inner tube; and how could someone possibly ride without 11
cogs in back? Oh, and with more than one sprocket in front?

But I know I'm an oddball retrogrouch. I still shift with both my right
hand and my left hand! I still know how to let go of the handlebars to
shift! And I still more than keep up with my (um, somewhat decrepit)
peer group while using 1980s technology.

I just ride.

But boy, when they start selling carbon fiber inner wires for shifters,
I'm jumping on those. And carbon fiber safety pins for keeping my pants
cuffs out of the chain. Think of the weight savings! ;-)

--
- Frank Krygowski


I would have to agree with that. While there are rather large differences
in quality and ride between the lowest and the middle grade bikes there
sure isn't much between the middle and top end.

I don't know how to tell the difference between a well installed cable
and a hydraulic disk for anyone other than a very high performance rider.
We've seen that pro's tend t0 shy away from disks because it takes so
much time to change a wheel.

And when they are using disks they get in just as many wrecks as rim
brakes. They do not seem to corner any faster since what sort of fool
would dive deeper into a corner taking so many more chances for a
millisecond in cornering speed?

The same with the steadily increasing number of speeds - this makes a
difference for racers alone. I think that 8 speeds was the point at which
gear ratios vs. reliability of shifting and wear of components hit their
peak. Now they're talking about 14 speeds with cogs getting paper thin
and chains getting so narrow that breaking them isn't unheard of anymore.

Unlike you, I am more to the performance side. Over the same course the
difference between my Colnago, Time and steel Pinarello Stelvio are
barely seconds. I absolutely do feel the weight difference between the 18
lb Colnago and the 26 lb Pinarello but only at the tops of the short
steep climbs I'm trying to bust when I'm getting tired.

Surprisingly, on long climbing days there isn't enough difference to put
in a hat. Hard climb speeds are set by your endurance and not strength so
8 lbs makes no difference I can tell.


For group sets assuming they are set up well, the only difference really
that I notice is jumps between gears, and even then 9 to 11 speed cog, not
something that I notice really or care about.

Present Adventure bike seems more comfortable than the cheaper CX that it
replaces using same tyres etc. I do slightly notice the weight difference
but it’s not huge.

I do though notice rim vs Disk and cable vs Hydraulic which is very
noticeable. Some variation within them as well though fairly slight.

Roger Merriman

Ads
  #82  
Old January 15th 19, 12:45 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

On 1/14/2019 6:16 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 13:53:35 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2019 1:43 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:
Tosspot wrote:
On 1/13/19 11:21 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

snip

But I know I'm an oddball retrogrouch.

Lol. You could use that as a posting name :-)

But boy, when they start selling carbon fiber inner wires for shifters,
I'm jumping on those. And carbon fiber safety pins for keeping my pants
cuffs out of the chain. Think of the weight savings!Â*Â* ;-)

See, there you go, I use velcro straps now because they are more
comfortable, and don't distort wrt to the traditional mild steel ones,
nobody foisted that on me, I can buy the old ones if I want, the velcro
ones are better.

Do you have a link for the CF ones...?

If I could find carbon fibre safety pins to keep your trouser cuffs out of
your chain, I'd buy them and send them to Frank, just to read the ensuing
rant. :-)


Oh no, I'd love them! I can't wait!

When I was asked what I wanted for Christmas, I jokingly suggested some
safety pins made of hollow titanium wire, for the weight savings.

But then it occurred to me, I really would like some brass ones. The
steel ones rust after a while. So I mentioned those.

I didn't get any. :-(


Try "plus four" pants. No need of a safety pins or clips.

If jeans with holes ripped in them are a fashion statement then
knickers, as they were known in my youth, must be nearly a "full
dress" uniform :-)


For years I've been telling my wife "Mark my words, knickers (or in
Britain, plus fours) will come back!"

I see that Jan Heine's company now sells them for cycling, and one
friend of ours wears them for some of her rides.

I've got a pair of stout corduroy ones from my cross country skiing days
long ago. Unfortunately, their waistband seems to have shrunk by about
two inches. :-(


--
- Frank Krygowski
  #83  
Old January 15th 19, 12:48 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

On 1/14/2019 6:06 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 06:28:18 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Monday, January 14, 2019 at 12:22:03 PM UTC+1, Duane wrote:
Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 9:57:50 PM UTC-5, Mark J. wrote:
On 1/13/2019 4:35 AM, Tosspot wrote:
On 1/12/19 6:46 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/12/2019 12:11 AM,
wrote:
Seriously, what is the point of these things? What problem do they
solve and is it worth the extra maintenance hassles for non-racing
riders?

Part of the point is "churning." Bikes and bike parts are a
super-mature industry, and bikes and their products last decades. (My
favorite bike is from 1986.) So the industry tries to come up with new
ideas every year, just to entice you to buy _something_.

Going back to the 1970s, it was "Ten speeds!" then "Touring bikes!"
then "Aluminum!" then "Mountain bikes!" ... and on and on, with front
suspension, full suspension, 6 speeds, 7 speeds, 8 & 9 & 10 & 11
speeds, carbon fiber, electronic shifting etc. It goes on forever.

Currently it's disc brakes, tubeless tires and "gravel bikes." For
almost everyone who rides a bicycle, the improvements (if any) are
almost undetectable. We are deeply into diminishing returns, no matter
what miracles the supposed connoisseurs claim.

I take issue.Â* Indexed ergo shifters vs downtube friction shifters, LED
LiPo lights vs dodgy glow worms, and this is going to cause trouble,
yes, hydraulic discs vs cable rim brakes.


I think Tosspot has nailed it here, though Frank's not wrong either, in
large part.

Yes, those of us who have watched cycling's new products for a while
(~40 years for me) know that there's a lot of useless junk that shows
up. There are also some great improvements, and some wonders. While we
will disagree about some (many) of them, let's admit that available
products today include a lot of great innovations.

But here's the thing - at first it was hard to tell which area of
"improvement" would really work. I think most of the categories of
improvements we enjoy today had early failures - hilariously so in some
cases, and they were surrounded by other "categorical failures", ideas
that really turned out to be entirely useless.

Here's a partial list (according to me) of big improvements I've seen
that weren't obvious in their first appearance:

Low-cost aluminum... cranks, derailleurs, etc.
I worked episodically in a Raleigh shop in the later 70's, assembling
new bikes. Right about then Raleigh shifted from lots of steel (or
plastic) Nervar, Simplex, Huret stuff to aluminum Sugino, SunTour, and
SR stuff. The latter was vastly easier to set up well. But there was
junk (plenty of it?) in the cheap aluminum component category. I
remember a cottered aluminum crank (!). In the earlier 70s, I doubt we
would have thought that low-cost aluminum parts could ever be good.

