FasterNearGirls

I did!

FasterNearGirls

Thanks, and good points. I already gave Reyolds the go ahead to ship me the 2012 Assault Tubulars though. I'm excited to experience it's advantages. I'll use them for races only so the flat hassle issues won't apply. I do have different sets of alloy training wheels and several cassettes.

Unfortunately I couldn't invest in a different set now while waiting for the latest Reynolds either.

Thanks!

ovoleg

I'm going with Assault tubulars once they're available at the shop(newest gen). In the meantime I'm rolling on some China aero clinchers. They've held up pretty good over the last 1200 miles.

FasterNearGirls

Nice! Sounds like a good plan!
My old generation ones will be lighter though!
I'm a little bummed I'll miss out on the advantages of the new SLG wheels mentioned here, but am staying positive as I know they'll be an upgrade over what I had previously already. That's probably why Reynolds would put me in the back of the line on their back orders if they were to replace with the SLG, makes sense.

PS - isn't it 25 points now for a Cat 3 upgrade, 30 for Cat 2 and 35 for Cat 1?

I'm gonna set up my Cat 1-o-meter

save10

cat 2...so far away...sigh

ovoleg

You should!

Nah it's only 20 points for Cat 3 upgrade
https://www.usacycling.org/news/user/story.php?id=580

It still has the verbiage about 12 months for a cat 3 to 2 upgrade so I'm not sure if that's still the case because I was under the impression they removed that part.

You'll be flying no matter which wheels you get and I'm not sure the new technology is all its marketed out to be but it'll be cool to have either way

FasterNearGirls

haha Cat 1-o-meter set!

YEah the 12 month verbiage is with regards to mandatory upgrades only. Your points carry over now.

Cool, now I need to research tires for the tubulars. I've heard that Continental Sprinters are great and probably the grippiest on corners. Though one friend mentioned it doesn't roll as nicely and fast as it doesn't use a latex tube? I clearly am not familiar.

carpediemracing 

I'm not a fan of the Contis. I removed four? of them even though they weren't flat (Sprinters and another one, not the GP4000 thing). Lumpy, if you get on rollers you'll realize right away. On the plus side the traction is fine and the tube is butyl, not latex, so it takes less time to pump a tire the next day.

My pick is the Vittoria EVO CX. On rollers they feel closest to clinchers (which are, since they're pretty much perfectly molded, the smoothest tires). I run 23mm tires, both the EVO (regular) and Tech (wet weather) and I'm putting them on all my wheels for next year.

With Vittoria the tubes are latex so your tires will be at 40 or 50 psi within a few days. If you're running really, really, really late (i.e. you roll up and your field is lining up) then it's a problem (I used my clinchers that day) but otherwise it shouldn't affect you much.

I've also run Bontragers, the two top ones. The top is 23mm, that is on a set of wheels right now, the next is 22mm. The tires get kind of hard/slippery when they get old so I'm removing them for the Vittorias.

I tend to flat the Vittorias and Bontragers at the end of their usable life so durability isn't a problem.

prathmann

It's been a long time since I used tubulars, but the on-the-road flat fix always seemed to me to be a big plus for them vs. clinchers. Just pull off the old tire, slap the new one on and inflate - only took a minute. Much faster and easier than getting out a tire lever to pry the clincher bead over the rim, then having to search for the cause of the flat so you wouldn't get another from an undiscovered thorn or glass shard, getting the new tube installed and finally reinflating. And I never had any issues riding with the spare tubular until it either wore out or suffered from a puncture. But I do agree that the at-home repair of the flat tubular was less pleasant with the need to carefullly locate the hole, undo the stitching, patch the hole, and sew it back up. That and the cost led me to switch back to clinchers.

I talked to one former bike messenger who said he used to carry his spare tubular tied to his seat stay and already going around the rear axle so he didn't even have to pull the rear wheel to replace a flat tire. Just pull the flat tire off the rim, zip-tie it around the other seat stay, untie the spare and mount it. Combine that with CO2 inflation and he could be back on the road in about 30 seconds.

FasterNearGirls

That sounds amazing! I assume that's a temp fix and he'd corner carefully until he could do a proper new glue job?

Wait - is it really this meticulous - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGw3DlZMRGI ?? 5 days? That's insane.

FasterNearGirls

These guys - https://www.merlincycles.com/vittoria...air-53681.html ?

Or some other one from here - https://www.biketiresdirect.com/searc...lar-road-tires ?

So many and they all claim to be the best!

Thank you!

carpediemracing 

"Open" tubulars are tubulars "open" at the base, aka a clincher.

The one with the actual tubulars is the list of things you want to consider. My tires tend to be a year or three behind the curve. This is because I buy a bunch of tires when the prices/offers are good, 6 or 8 at a time, and a pair of tires will last me a while, like 2-3 years sometimes (depends on how often I race the wheels they're on, for example I think I raced the Stinger 6s just 3 times last year).

I haven't tried the Pro4 tubular which intrigues me because my favorite clincher tire was the Krylion, and the base casing is the same as the Pro3 or whatever the pro# tire was during that time. I bought but have not installed some Pro4 Endurance clinchers so no personal experience on anything Pro4.

My understanding is that many of the branded tires (Bontrager, Michelin, Specialized, I think Hutchinson?, Vittoria, some others I'm sure) are made in the same factory in Thailand. When Vittoria started making tires there the factory learned how to make a tubular (or so the story goes) and they later made the tires for Bontrager etc. That's why I tried the Bontragers, and they were good. Michelin bought a portion of the factory (25% is what I heard) and moved their machines to Thailand, uses their own rubber compounds, etc, and makes their Pro4s there. If that's the case then the Pro4 tubulars ought to be fantastic. Basically it's a Vittoria type casing with a Michelin tread.

