Forum Replies Created
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Replies
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If the lever travel has
If the lever travel has increased substantially then a bleed will almost certainly be necessary – thinning pad will only really effect level travel by the degree to which the pad has worn. Given a brake bleed is a relatively cheap workshop job – if you don’t want to do it yourself, which unless you have lots of disc braked bikes to service is a lot of hassle anyway as you waste so much fluid due to it having such a short shelf life once opened – I would just drop the bike into a shop for them to take a look.
Titsey is rubbish as a
Titsey is rubbish as a descent due to the poor surface and poor sight lines (cars coming up don’t stay over on their side). Much better to go up it and then down one the the slightly less bib short decimating descents nearby.
As with all descents though, the technique is going to be roughly the same. Scrub off speed early, better to go too slow than to wipe out because you can’t slow down enough. Look a decent distance ahead so that you can see any issues with the road surface – e.g. pot holes. Don’t sit on the saddle – hover above it so that you can absorb any impacts through your legs without getting bounced around. Also, shift your bum back a little bit to put more weight over the back wheel, and descend on the drops rather than the hoods, with your elbows bent (which should also help absorb some of the bumps). Try to relax your hands and not grip too hard – also relax your shoulders as much as you can (if you tense up it will effect the steering and make it harder to flow over bumps).
The best descenders tend to be those who do a lot of mountain biking – you get more used to understanding the feedback that you are getting from the bike under you and more used to the bike moving around a lot more. Get out on the trails and have some fun, and you will reap big rewards on the road
As VeloUSA said, time for new
As VeloUSA said, time for new hoods. Shouldn’t be particularly expensive http://www.wiggle.co.uk/sram-doubletap-brake-hoods/
I would be surprised if that doesn’t help. You could also try sticking a thick rubber band (the wide flat type) tightly round the hood to give you something extra grip-wise. Won’t look pretty but does give extra grip
How do they come out size
How do they come out size wise? Are they pretty true to standard sizing or do they come up a bit small / narrow?
Hate to be negative but don’t
Hate to be negative but don’t do it. I have run tubeless tyres on road bikes for the past 5 years and love them – to the point where i would now never go back to standard tubed tyres. BUT, this has always been on rims designed to be run tubeless.
The main problem a road tubeless set-up faces is pressure. You can convert almost any old mountain bike wheel to run tubeless at low pressures, but road wheels are a whole different kettle of fish. Rims that are designed to be run tubeless have a different shaped bead hook to most non-tubeless rims. This is designed to maintain a much tighter and more resiliant hold of the tyre, especially under high pressure.
You will probably be able to successfully convert the Mavic’s so that they work tubeless, but the risk that the tyre will blow off the rim will be massively higher than on a proper tubeless compatible rim. This isn’t a major issue if it happens at home, but imagine it happening when you are flying down a descent. The conversion may seem rideable initially, but will it be able to cope with the changes in pressure caused by going through a pothole, or hitting any sort of bump in the road?
Get a bike fit if you are not
Get a bike fit if you are not 100% sure that what you have is perfect – your position may be agravating the situation.
Might be that the saddle you are using just isn’t right for you.
Try changing to a different brand of shorts – different shaped pad may help.
May be an issue where is is worth going to the doctors – there may be an underlying issue that they could help with.
May be worth checking yourself for ingrowing hairs down there – sorting these out may help.
Let the sores recover – take a break for a week or so to let them heal up
I’ve done a couple of CX
I’ve done a couple of CX races on my Grade (Carbon 105). Running Schwalbe X-One tyres tubeless at 35psi worked really well. I’m a fat sod, so if you’re not really heavy you could probably go lower on the pressure if you’re running tubeless. Even at 90kg+ i think I could have run 30PSI ok.
The bike is more than robust enough to deal with CX. The biggest problem I had was with gearing. The semi compact chainset meant that I was fine in terms of low gears (36-32 is as low as you’ll get on an out and out CX bike most of the time) but the 52 tooth big ring was just too big (not that you’ll be wanting to use it much in a CX race).
If the course is relatively dry it will work great. If there is heavy mud then the clearances on my grade are not brilliant, so you may get slowed up a bit by mud blocking the tyre
To be frank they are all good
To be frank they are all good bikes. I have the GT Grade Carbon 105 and absolutely love it. The biggest thing holding it back on the road, and this goes for all of these bikes, is the wheelset. The Stans Grail’s that come on the GT are brilliant but they are certainly not the lightest. I am tempted to get a second lighter set of wheels for use on rides where I know that I won’t be tackling any rough stuff. That said, I’ve managed a number of gold times on various sportives so the bike in its current configaration is certainly not holding me back much.
I’m super paranoid though, to the extent that I’ve practiced getting the tyre off and a tube in while in a cold shower to make sure that I can do it out in the rain if I absolutely have to.err…. excuse me… that’s not normal!
Well, I never claimed to be normal 😉
In all seriousness though, tubeless or tubed I would recommend practicing fitting a tube in adverse conditions. The last thing you want is to find yourself struggling in the cold and wet for any longer than absolutely necessary.