Quality clincher tires (first decent ones, then great ones).
When I started riding, no clincher came close to the quality, rolling
resistance, weight of sewups, pain-in-the-ass though they are. Then SBI
(Specialized Bicycle Imports, later shortened), IRC, and then Michelin
started selling very nice clinchers, and Schwinn's outsourced "LeTour"
tires were good too. Today I can get "handmade" non-vulcanized tires by
Challenge, Veloflex, or major brands like Vittoria that come pretty
close to duplicating sewup feel, rolling resistance, and (almost)
weight. Or I can get midweight vulcanized tires that are only slightly
heavier.
But some of the earlier attempts at "clincher reform" were, IIRC, pretty
crappy. One could easily have thought that "quality clincher" was a
pipe dream that would never take root.

Clipless pedals
This one is huge for me. When I had toestraps tightened enough to work
- and I kept 'em pretty loose - I still had killer problems with cold
feet in winter. With clipless, I have lots of room for shoe covers,
etc., not to mention other advantages. I know we don't all agree, but
the overwhelming adoption of clipless can't /just/ be marketing.
BUT OMG were there a bunch of poor, crappy, and even
disastrous/dangerous clipless designs early on. Sampson comes to mind,
or especially the Cinelli M71 pedal. I've forgotten the names of most
of the others, but they certainly gave the impression that clipless
pedals were crazy.

Indexed shifting
Again, we don't all agree, but the overwhelming majority of cyclists
seem to think that index shifting is a pretty neat idea. Despite some
real turkeys early on (Positron and Positron II, anyone?), turkeys that
"clearly" signaled that index shifting was an answer to a question
nobody asked, it turns out you *can* make a quality indexed shifter.
Who knew?

I could go on. Brifters, LED/LiPo lights, aluminum and carbon frames,
bicycle computers, nylon saddles (that's reaching back many years), and
yes, disc brakes, etc. - and all those advances coming on the scene with
many poor early designs, and surrounded by junk we still laugh about
that never amounted to anything. But if we could tell which inventions
would blossom when we first saw them, we'd all have invested in Intel
and Microsoft in the 70's and be rich now.

So even though I agree with Frank about "churn" in large part, that
churn turns out a few not-immediately-recognizable innovations that most
of us are glad about. A sort of Darwinian evolution, if you will.
While the industry may be super-mature, it ain't done yet.

Mark J.

I can remember when BIYCLING magazine had an article about NOT needing 15
gears on a bicycle. They stated in their article that 10 gears was more than enough.

I've tried clipless pedals but had problems getting out of them at times
and then falling over and getting scraped up a bit. Therefore I went back
to toeclips. For most of my riding I don't even have to snug up the
straps let alone tighten them up yet my feet stay on the pedals.
Besides, toestraps have LOTS of other uses. I've used one to keep a
dressing on a cut on a leg. I've used them to secure a jacket and tights
to the underside of my saddle after the temperatures rose to from quite
chilly to quite warm. I've used a toestrap to secure an extra water
bottle under a saddle. I've looped a toestrap around my handlebar and
stem and used it as makeshift bottle holder to hold a cup of coffee. I
used 2 toestraps joined together to hold something to the rear rack on a
bicycle. Hard to do any of that if you have clipless pedals. LOL VBEG ;)

I can remember too when downtube shifters sometimes would wear, or at
least the innards would, to the point where it was nearly impossible to
keep in the gear one wanted.

I think pneumatic clincher tires with separate tubes, decent derailleurs
and decent index shifting are 3 of the major innovations that caused
bicycling to grow as much as it has in North America.

I like my Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters on my touring bike. The left
shifter is ratchet and thus it's dead simple to trim the front
derailleur. I find I shift more often on hills with a load with the Ergos
t han I did even with bar-end shifters. However, I still like my downtube
shifters that i have on some of my other bikes. I especially like my
top-center mounted Dura Ace AX shifters and my top-center downtube
mounted Suntour symetric shifters (?) because they can be shifted front
and rear with just one hand at the same time.

In winter I really like my Lyotard MB23 platform pedals*. They're Frank's favourite pedals.

For me and for many others even 7 gears in t he rear with 2 or 3
chainrings is plenty. I like Shimano 9-speed clusters because I can set
them up with 7 cogs for most riding but with 2 larger cogs for bailout
gears. I use a Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters and rear derailler to shift my
9-speed Shimano cassette on my touring bike.

Some folks who are really into fitness riding or fast-paced group riding
probably love more gears because the increases in effort between gears
isn't as great as it is in 7, 6, or 5 speed cassettes.

Again a lot of bicycle innovations are different horses for different courses.

At least now we have a lot of equipment choices that can be used to give
us the customized bike we WANT or NEED for OUR style of riding.


That last sentence says it all.



--
duane


Something the 'dinosaurs' will never understand and claim everone is a victim of marketing. When I bought my first serious roadbike I had the choice between 3 saddles: junk, crap and doesn't fit.....

Lou


Yet, Brooks was marketing saddles in 1888. A saddle that even today
people pay rather astonishing amounts of money to own and ride.
The B-17 was introduced in the 1890's and is still marketed today.
That is nearly 130 years that folks have been buying that particular
saddle which would seem to indicate that it is not considered as
"junk, crap and doesn't fit".


We host touring cyclists through Warm Showers. Brooks are probably the
most common of the saddle brands under the cycle tourists that arrive here.

Having said that, Brooks don't happen to work for me, except for my 3
speed about-town bike. We're all different down there.

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #84  
Old January 15th 19, 01:52 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
news18
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,131
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 08:51:00 -0800, Mark J. wrote:


Also, I've found that velcro straps work better for all but heavy-duty
stowage:
https://kgear.eogear.com/collections...eogear-medium-

d-ring-strap

What life do you get out of them?
I find velcro is a good fluff, hair, seeds, etc collector and eventuall
fails.

  #85  
Old January 15th 19, 01:58 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

On 1/14/2019 7:52 PM, news18 wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 08:51:00 -0800, Mark J. wrote:


Also, I've found that velcro straps work better for all but heavy-duty
stowage:
https://kgear.eogear.com/collections...eogear-medium-

d-ring-strap

What life do you get out of them?
I find velcro is a good fluff, hair, seeds, etc collector and eventuall
fails.


I find it largely recovers if you take the trouble to comb it out.