I buy from Ribble, PBK, and through the LBS that sponsors the team.

I checked one of those sites. The Contis I have are the Competitions and the Sprinters.

coachboyd

A guy from Michelin just stopped by our place and dropped some off (it's really good to be in Greenville) so I'll be testing them out this year. They feel really nice but I haven't had a chance to glue them up yet. Conti Sprinters are very durable and have good longevity, but in the wet they seem to be lacking since they moved to the Black Chilli compound.

FasterNearGirls

I went through 3 pairs of PRO 4's clinchers pretty quickly. They didn't puncture as much as my Pro 3's did but I still was not very happy with how quickly my rear tire squared off.

I've been determined to finally switch to Conti, in fact I even have a set of Force/Attack (24mm/22mm front and rear specific with different durometers/compounds) that I was going to mount in the spring. But now that I am going tubulars, those clinchers will go to my training wheels.

I guess I'll look into the Continental or Vittoria options in Tubulars.

Lastly, this video is much more comforting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCvSa5_RwyU phew!

Silvercivic27

Evo Corsa CX, 23mm, end of story

prathmann

I doubt it. Sounds like he just continued to ride on the spare tubular normally - and most messengers don't corner very carefully. I never reglued after having a flat on the road. The rim and spare would still have a slightly tacky layer and that seemed to be sufficient. Didn't race, but I did ride with some reasonably quick groups and never seemed to hold people up on fast winding descents (lived in Tucson at that time so there were lots of descents from Gates Pass and coming down from Kitt Peak).

kleng

How much is the 46 upgrade, you would be saving be saving about 20 % of weight and hubs are superior DT swiss

Silvercivic27

It's all about a value analysis. The OP is a guy who crashed at least 3 times in 2 seasons, ultimately destroying a set of wheels but fortunately catted up to 3, so I suppose it was worth it. To me, though, that's crashing and breaking stuff an awful lot. Thankfully, I don't crash that much. I make a very decent wage, but I think that if I crashed that much, even I would be on a much more cost conservative choice, like Boyd's or Williams or the wheel du jour off Chainlove. I think the Assaults are more than enough wheel for a situation like that. Now that I've said that, I'll probably crash and destroy my Zipp tubular 404/808s at the next race. . .good news is that you usually aren't going to make a wheel completely useless in a crash. You may break a rim, but it's not like the entire thing burned up in a fire or something (I hope)

FasterNearGirls

You got it. Even these are pricier than I'd like to risk, but thankfully I had the RAP (Assurance Program / crash replacement) thing.
Corrections - I Upgraded to Cat 2 in 2 seasons (3 in 1 season). Didn't crash at all on the first, but crashed 6 times in 2013!!! Most crashes were on stupid group rides though, like the one were I broke a Hi Mod EVO frame because the wheel in front of me hit a pothole and went down.

Same story with the EVO, too nice to crash. Thankfully I had crash replacement on that too, which took 6 months to get a new one, and had a spare bike - good old Neuvation - won the state crit on her.

So now it's fingers crossed that my Hi Mod EVO, wheels, components, and body stay relatively undamaged!!

ovoleg

Black Chili compound is silica based, which means its better for the wet than the carbon black tread compound they were using before.

It might feel different which is throwing you off.

Silvercivic27

I think your winning the state champs with your old Neuvation brings up a good point though. We always get so hung up on equipment things, and it is definitely a lot of fun to think about, but the reality is that success at the amateur level is probably about 90% about you and 10% about the bike. Nobody at the p/1/2 level is riding a bad bike. Your racing success is not impacted in a major way by 100g in your wheelset or 5W savings from aero. There is a lot of "keeping up with the Joneses" in our sport. A lot.

ovoleg

keeping up with the joneses is better than some grouches who are still riding 3 speed bikes and telling the rest of us that 3 gears is enough and that frictoin shifters are still perfectly usable in races.

Some of us aren't Lance Armstrong, we could use all the help we can get!

coachboyd

I would say it was the sliding out in the corners of a wet crit that were throwing me off. Back in the day when the Sprinter was the Sprinter 250 (with the diamond tread pattern), the handling in the wet was definitely better. I used to hope for rain in crits because I knew I had an advantage.

Silvercivic27

You're misunderstanding me again. None of us is Lance Armstrong. We all need all the help we can get. It's the constant need to have something better than the next guy that causes the sanity of the spending in this sport to go right out the window. Obviously the bike you gave as an extreme counter example is not appropriate. My point is that Ultegra 10sp is fine. You don't need DI2 to do well. An Evo is fine. You don't need a Cervelo RCa. Assaults are fine. You don't need RZRs.

ovoleg

Have you thought about possibly that the Sprinter 250 was just a better carbon black compound than the competition back in the day(there are a ton of things that are added into the mix including natural rubber, carbon black, additives, accelerators, inhibitors, etc).

Currently, the new Pro4 and the Conti 4000s are using Silica in their tread compound, and a ton of people in races have these tires. I would consider running the old Sprinter 250 versus the current field and see how you do.

I'm just telling you from the science aspect, the black chili compound should be significantly better for wet traction. So if back to back testing shows that the older tire is better, then that would indicate that they screwed up on the construction of the tire.

All of this without objective back to back testing is all anecdotal BS. This is why you should never trust the reviews on tirerack or random user reviews.

I used to work as a tire development engineer