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Hi all,
Just read the 'Puncture fairies' thread, but thought I would start a new one.
Is anyone else having bother with punctures on the innocent, I've had my 3rd in a month.
I'm also thinking of investing in new tyres, are Gatorskins any good?
Cheers
Boab
I had massive threaded nail through my marathon plusses on NEPN near Crewe toll today. Needed pliers to get the fecker out, kindly supplied by CPN who was at the meeting I ended up wheeling my bike to.
Many threads boab on the merits of gator skins. They wear out more quickly than the marathon plusses but they are slick.
Thanks Gembo, the Marathon plusses look ideal for winter with being more grippy, cant see me loosing too much time with the extra resistance.
BTW. I'm a bit of a newbie to cycling, so would I need different inner tubes for Gatorskins or Marathon plusses?
Boab the thinnest marathon plus you could get is a 700x 28
A gators kin typically a 700 x 25?
So theoretically you could buy a tube that would fit either of the above
Marathon Pluses have tread but that won't make them grippier than slicks on tarmac. In fact in the wet some have noted the opposite.
They will probably be best for complete resistance to glass.
Gatorskins can also be bought in Hardcase form - even more protection.
Often tyres puncture much more easily at the end of their lives.
I tend to use the Innocent much less (apart from the top bit) because of frequency that glass appears. The council doesn't seem to sweep regular, only in response to complaints. I simply go on the road which has a bus lane so is pretty safe. I didn't want to use Marathon Pluses and other alternatives, whilst good, are not 100%.
Tread designed to dispel water, slicks less grippy therefore in rain?
Slicks have the most contact area, even in the wet, so more grippy. Tread is only good if your tyres are harder than the ground, as off road.
Marathon tread is much better on wet leaves. I've got a Gatorskin on the back temporarily and it's terribly slippy trying to get up Donkey Lane (admittedly a bit more than wet leaves...)
Car tyres have tread but motorbike tyres are slick? Is that right?
Car tyres are wide and flat so they need tread to pump the water out.
Brandt on tread.
http://sheldonbrown.com/brandt/slicks.html
Sheldon on tyres.
@Boab08 I tried my first Gatorskins this year, 700x23 slicks, put about 2000 miles on them commuting and general riding between March and October. No punctures. And I've not been kind to them.
Looking a bit worn and chewed up now. New ones in the spring I think.
The grip in the dry is very good and predictable. They have legendarily poor grip on wet surfaces. But hey, it's good for improving your reactions.
Comfort-wise, tyre pressure seems pretty crucial - I found that if I let them drop below 100psi then they really started to 'crash and shake' on the bumps. At a careful 110-115psi they are surprisingly comfy (for my own weight).
I don't quite believe that a slick tyre grips better in every possible on-road scenario. Point number one, if I quote Brandt:
"Tread patterns have no effect on surfaces in which they leave no impression."
Okay, I'll go with that. Now lets look at a picture. Try to see the relevance of the above statement here:
That's a bog standard rack and pinion arrangement. The rack itself is obviously a hard solid surface and we can think of the pinion as a wheel/tyre. I think we could all agree that the specially shaped pinion will provide maximum 'grip' on the rack whereas a smooth disc would be useless. But, the pinion is as hard if not harder than the rack, and it leaves no impression on it...clearly in this case the 'tread' of the pinion is far superior to a slick gear.
So what's the relevance to bike tyres? Well, when you get down to it, no surface is perfectly smooth so you might consider rough asphalt to be a bit like that rack on the very small scale. In which case it's possible that a very fine tread might just help out a bit. However irrelevant you might think this example is it proves the 'no effect on harder surfaces' rule isn't a universal law.
Out of theory-land and into reality and I'll quote from one of my favourite articles on tyres:
"The importance of tread pattern is no surprise to the off-road world but common wisdom says it's a non-factor on the road, where slick treads are assumed to deliver the greatest surface contact with the ground and thus, the best grip. However, asphalt is far from a perfect – or even consistent – material. Certain tread designs can provide a measureable mechanical adhesion to the ground."
So here's a source saying basically the opposite to what Brandt and Sheldon assert. I don't doubt that on very, very smooth surfaces like a racetrack a slick is best. But, now think about the variety of surfaces that all come under 'on-road', I'm especially picturing rough-but-hard asphalt that even to the eye is quite uneven. Again 'common wisdom' has it that narrow tyres roll faster, which makes sense, but then when you get round to measuring it properly the opposite is true.
To be clear I'm not about to swap out the slicks on my road bike for any form of knobbies but this is the sort of thing that interests me. I'd believe that in 99% of everyday riding scenarios a slick is best but I won't take it as gospel.