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #86  
Old January 15th 19, 02:08 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 805
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 18:45:31 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2019 6:16 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 13:53:35 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2019 1:43 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:
Tosspot wrote:
On 1/13/19 11:21 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

snip

But I know I'm an oddball retrogrouch.

Lol. You could use that as a posting name :-)

But boy, when they start selling carbon fiber inner wires for shifters,
I'm jumping on those. And carbon fiber safety pins for keeping my pants
cuffs out of the chain. Think of the weight savings!** ;-)

See, there you go, I use velcro straps now because they are more
comfortable, and don't distort wrt to the traditional mild steel ones,
nobody foisted that on me, I can buy the old ones if I want, the velcro
ones are better.

Do you have a link for the CF ones...?

If I could find carbon fibre safety pins to keep your trouser cuffs out of
your chain, I'd buy them and send them to Frank, just to read the ensuing
rant. :-)

Oh no, I'd love them! I can't wait!

When I was asked what I wanted for Christmas, I jokingly suggested some
safety pins made of hollow titanium wire, for the weight savings.

But then it occurred to me, I really would like some brass ones. The
steel ones rust after a while. So I mentioned those.

I didn't get any. :-(


Try "plus four" pants. No need of a safety pins or clips.

If jeans with holes ripped in them are a fashion statement then
knickers, as they were known in my youth, must be nearly a "full
dress" uniform :-)


For years I've been telling my wife "Mark my words, knickers (or in
Britain, plus fours) will come back!"

I see that Jan Heine's company now sells them for cycling, and one
friend of ours wears them for some of her rides.

I've got a pair of stout corduroy ones from my cross country skiing days
long ago. Unfortunately, their waistband seems to have shrunk by about
two inches. :-(


It is funny how clothes that seemed so indestructible in years gone by
suddenly start to shrink as one grows older :-) Although since my
sojourn in the hospital this year I've discovered that some of my old
pants have started to fit again :-)


Cheers,
John B.


  #87  
Old January 15th 19, 02:30 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 805
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 18:48:00 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2019 6:06 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 06:28:18 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Monday, January 14, 2019 at 12:22:03 PM UTC+1, Duane wrote:
Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 9:57:50 PM UTC-5, Mark J. wrote:
On 1/13/2019 4:35 AM, Tosspot wrote:
On 1/12/19 6:46 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/12/2019 12:11 AM,
wrote:
Seriously, what is the point of these things? What problem do they
solve and is it worth the extra maintenance hassles for non-racing
riders?

Part of the point is "churning." Bikes and bike parts are a
super-mature industry, and bikes and their products last decades. (My
favorite bike is from 1986.) So the industry tries to come up with new
ideas every year, just to entice you to buy _something_.

Going back to the 1970s, it was "Ten speeds!" then "Touring bikes!"
then "Aluminum!" then "Mountain bikes!" ... and on and on, with front
suspension, full suspension, 6 speeds, 7 speeds, 8 & 9 & 10 & 11
speeds, carbon fiber, electronic shifting etc. It goes on forever.

Currently it's disc brakes, tubeless tires and "gravel bikes." For
almost everyone who rides a bicycle, the improvements (if any) are
almost undetectable. We are deeply into diminishing returns, no matter
what miracles the supposed connoisseurs claim.

I take issue.* Indexed ergo shifters vs downtube friction shifters, LED
LiPo lights vs dodgy glow worms, and this is going to cause trouble,
yes, hydraulic discs vs cable rim brakes.


I think Tosspot has nailed it here, though Frank's not wrong either, in
large part.

Yes, those of us who have watched cycling's new products for a while
(~40 years for me) know that there's a lot of useless junk that shows
up. There are also some great improvements, and some wonders. While we
will disagree about some (many) of them, let's admit that available
products today include a lot of great innovations.

But here's the thing - at first it was hard to tell which area of
"improvement" would really work. I think most of the categories of
improvements we enjoy today had early failures - hilariously so in some
cases, and they were surrounded by other "categorical failures", ideas
that really turned out to be entirely useless.

Here's a partial list (according to me) of big improvements I've seen
that weren't obvious in their first appearance:

Low-cost aluminum... cranks, derailleurs, etc.
I worked episodically in a Raleigh shop in the later 70's, assembling
new bikes. Right about then Raleigh shifted from lots of steel (or
plastic) Nervar, Simplex, Huret stuff to aluminum Sugino, SunTour, and
SR stuff. The latter was vastly easier to set up well. But there was
junk (plenty of it?) in the cheap aluminum component category. I
remember a cottered aluminum crank (!). In the earlier 70s, I doubt we
would have thought that low-cost aluminum parts could ever be good.

Quality clincher tires (first decent ones, then great ones).
When I started riding, no clincher came close to the quality, rolling
resistance, weight of sewups, pain-in-the-ass though they are. Then SBI
(Specialized Bicycle Imports, later shortened), IRC, and then Michelin
started selling very nice clinchers, and Schwinn's outsourced "LeTour"
tires were good too. Today I can get "handmade" non-vulcanized tires by
Challenge, Veloflex, or major brands like Vittoria that come pretty
close to duplicating sewup feel, rolling resistance, and (almost)
weight. Or I can get midweight vulcanized tires that are only slightly
heavier.
But some of the earlier attempts at "clincher reform" were, IIRC, pretty
crappy. One could easily have thought that "quality clincher" was a
pipe dream that would never take root.

Clipless pedals
This one is huge for me. When I had toestraps tightened enough to work
- and I kept 'em pretty loose - I still had killer problems with cold
feet in winter. With clipless, I have lots of room for shoe covers,
etc., not to mention other advantages. I know we don't all agree, but
the overwhelming adoption of clipless can't /just/ be marketing.
BUT OMG were there a bunch of poor, crappy, and even
disastrous/dangerous clipless designs early on. Sampson comes to mind,
or especially the Cinelli M71 pedal. I've forgotten the names of most
of the others, but they certainly gave the impression that clipless
pedals were crazy.

Indexed shifting
Again, we don't all agree, but the overwhelming majority of cyclists
seem to think that index shifting is a pretty neat idea. Despite some
real turkeys early on (Positron and Positron II, anyone?), turkeys that
"clearly" signaled that index shifting was an answer to a question
nobody asked, it turns out you *can* make a quality indexed shifter.
Who knew?

I could go on. Brifters, LED/LiPo lights, aluminum and carbon frames,
bicycle computers, nylon saddles (that's reaching back many years), and
yes, disc brakes, etc. - and all those advances coming on the scene with
many poor early designs, and surrounded by junk we still laugh about
that never amounted to anything. But if we could tell which inventions
would blossom when we first saw them, we'd all have invested in Intel
and Microsoft in the 70's and be rich now.

