Mar '17 29

Sewn or tire? To be or have?

Here's Maciek. Somewhere in the middle of Jeseníky, on a Sunday afternoon he goes for a walk with a bicycle. You can choose from either blisters on your feet from a 3-hour walk in the same socks on the asphalt, or massacring your white cycling jersey. Then he will sit in the cold for 2 hours, waiting for the car to come for him. Through all these hours, he promises himself that he will never be on the road again without a spare tube, pump and patch stock. Just as he promised it many times in the past and in the future. Does another tire help? Better tug or tire?


Do you know what pressure you had in your tires (or tubular tires) during your last racing or regular bike ride? Yes, the word ride is bad, but I do not know a better counterpart. If not and you pump on the feel, until it is hard or pumped 2 weeks ago and "probably still is good" then I would postpone the selection of tires for a while. Possibly limited to: which rubber the air goes down the slowest. Because how many watts we save and how quickly we will end up with grip on the bend, however, depends mainly on the condition of our tires. I omit here tires that are made of a garden hose.

The problem is that nobody knows exactly how much to pump. This so-called secret knowledge and every mechanic has its own. We can use, for example, a table from Michelin, which looks quite credibly (because it has two variables, colors, nice pictures and is in English):


Tire pressure on a road bike


But a moment later it turns out that the variables in life are of course a lot more (surface, weather, temperature changes), and other sources give completely different proposals - google: road bike tire pressure chart. For example, the change in air temperature by 10 degrees Fahrenheit (about 5 degrees) is a change in tire pressure by about 2%. And yet when driving in the mountains, temperature changes by 20 degrees are nothing extraordinary (source with difficult patterns).

Finding the optimal pressure requires from us either experience and a lot of experience, or self-commenting skills that a given setting is optimal. At the congresses, apart from the equipment, the most important thing is self-confidence, and it just gives her the feeling that everything has been perfectly matched.

Suppose, however, that we are PRO. Or completely non-pro, because more than on this proverbial saving of watts, we care about cool equipment. It's a bit mine, not a very reasonable approach, I would have gained more by cleaning the drive regularly, but I know I will not do it. Comparing two similarly unadorned drives or tires, the better will be better.

We come to a very important question: a tubular or a tire? Most of us will sooner or later face this dilemma. Even if it is not planned, because the wheels for the price bar at bargain prices appear on the Allegro every now and then, and who would not want to have a cone?

At the beginning a quick explanation. How the tire works, probably everyone knows - the rim with edges holds the tire under which the inner tube is located, which we fill with air. In a tubular tube we have a sewn-in inside. The rim has no rims, it is flattened, which means we need to stick the rubber with a special glue or tape (which makes us stick to fingers, because it's too comfortable). There are also poles and a tubeless system that combines the advantages and disadvantages of both previous ones. Looking at the quantity of this type of products on the market, the manufacturers themselves are not yet fully convinced of the sense of this solution on the road. However, new problems appear in it, such as high rim temperatures that dissolve the milk, which have drowned holes - so we will skip these inventions until they become popular (on the road, because in the field I think they are obligatory).



The first and seemingly the most important. However, looking at the amount of non-standard components on the market, I doubt if it has any meaning, because after all it looks> everything. But let's assume that you are leaving the Mazowsze region sometimes and going to the mountains. Your maximum speeds are increased by half. Have you ever thought of what would happen if you had buried a hole or invaded the slide left behind by happy tourists at a quick downhill ... in a group? From the outbreak of the tire to the loss of control over the bike (unless we know how to drive), it is about 1-3 seconds apart. A beautiful vision. In the tubs, the tube does not explode, and even if we puncture it, the milk we filled it with (because we did it, despite the weight penalty, right?) Either effectively overwhelms it or reduces the air outlet, so that the reaction time will be significantly longer. Sometimes a dozen or so seconds, sometimes a dozen days or weeks.


Driving properties

The latest research by completely-independent-American-German-scientists say that there is no difference. We are talking about the road, of course, because the possibility of safe driving at low pressure (without a chance to pinch the inner tube) is game-changer in cross-country. A very good tire is just as good as a very good toll, and it costs as much as a bad tug.