I go with Edinburgh's roads and cycle paths are less than smooth and I am looking for something tougher than a slick for my commute. These all seem to come with a tread pattern? If not a tread itself
"tougher than a slick for my commute"
That makes obvious assumptions that may or may not be true.
Time for new thread?
Facts and opinions about tyre technology/dynamics?
http://www.conti-tyres.co.uk/conticycle/news_int_18.shtml#05
http://www.conti-tyres.co.uk/conticycle/te%20Protection_RTL.shtml
Black chili, so good.
Obvious assumptions, that is me.
The other day when all this discussion resulted in big puncture for me at Crewe toll end of NEPN I ran on for 500 yards with nail and marathon plus. Indeed Incould have probably made it to Drylaw whence I was headed, but felt I had time just to push.
If I had slicks would have needed new tyre as well as new tube and that is the truth ruth
allebong,
If the rack and pinion had no teeth would it still work?
It might not be a perfect analog of what goes on with rubber tyres on a road.
@Wfb: I'm not claiming it's a perfect analog, it's more of a thought experiment based on what Brandt was saying about tread having no effect if it doesn't leave an imprint on a surface. That's the sort of reasoning I like trying to poke holes in and that (I thought) was the clearest way of doing it. The real point is that with the teeth of the rack a slick rubber wheel say is going to have less traction on it than a rubber wheel with tread that matches the rack.
I'd say it all comes down to scale. Very, very smooth tarmac is still rough if you look close enough, and in that case a slick tread -even thought it, again, is rough at some level - will be able to deform to fill all the minute gaps and get all the grip out. But rougher tarmac with bigger gaps/voids, you might end up with a slick tread that can't deform sufficiently around it all. Meanwhile if you had some form of tread with small knobs they would be able to hook into the cavities and get more grip. Back to the rack example, if you scale the teeth of both the rack and pinion down, you approach what looks like to us a slick tyre on hard ground.
Again I don't see any of this as really mattering when it comes to choosing bike tyres. I just find it interesting to think about.
I've had conti gator slicks for a while now and find them extremely grippy. Sorry, but I don't buy the rack and pinion theory - it's all about contact with the ground and a 23 tyre needs a lot of rubber to contact the ground.
A much wider tyre is going to aquaplane and needs tread to disperse the water.
I don't think the gators will perform well in snow but, for dry & wet conditions, with the right pressure (I tend to go 95psi) then they seem pretty good.
I've had conti gator slicks for a while now and find them extremely grippy. Sorry, but I don't buy the rack and pinion theory - it's all about contact with the ground and a 23 tyre needs a lot of rubber to contact the ground.
A much wider tyre is going to aquaplane and needs tread to disperse the water.
I don't think the gators will perform well in snow but, for dry & wet conditions, with the right pressure (I tend to go 95psi) then they seem pretty good.
When it comes to riding on ice all the ground contact in the world won't get you any grip will it ;) Course that falls under a very uncommon situation that calls for the ice spikes. You should try looking at your 'smooth' tyres and some 'smooth' tarmac under magnification and try to contemplate exactly how the two can interact to keep you upright at 20mph. Actually, I try not to think about it when I'm riding as like so much on a bike you're best served by not overthinking it. Which is pretty much what I'm doing in this very thread...
Aquaplaning is irrelevant for bikes unless you're planning on drafting any F1 cars anytime soon though. I even have a tyre with 'grooves to displace water' at the side of the tread and the only effect seems to be to catch water and fling it outside the range of the mudguards and directly at my feet...good work there.
I read this PDF from Michelin a while back that goes into all this stuff in excruciating detail, I can recommend it as a cure for insomnia if nothing else. I'll try to find it again.
Loads of glass on the Innocent just through and past the chicane on the Bingham side of Duddingston Road West. Might be a crashed scooter. Can someone please tweet @east_team and tag it #edtravcyc? My Twitter is offline at the moment.
Just saw someone saying this on twitter. Will paste in her tweets.
Bruntsfield Links paths and Leamington Walk are also often prone to this of a Monday morning. I suspect the cause is pretty similar...
Yes, Tuesday morning on the Innocent path - a sea of smashed bottles from the chicane barriers at the "travellers" site(no connection obviuosly1) for around 50m. passed many other walking cyclists at this point who had the same feeling as I do about the perpetrators!Clearly a totally deliberate attempt to cause maximum inconvenience to cyclists/wheelchair users, not to mention dogs paws. To add to it all, walking along the grass verge to avoid the glass resulted in dog-sh*t on the shoes!! What a wonderful society!
I emailed my local councillor about this and she has let East Team know. When I was fixing my puncture there on Monday evening, I warned other cyclists about the glass. I was told of one cyclist who has taken to carrying a small brush and dust-pan.
Cheers
Colin
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