So even though I agree with Frank about "churn" in large part, that
churn turns out a few not-immediately-recognizable innovations that most
of us are glad about. A sort of Darwinian evolution, if you will.
While the industry may be super-mature, it ain't done yet.

Mark J.

I can remember when BIYCLING magazine had an article about NOT needing 15
gears on a bicycle. They stated in their article that 10 gears was more than enough.

I've tried clipless pedals but had problems getting out of them at times
and then falling over and getting scraped up a bit. Therefore I went back
to toeclips. For most of my riding I don't even have to snug up the
straps let alone tighten them up yet my feet stay on the pedals.
Besides, toestraps have LOTS of other uses. I've used one to keep a
dressing on a cut on a leg. I've used them to secure a jacket and tights
to the underside of my saddle after the temperatures rose to from quite
chilly to quite warm. I've used a toestrap to secure an extra water
bottle under a saddle. I've looped a toestrap around my handlebar and
stem and used it as makeshift bottle holder to hold a cup of coffee. I
used 2 toestraps joined together to hold something to the rear rack on a
bicycle. Hard to do any of that if you have clipless pedals. LOL VBEG ;)

I can remember too when downtube shifters sometimes would wear, or at
least the innards would, to the point where it was nearly impossible to
keep in the gear one wanted.

I think pneumatic clincher tires with separate tubes, decent derailleurs
and decent index shifting are 3 of the major innovations that caused
bicycling to grow as much as it has in North America.

I like my Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters on my touring bike. The left
shifter is ratchet and thus it's dead simple to trim the front
derailleur. I find I shift more often on hills with a load with the Ergos
t han I did even with bar-end shifters. However, I still like my downtube
shifters that i have on some of my other bikes. I especially like my
top-center mounted Dura Ace AX shifters and my top-center downtube
mounted Suntour symetric shifters (?) because they can be shifted front
and rear with just one hand at the same time.

In winter I really like my Lyotard MB23 platform pedals*. They're Frank's favourite pedals.

For me and for many others even 7 gears in t he rear with 2 or 3
chainrings is plenty. I like Shimano 9-speed clusters because I can set
them up with 7 cogs for most riding but with 2 larger cogs for bailout
gears. I use a Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters and rear derailler to shift my
9-speed Shimano cassette on my touring bike.

Some folks who are really into fitness riding or fast-paced group riding
probably love more gears because the increases in effort between gears
isn't as great as it is in 7, 6, or 5 speed cassettes.

Again a lot of bicycle innovations are different horses for different courses.

At least now we have a lot of equipment choices that can be used to give
us the customized bike we WANT or NEED for OUR style of riding.


That last sentence says it all.



--
duane

Something the 'dinosaurs' will never understand and claim everone is a victim of marketing. When I bought my first serious roadbike I had the choice between 3 saddles: junk, crap and doesn't fit.....

Lou


Yet, Brooks was marketing saddles in 1888. A saddle that even today
people pay rather astonishing amounts of money to own and ride.
The B-17 was introduced in the 1890's and is still marketed today.
That is nearly 130 years that folks have been buying that particular
saddle which would seem to indicate that it is not considered as
"junk, crap and doesn't fit".


We host touring cyclists through Warm Showers. Brooks are probably the
most common of the saddle brands under the cycle tourists that arrive here.

Having said that, Brooks don't happen to work for me, except for my 3
speed about-town bike. We're all different down there.


Yes!

Bontrager, which seems to be a TREK brand, has a thing that you sit on
which is suppose to "measure" you and allow the selection of a saddle
that fits perfectly. Having already bought a large of saddles that
didn't fit I tried it out and bought a brand new Bontrager's saddle...
it didn't fit :-(

Luckily I bought, years ago, a second hand bike with a saddle that was
a perfect fit and that had the brand and model number stamped on it. A
Velo V-1205. Unfortunately Velo saddles don't seemed to be common here
so I've only been able to buy one more, second hand.

I could of course, order a Velo 1205 from Andrew but by the time
postage and duties were added in I could probably buy a Brooks :-)


Cheers,
John B.


  #88  
Old January 15th 19, 02:45 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Duane[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,546
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 18:48:00 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2019 6:06 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 06:28:18 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Monday, January 14, 2019 at 12:22:03 PM UTC+1, Duane wrote:
Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 9:57:50 PM UTC-5, Mark J. wrote:
On 1/13/2019 4:35 AM, Tosspot wrote:
On 1/12/19 6:46 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/12/2019 12:11 AM,
wrote:
Seriously, what is the point of these things? What problem do they
solve and is it worth the extra maintenance hassles for non-racing
riders?

Part of the point is "churning." Bikes and bike parts are a
super-mature industry, and bikes and their products last decades. (My
favorite bike is from 1986.) So the industry tries to come up with new
ideas every year, just to entice you to buy _something_.

Going back to the 1970s, it was "Ten speeds!" then "Touring bikes!"
then "Aluminum!" then "Mountain bikes!" ... and on and on, with front
suspension, full suspension, 6 speeds, 7 speeds, 8 & 9 & 10 & 11
speeds, carbon fiber, electronic shifting etc. It goes on forever.

Currently it's disc brakes, tubeless tires and "gravel bikes." For
almost everyone who rides a bicycle, the improvements (if any) are
almost undetectable. We are deeply into diminishing returns, no matter
what miracles the supposed connoisseurs claim.

I take issue.* Indexed ergo shifters vs downtube friction shifters, LED
LiPo lights vs dodgy glow worms, and this is going to cause trouble,
yes, hydraulic discs vs cable rim brakes.


I think Tosspot has nailed it here, though Frank's not wrong either, in
large part.

Yes, those of us who have watched cycling's new products for a while
(~40 years for me) know that there's a lot of useless junk that shows
up. There are also some great improvements, and some wonders. While we
will disagree about some (many) of them, let's admit that available
products today include a lot of great innovations.

But here's the thing - at first it was hard to tell which area of
"improvement" would really work. I think most of the categories of
improvements we enjoy today had early failures - hilariously so in some
cases, and they were surrounded by other "categorical failures", ideas
that really turned out to be entirely useless.