Gentlemen do not talk about money. Let's look at the wiggle. The price of the most popular tire on the Polish internet - Continental GP 4000S II: 31 to 35 euros depending on the width, the same as a tubular: 65 euros, "discounted" with 110euro. I place the word in parentheses, because in other stores (eg on rosebikes or bike24) the price is identical.

In a nutshell: tubers are much more expensive, much less available and require additional costs in handling, and cheap tubular goods do not make sense to me. If we do not plan to spend more than 400 PLN on tires regularly - you can easily forget about them. Vittoria Rubino Pro for a stitch, or even half a hundred, how we get a great promotion, it will work better for me than a garden hose in the style of Tufo S33. You can, of course, say that s33 is a training tubing, but c'mon - why would anyone want to train a tubular train?

The tires are the last place on the bike in which I would look for savings, but why overpay?




vittoria pit stop


Let us assume that we caught the slipping route. In the case of a tire, we stop, remove the inner tube, seal it with a patch, put it on, pump it, patch it, pull it out, replace it with a new crying, we lost some 7 zlotys, pump (we mount with the tire a few minutes), continue. If we do not have a spare tire with us, then somebody will drop us with the pump. As we are in the middle of nothing, we push the tire with grass and worms, or we tie a tube on the knot and like a harpoon we press on. Possibly, we use a sealer that will work or it will not work (and it probably will not work, it only worked with tubes in the cross).

If we catch a flak on the trench (which should be much more difficult), the matter is simple: we stop, call our family or friends and return by car. The alternative is to put a second, spare, lightweight tubule in the pocket and exchange it on the route (option for the rich and for those who have biceps, because breaking the rubber is not always easy or a sealer that will work or not (though the chance greater than with tire).

In addition, there are such primitive activities during the exchange as, for example, cleaning the rim from adhesive residue or the extension of the valves if the cone is long and the tubular has a short valve.


Prestige and appearance

But let's be honest: the tubs are bought because most of the carbon cones require tubs, and almost every bike on the cones looks better. Well, the wheels for the tubular are generally a lot lighter - they do not need these strong, side walls. Here the subject of the rim appears, which I will shorten - you can read deeper here.

There are, however, carbon or carbon-aluminum wheels, but this is a fairly new invention. In my opinion, only the top wheels are able to provide us with sufficient security in this case. I'm sure I would not choose the popular version of the carbo-Chinese version of the tire. I know that now there can be 70 comments: I have and live, but: on every high-altitude trip I've been to, some Chinese wheel for a tuber dies while braking at the exit. Regardless of how good the site was complex. The rims are heated to such temperatures that the blocks melt in their eyes. You can imagine what a tube felt surrounded by such temperature. For pros, it's not a problem - they do not inhibit. With the rest, carbons generally do not inhibit :-)


Szytka or tire - this is the question:

if your bike has massive pipes and you want it to look good and preserve the aero-properties you must have cones. If you need to have cones, buy one for a tubular one. Unless you do not leave Mazovia (and you do not brake), or you can spend a minimum of 5k-6k PLN on the wheels, then you can use the tire.

if you want to have a very light bike (lightweight wheels are probably the biggest gain) - take the tubs

if you want to see your friends in the bike shop often - take the tubs

if you have an outspoken wife / girlfriend / mistress - take the tubs

if you want to be cool - take the tubs

if in the shop you answer best instead the cheapesttake the tubs

if you have anxiety at fast descents or during fast, group rides - take the tubs


I spent 4 years on the tubs - I do not plan to come back to them for now, although I would calmly drop the bike from 400gram, thanks to which in a going configuration it would go below the threshold of 6 kilograms. Unfortunately, I'm probably old and I do not want to devote so much time to the equipment.

About the Author:
Every day I work in IT: I restart servers, I click on things and I ask if it has already been repaired. I spend my free time with friends on cycling. We visit the best parties, overcome the most spectacular routes, we ride in the toughest races. Blog allows me to develop my passion and describe the best of adventures, so that you do not have to repeat our mistakes. I am trying to stick to the unpopular rule that quality counts not quantity.