I’ve been running tubeless
I’ve been running tubeless tyres for the past five years and have had an overwhelmingly positive experience with them.
In that time I have only had one puncture while out riding that the sealant couldn’t deal with, and that was because i was left with a six inch gash in the tyre that you couldn’t just fix by adding in a spare tube (so would have been just as bad on a standard tubed tyre). That is literally the only time where I have had a puncture and not just simply been able to carry on riding (stopping to add a little more air into the tyres if the punture was on the larger side).
I don’t race, apart from the odd TT, so my experience comes from general riding, commuting, sportives and multi-day rides. There is absolutely no way I would ever go back to riding with tubes. The little bit of faff involved in fitting (which has actually come down with time as the new generation of tubeless tyres are so much better than they were when I first moved over to tubeless) is more than made up for by virtually never having to deal with punctures. If you ride throughout the year you will know just how horrible it is to change a tube in driving rain on a cold winter ride, when everything is covered in grit. With tubeless tyres the likelihood is that you will never have to do this again.
With no tube you remove the most common sort of puncture – pinch flats. Sealant deal with virtually everything else.
Currently I’m running Schwalbe One Pros (25mm currently, although when they wear out I’ll probably switch to 28s) on DT Swiss wheels, with Hutchinson sealant on my main road bike (a Rose Xeon CDX). I also have a GT Grade Carbon 105, that I run with a variety of different tyres dependent on what sort of ride I have lined up. For road rides I’ve got a set of Hutchinson Sectors (28mm), offroad Schwalbe X-One (33mm cyclocross tyres) and I’m currently testing a set of Schwalbe G-One tyres (35mm). These are on Stan Grail Wheels, again with Hutchinson sealant. I always use about twice as much sealant as recommended.
I still carry a spare tube on every ride – I think it would be tempting fate too much to not do so. I’m super paranoid though, to the extent that I’ve practiced getting the tyre off and a tube in while in a cold shower to make sure that I can do it out in the rain if I absolutely have to. Although a tubeless set-up can potentially save a little bit of weight, this really shouldn’t be the reason you try tubeless. The better ride quality (partly from being able to run slightly lower pressures with no downside) and the lack of punctures are the reasons I love it.
The major downside of road tubeless is that you do have to have rims that are designed for tubeless tyres. At mountain bike pressures you can convert almost any rim to run tubeless, but at road pressures the tyre will just blow off the rim or be very unsafe) if the rim is not specifically designed to be run with tubeless tyres. This limits choice quite a bit, but more and more wheel manufacturers are getting on board with tubeless now. Tyre choice is also much more limited, but again this is getting better with time. The current batch of Schwalbe tubeless tyres are absolutely spectacular, both in terms of ride quality and in ease of getting on (when I first started running tubeless, with hutchinson fushion 3s, getting the tyre on and off of the rim was an absolute nightmare – this just isnt the case anymore). Worth taking a look at this: http://road.cc/content/buyers-guide/182561-buyers-guide-tubeless-tyres-%E2%80%94-all-your-options-new-technology-rubber
What he said. Definitely go for an excellent alloy frame with a better groupset, than a cheap carbon frame and a fairly rubbish group as it would be for £999.Yeah, there simply aren’t that many really good carbon frames at the £1,000 mark. You could get a very good aluminium frame with good components, and build in extra comfort by having wider tyres, perhaps a nice carbon seatpost. An alloy bike at this price range is likely to have much better wheels than a carbon bike at the same price, and you will feel the difference they make
Dammit, wish I’d seen this. Awesome ride by Laura T.Yeah, sounds like it was a good session. Wish I’d been able to go. I almost bankrupted myself getting tickets to a few other sessions, so hopefully they will make up for missing last night!
baucutts wrote:
Hi Paul, Are these still available? SebYep, still available 🙂
Email me on paulrattew @ hotmail.com if you want more info
I have 2 spare tickets for
I have 2 spare tickets for Thursday evening’s session of the track cycling world championships in London. I can’t go anymore as my mum is going into hospital that day. They are great seats – face value of the tickets is £50 each.
I am looking for £50 for the pair – great chance to grab a bargain.
Let me know if you are interested.
Paul
Buy a track bike. Switch the
Buy a track bike. Switch the fork for a TT fork (that is drilled for a front brake). Add brake. Done. Ive done a few 10 mile TTs on my track bike – great fun but a completely different experience to doing it on a bike with multiple gears or a freewheel. There is absolutely no respite when you are on a fixed gear. You cannot really rest, down hills are horrendous as your legs get pulled around at 200rpm and even slight inclines can bring you grovelling to a stand still.
I wouldn’t try to run a bike with a frame designed for multiple gears as a fixed gear bike. Fine to run as a single-speed with a freehub, but not so easy to do fixed. Hub widths become an issue, and also a standard drop out is poorly designed to deal with the forces that a fixed gear bike places on it.