Here's a partial list (according to me) of big improvements I've seen
that weren't obvious in their first appearance:

Low-cost aluminum... cranks, derailleurs, etc.
I worked episodically in a Raleigh shop in the later 70's, assembling
new bikes. Right about then Raleigh shifted from lots of steel (or
plastic) Nervar, Simplex, Huret stuff to aluminum Sugino, SunTour, and
SR stuff. The latter was vastly easier to set up well. But there was
junk (plenty of it?) in the cheap aluminum component category. I
remember a cottered aluminum crank (!). In the earlier 70s, I doubt we
would have thought that low-cost aluminum parts could ever be good.

Quality clincher tires (first decent ones, then great ones).
When I started riding, no clincher came close to the quality, rolling
resistance, weight of sewups, pain-in-the-ass though they are. Then SBI
(Specialized Bicycle Imports, later shortened), IRC, and then Michelin
started selling very nice clinchers, and Schwinn's outsourced "LeTour"
tires were good too. Today I can get "handmade" non-vulcanized tires by
Challenge, Veloflex, or major brands like Vittoria that come pretty
close to duplicating sewup feel, rolling resistance, and (almost)
weight. Or I can get midweight vulcanized tires that are only slightly
heavier.
But some of the earlier attempts at "clincher reform" were, IIRC, pretty
crappy. One could easily have thought that "quality clincher" was a
pipe dream that would never take root.

Clipless pedals
This one is huge for me. When I had toestraps tightened enough to work
- and I kept 'em pretty loose - I still had killer problems with cold
feet in winter. With clipless, I have lots of room for shoe covers,
etc., not to mention other advantages. I know we don't all agree, but
the overwhelming adoption of clipless can't /just/ be marketing.
BUT OMG were there a bunch of poor, crappy, and even
disastrous/dangerous clipless designs early on. Sampson comes to mind,
or especially the Cinelli M71 pedal. I've forgotten the names of most
of the others, but they certainly gave the impression that clipless
pedals were crazy.

Indexed shifting
Again, we don't all agree, but the overwhelming majority of cyclists
seem to think that index shifting is a pretty neat idea. Despite some
real turkeys early on (Positron and Positron II, anyone?), turkeys that
"clearly" signaled that index shifting was an answer to a question
nobody asked, it turns out you *can* make a quality indexed shifter.
Who knew?

I could go on. Brifters, LED/LiPo lights, aluminum and carbon frames,
bicycle computers, nylon saddles (that's reaching back many years), and
yes, disc brakes, etc. - and all those advances coming on the scene with
many poor early designs, and surrounded by junk we still laugh about
that never amounted to anything. But if we could tell which inventions
would blossom when we first saw them, we'd all have invested in Intel
and Microsoft in the 70's and be rich now.

So even though I agree with Frank about "churn" in large part, that
churn turns out a few not-immediately-recognizable innovations that most
of us are glad about. A sort of Darwinian evolution, if you will.
While the industry may be super-mature, it ain't done yet.

Mark J.

I can remember when BIYCLING magazine had an article about NOT needing 15
gears on a bicycle. They stated in their article that 10 gears was more than enough.

I've tried clipless pedals but had problems getting out of them at times
and then falling over and getting scraped up a bit. Therefore I went back
to toeclips. For most of my riding I don't even have to snug up the
straps let alone tighten them up yet my feet stay on the pedals.
Besides, toestraps have LOTS of other uses. I've used one to keep a
dressing on a cut on a leg. I've used them to secure a jacket and tights
to the underside of my saddle after the temperatures rose to from quite
chilly to quite warm. I've used a toestrap to secure an extra water
bottle under a saddle. I've looped a toestrap around my handlebar and
stem and used it as makeshift bottle holder to hold a cup of coffee. I
used 2 toestraps joined together to hold something to the rear rack on a
bicycle. Hard to do any of that if you have clipless pedals. LOL VBEG ;)

I can remember too when downtube shifters sometimes would wear, or at
least the innards would, to the point where it was nearly impossible to
keep in the gear one wanted.

I think pneumatic clincher tires with separate tubes, decent derailleurs
and decent index shifting are 3 of the major innovations that caused
bicycling to grow as much as it has in North America.

I like my Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters on my touring bike. The left
shifter is ratchet and thus it's dead simple to trim the front
derailleur. I find I shift more often on hills with a load with the Ergos
t han I did even with bar-end shifters. However, I still like my downtube
shifters that i have on some of my other bikes. I especially like my
top-center mounted Dura Ace AX shifters and my top-center downtube
mounted Suntour symetric shifters (?) because they can be shifted front
and rear with just one hand at the same time.

In winter I really like my Lyotard MB23 platform pedals*. They're
Frank's favourite pedals.

For me and for many others even 7 gears in t he rear with 2 or 3
chainrings is plenty. I like Shimano 9-speed clusters because I can set
them up with 7 cogs for most riding but with 2 larger cogs for bailout
gears. I use a Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters and rear derailler to shift my
9-speed Shimano cassette on my touring bike.

Some folks who are really into fitness riding or fast-paced group riding
probably love more gears because the increases in effort between gears
isn't as great as it is in 7, 6, or 5 speed cassettes.

Again a lot of bicycle innovations are different horses for different courses.

At least now we have a lot of equipment choices that can be used to give
us the customized bike we WANT or NEED for OUR style of riding.


That last sentence says it all.



--
duane

Something the 'dinosaurs' will never understand and claim everone is a
victim of marketing. When I bought my first serious roadbike I had the
choice between 3 saddles: junk, crap and doesn't fit.....

Lou

Yet, Brooks was marketing saddles in 1888. A saddle that even today
people pay rather astonishing amounts of money to own and ride.
The B-17 was introduced in the 1890's and is still marketed today.
That is nearly 130 years that folks have been buying that particular
saddle which would seem to indicate that it is not considered as
"junk, crap and doesn't fit".


We host touring cyclists through Warm Showers. Brooks are probably the
most common of the saddle brands under the cycle tourists that arrive here.

Having said that, Brooks don't happen to work for me, except for my 3
speed about-town bike. We're all different down there.


Yes!

Bontrager, which seems to be a TREK brand, has a thing that you sit on
which is suppose to "measure" you and allow the selection of a saddle
that fits perfectly. Having already bought a large of saddles that
didn't fit I tried it out and bought a brand new Bontrager's saddle...
it didn't fit :-(

Luckily I bought, years ago, a second hand bike with a saddle that was
a perfect fit and that had the brand and model number stamped on it. A
Velo V-1205. Unfortunately Velo saddles don't seemed to be common here
so I've only been able to buy one more, second hand.

I could of course, order a Velo 1205 from Andrew but by the time
postage and duties were added in I could probably buy a Brooks :-)


Cheers,
John B.




Saddles are a specific sort of thing. What works for one person can be
torture for another. There are too many variations based on the person,
the bike geometry and the type of riding. Getting one that is the right
size is only a starting point in my opinion.




--
duane
  #89  
Old January 15th 19, 03:23 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
AMuzi
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,447
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

On 1/14/2019 7:30 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 18:48:00 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2019 6:06 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 06:28:18 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Monday, January 14, 2019 at 12:22:03 PM UTC+1, Duane wrote:
Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 9:57:50 PM UTC-5, Mark J. wrote:
On 1/13/2019 4:35 AM, Tosspot wrote:
On 1/12/19 6:46 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/12/2019 12:11 AM,
wrote:
Seriously, what is the point of these things? What problem do they
solve and is it worth the extra maintenance hassles for non-racing
riders?

Part of the point is "churning." Bikes and bike parts are a
super-mature industry, and bikes and their products last decades. (My
favorite bike is from 1986.) So the industry tries to come up with new
ideas every year, just to entice you to buy _something_.

Going back to the 1970s, it was "Ten speeds!" then "Touring bikes!"
then "Aluminum!" then "Mountain bikes!" ... and on and on, with front
suspension, full suspension, 6 speeds, 7 speeds, 8 & 9 & 10 & 11
speeds, carbon fiber, electronic shifting etc. It goes on forever.

Currently it's disc brakes, tubeless tires and "gravel bikes." For
almost everyone who rides a bicycle, the improvements (if any) are
almost undetectable. We are deeply into diminishing returns, no matter
what miracles the supposed connoisseurs claim.

I take issue. Indexed ergo shifters vs downtube friction shifters, LED
LiPo lights vs dodgy glow worms, and this is going to cause trouble,
yes, hydraulic discs vs cable rim brakes.


I think Tosspot has nailed it here, though Frank's not wrong either, in
large part.

Yes, those of us who have watched cycling's new products for a while
(~40 years for me) know that there's a lot of useless junk that shows
up. There are also some great improvements, and some wonders. While we
will disagree about some (many) of them, let's admit that available
products today include a lot of great innovations.

But here's the thing - at first it was hard to tell which area of
"improvement" would really work. I think most of the categories of
improvements we enjoy today had early failures - hilariously so in some
cases, and they were surrounded by other "categorical failures", ideas
that really turned out to be entirely useless.

Here's a partial list (according to me) of big improvements I've seen
that weren't obvious in their first appearance:

Low-cost aluminum... cranks, derailleurs, etc.
I worked episodically in a Raleigh shop in the later 70's, assembling
new bikes. Right about then Raleigh shifted from lots of steel (or
plastic) Nervar, Simplex, Huret stuff to aluminum Sugino, SunTour, and
SR stuff. The latter was vastly easier to set up well. But there was
junk (plenty of it?) in the cheap aluminum component category. I
remember a cottered aluminum crank (!). In the earlier 70s, I doubt we
would have thought that low-cost aluminum parts could ever be good.

Quality clincher tires (first decent ones, then great ones).
When I started riding, no clincher came close to the quality, rolling
resistance, weight of sewups, pain-in-the-ass though they are. Then SBI
(Specialized Bicycle Imports, later shortened), IRC, and then Michelin
started selling very nice clinchers, and Schwinn's outsourced "LeTour"
tires were good too. Today I can get "handmade" non-vulcanized tires by
Challenge, Veloflex, or major brands like Vittoria that come pretty
close to duplicating sewup feel, rolling resistance, and (almost)
weight. Or I can get midweight vulcanized tires that are only slightly
heavier.
But some of the earlier attempts at "clincher reform" were, IIRC, pretty
crappy. One could easily have thought that "quality clincher" was a
pipe dream that would never take root.

Clipless pedals
This one is huge for me. When I had toestraps tightened enough to work
- and I kept 'em pretty loose - I still had killer problems with cold
feet in winter. With clipless, I have lots of room for shoe covers,
etc., not to mention other advantages. I know we don't all agree, but
the overwhelming adoption of clipless can't /just/ be marketing.
BUT OMG were there a bunch of poor, crappy, and even
disastrous/dangerous clipless designs early on. Sampson comes to mind,
or especially the Cinelli M71 pedal. I've forgotten the names of most
of the others, but they certainly gave the impression that clipless
pedals were crazy.

Indexed shifting
Again, we don't all agree, but the overwhelming majority of cyclists
seem to think that index shifting is a pretty neat idea. Despite some
real turkeys early on (Positron and Positron II, anyone?), turkeys that
"clearly" signaled that index shifting was an answer to a question
nobody asked, it turns out you *can* make a quality indexed shifter.
Who knew?

I could go on. Brifters, LED/LiPo lights, aluminum and carbon frames,
bicycle computers, nylon saddles (that's reaching back many years), and
yes, disc brakes, etc. - and all those advances coming on the scene with
many poor early designs, and surrounded by junk we still laugh about
that never amounted to anything. But if we could tell which inventions
would blossom when we first saw them, we'd all have invested in Intel
and Microsoft in the 70's and be rich now.

So even though I agree with Frank about "churn" in large part, that
churn turns out a few not-immediately-recognizable innovations that most
of us are glad about. A sort of Darwinian evolution, if you will.
While the industry may be super-mature, it ain't done yet.

Mark J.

I can remember when BIYCLING magazine had an article about NOT needing 15
gears on a bicycle. They stated in their article that 10 gears was more than enough.

I've tried clipless pedals but had problems getting out of them at times
and then falling over and getting scraped up a bit. Therefore I went back
to toeclips. For most of my riding I don't even have to snug up the
straps let alone tighten them up yet my feet stay on the pedals.
Besides, toestraps have LOTS of other uses. I've used one to keep a
dressing on a cut on a leg. I've used them to secure a jacket and tights
to the underside of my saddle after the temperatures rose to from quite
chilly to quite warm. I've used a toestrap to secure an extra water
bottle under a saddle. I've looped a toestrap around my handlebar and
stem and used it as makeshift bottle holder to hold a cup of coffee. I
used 2 toestraps joined together to hold something to the rear rack on a
bicycle. Hard to do any of that if you have clipless pedals. LOL VBEG ;)

I can remember too when downtube shifters sometimes would wear, or at
least the innards would, to the point where it was nearly impossible to
keep in the gear one wanted.

I think pneumatic clincher tires with separate tubes, decent derailleurs
and decent index shifting are 3 of the major innovations that caused
bicycling to grow as much as it has in North America.

I like my Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters on my touring bike. The left
shifter is ratchet and thus it's dead simple to trim the front
derailleur. I find I shift more often on hills with a load with the Ergos
t han I did even with bar-end shifters. However, I still like my downtube
shifters that i have on some of my other bikes. I especially like my
top-center mounted Dura Ace AX shifters and my top-center downtube
mounted Suntour symetric shifters (?) because they can be shifted front
and rear with just one hand at the same time.

In winter I really like my Lyotard MB23 platform pedals*. They're Frank's favourite pedals.

For me and for many others even 7 gears in t he rear with 2 or 3
chainrings is plenty. I like Shimano 9-speed clusters because I can set
them up with 7 cogs for most riding but with 2 larger cogs for bailout
gears. I use a Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters and rear derailler to shift my
9-speed Shimano cassette on my touring bike.

Some folks who are really into fitness riding or fast-paced group riding
probably love more gears because the increases in effort between gears
isn't as great as it is in 7, 6, or 5 speed cassettes.

Again a lot of bicycle innovations are different horses for different courses.

At least now we have a lot of equipment choices that can be used to give
us the customized bike we WANT or NEED for OUR style of riding.


That last sentence says it all.



--
duane

Something the 'dinosaurs' will never understand and claim everone is a victim of marketing. When I bought my first serious roadbike I had the choice between 3 saddles: junk, crap and doesn't fit.....

Lou

Yet, Brooks was marketing saddles in 1888. A saddle that even today
people pay rather astonishing amounts of money to own and ride.
The B-17 was introduced in the 1890's and is still marketed today.
That is nearly 130 years that folks have been buying that particular
saddle which would seem to indicate that it is not considered as
"junk, crap and doesn't fit".


We host touring cyclists through Warm Showers. Brooks are probably the
most common of the saddle brands under the cycle tourists that arrive here.

Having said that, Brooks don't happen to work for me, except for my 3
speed about-town bike. We're all different down there.


Yes!

Bontrager, which seems to be a TREK brand, has a thing that you sit on
which is suppose to "measure" you and allow the selection of a saddle
that fits perfectly. Having already bought a large of saddles that
didn't fit I tried it out and bought a brand new Bontrager's saddle...
it didn't fit :-(

Luckily I bought, years ago, a second hand bike with a saddle that was
a perfect fit and that had the brand and model number stamped on it. A
Velo V-1205. Unfortunately Velo saddles don't seemed to be common here
so I've only been able to buy one more, second hand.

I could of course, order a Velo 1205 from Andrew but by the time
postage and duties were added in I could probably buy a Brooks :-)


Cheers,
John B.



I did not recognize the number but a web search shows:

https://www.amazon.com/Endzone-Orang.../dp/B00H6PC7WG

https://www.alibaba.com/product-deta...006276926.html


--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971


  #90  
Old January 15th 19, 04:52 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
John B. Slocomb
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 805
Default What is the point of tubeless tires?

On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 01:45:23 -0000 (UTC), Duane
wrote:

John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 18:48:00 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2019 6:06 PM, John B. Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 06:28:18 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Monday, January 14, 2019 at 12:22:03 PM UTC+1, Duane wrote:
Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Sunday, January 13, 2019 at 9:57:50 PM UTC-5, Mark J. wrote:
On 1/13/2019 4:35 AM, Tosspot wrote:
On 1/12/19 6:46 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/12/2019 12:11 AM,
wrote:
Seriously, what is the point of these things? What problem do they
solve and is it worth the extra maintenance hassles for non-racing
riders?

Part of the point is "churning." Bikes and bike parts are a
super-mature industry, and bikes and their products last decades. (My
favorite bike is from 1986.) So the industry tries to come up with new
ideas every year, just to entice you to buy _something_.

Going back to the 1970s, it was "Ten speeds!" then "Touring bikes!"
then "Aluminum!" then "Mountain bikes!" ... and on and on, with front
suspension, full suspension, 6 speeds, 7 speeds, 8 & 9 & 10 & 11
speeds, carbon fiber, electronic shifting etc. It goes on forever.

Currently it's disc brakes, tubeless tires and "gravel bikes." For
almost everyone who rides a bicycle, the improvements (if any) are
almost undetectable. We are deeply into diminishing returns, no matter
what miracles the supposed connoisseurs claim.

I take issue.* Indexed ergo shifters vs downtube friction shifters, LED
LiPo lights vs dodgy glow worms, and this is going to cause trouble,
yes, hydraulic discs vs cable rim brakes.


I think Tosspot has nailed it here, though Frank's not wrong either, in
large part.

Yes, those of us who have watched cycling's new products for a while
(~40 years for me) know that there's a lot of useless junk that shows
up. There are also some great improvements, and some wonders. While we
will disagree about some (many) of them, let's admit that available
products today include a lot of great innovations.

But here's the thing - at first it was hard to tell which area of
"improvement" would really work. I think most of the categories of
improvements we enjoy today had early failures - hilariously so in some
cases, and they were surrounded by other "categorical failures", ideas
that really turned out to be entirely useless.

Here's a partial list (according to me) of big improvements I've seen
that weren't obvious in their first appearance:

Low-cost aluminum... cranks, derailleurs, etc.
I worked episodically in a Raleigh shop in the later 70's, assembling
new bikes. Right about then Raleigh shifted from lots of steel (or
plastic) Nervar, Simplex, Huret stuff to aluminum Sugino, SunTour, and
SR stuff. The latter was vastly easier to set up well. But there was
junk (plenty of it?) in the cheap aluminum component category. I
remember a cottered aluminum crank (!). In the earlier 70s, I doubt we
would have thought that low-cost aluminum parts could ever be good.

Quality clincher tires (first decent ones, then great ones).
When I started riding, no clincher came close to the quality, rolling
resistance, weight of sewups, pain-in-the-ass though they are. Then SBI
(Specialized Bicycle Imports, later shortened), IRC, and then Michelin
started selling very nice clinchers, and Schwinn's outsourced "LeTour"
tires were good too. Today I can get "handmade" non-vulcanized tires by
Challenge, Veloflex, or major brands like Vittoria that come pretty
close to duplicating sewup feel, rolling resistance, and (almost)
weight. Or I can get midweight vulcanized tires that are only slightly
heavier.
But some of the earlier attempts at "clincher reform" were, IIRC, pretty
crappy. One could easily have thought that "quality clincher" was a
pipe dream that would never take root.

Clipless pedals
This one is huge for me. When I had toestraps tightened enough to work
- and I kept 'em pretty loose - I still had killer problems with cold
feet in winter. With clipless, I have lots of room for shoe covers,
etc., not to mention other advantages. I know we don't all agree, but
the overwhelming adoption of clipless can't /just/ be marketing.
BUT OMG were there a bunch of poor, crappy, and even
disastrous/dangerous clipless designs early on. Sampson comes to mind,
or especially the Cinelli M71 pedal. I've forgotten the names of most
of the others, but they certainly gave the impression that clipless
pedals were crazy.

Indexed shifting
Again, we don't all agree, but the overwhelming majority of cyclists
seem to think that index shifting is a pretty neat idea. Despite some
real turkeys early on (Positron and Positron II, anyone?), turkeys that
"clearly" signaled that index shifting was an answer to a question
nobody asked, it turns out you *can* make a quality indexed shifter.
Who knew?

I could go on. Brifters, LED/LiPo lights, aluminum and carbon frames,
bicycle computers, nylon saddles (that's reaching back many years), and
yes, disc brakes, etc. - and all those advances coming on the scene with
many poor early designs, and surrounded by junk we still laugh about
that never amounted to anything. But if we could tell which inventions
would blossom when we first saw them, we'd all have invested in Intel
and Microsoft in the 70's and be rich now.

So even though I agree with Frank about "churn" in large part, that
churn turns out a few not-immediately-recognizable innovations that most
of us are glad about. A sort of Darwinian evolution, if you will.
While the industry may be super-mature, it ain't done yet.

Mark J.

I can remember when BIYCLING magazine had an article about NOT needing 15
gears on a bicycle. They stated in their article that 10 gears was more than enough.

I've tried clipless pedals but had problems getting out of them at times
and then falling over and getting scraped up a bit. Therefore I went back
to toeclips. For most of my riding I don't even have to snug up the
straps let alone tighten them up yet my feet stay on the pedals.
Besides, toestraps have LOTS of other uses. I've used one to keep a
dressing on a cut on a leg. I've used them to secure a jacket and tights
to the underside of my saddle after the temperatures rose to from quite
chilly to quite warm. I've used a toestrap to secure an extra water
bottle under a saddle. I've looped a toestrap around my handlebar and
stem and used it as makeshift bottle holder to hold a cup of coffee. I
used 2 toestraps joined together to hold something to the rear rack on a
bicycle. Hard to do any of that if you have clipless pedals. LOL VBEG ;)

I can remember too when downtube shifters sometimes would wear, or at
least the innards would, to the point where it was nearly impossible to
keep in the gear one wanted.

I think pneumatic clincher tires with separate tubes, decent derailleurs
and decent index shifting are 3 of the major innovations that caused
bicycling to grow as much as it has in North America.

I like my Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters on my touring bike. The left
shifter is ratchet and thus it's dead simple to trim the front
derailleur. I find I shift more often on hills with a load with the Ergos
t han I did even with bar-end shifters. However, I still like my downtube
shifters that i have on some of my other bikes. I especially like my
top-center mounted Dura Ace AX shifters and my top-center downtube
mounted Suntour symetric shifters (?) because they can be shifted front
and rear with just one hand at the same time.

In winter I really like my Lyotard MB23 platform pedals*. They're
Frank's favourite pedals.

For me and for many others even 7 gears in t he rear with 2 or 3
chainrings is plenty. I like Shimano 9-speed clusters because I can set
them up with 7 cogs for most riding but with 2 larger cogs for bailout
gears. I use a Campy Ergo 9-speed shifters and rear derailler to shift my
9-speed Shimano cassette on my touring bike.

Some folks who are really into fitness riding or fast-paced group riding
probably love more gears because the increases in effort between gears
isn't as great as it is in 7, 6, or 5 speed cassettes.

Again a lot of bicycle innovations are different horses for different courses.

At least now we have a lot of equipment choices that can be used to give
us the customized bike we WANT or NEED for OUR style of riding.


That last sentence says it all.



--
duane

Something the 'dinosaurs' will never understand and claim everone is a
victim of marketing. When I bought my first serious roadbike I had the
choice between 3 saddles: junk, crap and doesn't fit.....

Lou

Yet, Brooks was marketing saddles in 1888. A saddle that even today
people pay rather astonishing amounts of money to own and ride.
The B-17 was introduced in the 1890's and is still marketed today.
That is nearly 130 years that folks have been buying that particular
saddle which would seem to indicate that it is not considered as
"junk, crap and doesn't fit".

We host touring cyclists through Warm Showers. Brooks are probably the
most common of the saddle brands under the cycle tourists that arrive here.

Having said that, Brooks don't happen to work for me, except for my 3
speed about-town bike. We're all different down there.


Yes!

Bontrager, which seems to be a TREK brand, has a thing that you sit on
which is suppose to "measure" you and allow the selection of a saddle
that fits perfectly. Having already bought a large of saddles that
didn't fit I tried it out and bought a brand new Bontrager's saddle...
it didn't fit :-(

Luckily I bought, years ago, a second hand bike with a saddle that was
a perfect fit and that had the brand and model number stamped on it. A
Velo V-1205. Unfortunately Velo saddles don't seemed to be common here
so I've only been able to buy one more, second hand.

I could of course, order a Velo 1205 from Andrew but by the time
postage and duties were added in I could probably buy a Brooks :-)


Cheers,
John B.




Saddles are a specific sort of thing. What works for one person can be
torture for another. There are too many variations based on the person,
the bike geometry and the type of riding. Getting one that is the right
size is only a starting point in my opinion.


That is certainly true. The Bintrager device was a sheet of plastic
with, apparently a layer of some jelly like stuff and covered by a
sheet of clear plastic. You sat on it for a while and your "sit bones"
indented the clear plastic which had a scale embossed on it and you
then use that to select the proper size saddle. Which didn't work for
me :-(

Riding in Bangkok, which is essentially flat, one can adjust the
saddle and it will feel right as long as you have the bike. However,
since we moved (about 200 km N.E. of Bangkok) there are hills and the
thought sometimes enters my mind, usually when going either up or down
hill, that "maybe the saddle needs adjusting" but of course as soon as
I hit level going the saddle feels just right :-)


Cheers,
John B.


 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Tubeless Tires. [email protected] Techniques 0 November 18th 18 10:09 PM
Tubeless Tires [email protected] Techniques 16 August 20th 18 03:57 PM
Tubeless Tires [email protected] Techniques 5 April 12th 17 03:49 AM
tubeless tires steve Techniques 2 March 14th 08 12:18 PM
Tubeless tires MT Techniques 2 March 30th 05 09:08 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 11:13 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 CycleBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.