Corbin

Be careful of the shoulder at first. There will be loose gravel. 28c's make a huge difference, matter of fact I didn't notice the difference at first until I got on a chip sealed road (which was like 3 miles in).

What pissed me off is my main chip sealed ride just got resealed and chipped while the didn't event bother fixing the holes or random spots where the 1' shoulder was eroded away. The road didn't even need to be repaved. They seem to waste money on road pavings around here based on my experience in the mid-west.

Trsnrtr

Most are concrete and don't benefit from sealcoating. Having said that, I've seen seal coated ramps.

Jiggle

Haha, I live on chip seal. It only gets bad when they put a fresh layer of gravel on it. No tar, just a bunch of gravel. But it cuts down on vehicle traffic and it's the country, so I like it.

Voodoo76

Not in SE MI, where the edge of many roads is a perpetual series of overlapping potholes and/or patches. Not to mention the expansion cracks. I'll take the chip seal any day (and so would my back).

shafter

You call THAT bad??? Boy have I got some pictures for you!

RFEngineer

Yes! Here in Colorado, the expansion cracks in some of the roads are Terrible!

RFEngineer

Here google earth shows one of my problem roads:



It is quite eye opening that you can see those cracks so well from space! They are probably 3 inches across and deep. Riding on 28mm tires is about the only thing keeping me sane.
Alan

Jiggle

Hey, this Texan knows you are right. We don't have that ice cracking that tears up your roads. I can't find the exact video, but there's one on y tube of a guy screaming totally bonkers about your roads, it's hilarious. This one will have to do.

jbell_64

At least they are running a roller over it! Here in IL and IN, they just spray the oil and dump the rock and call it a day.... Most county roads seem to get it every 3-5 years.

NYMXer

The northern freeze/thaw cycle will cause a few potholes but the ones in that video are severe. I can only assume that the town didn't fix them because more potholes were going to form and any patching would not stay with more freeze/thaw action.
In the northern states, those potholes are a Spring tradition indicating winter is on it's way out. The only bikes riding over that stretch of road would be Mtb's!

Jarrett2

There it is... Hate that stuff.

Even the way it pops and crackles tar bubbles in the hot August sun.

Jarrett2

We have both and what you are talking about is much better. You can dodge that stuff.

There is no dodging Texas chipseal.

DrIsotope

I must say, they definitely do the chipseal differently here. After the binder is laid down and the aggregate is compacted into it, they go over it again with a "tack coat." After the initial drying period, there are pretty much no loose rocks left. The surface is pretty grippy until the road seasons in, but as I said, it beats the alternative. What y'all have in Texas looks like a gravel road with some tar hiding under it.

hfbill

There's an old saying that goes something like: "You don't have to be a chef to know that milk has gone sour". They use this byzantine method of road surfacing around here on some roads, but it doesn't last more than a year or two. One road nearby was "Tar & Chipped" in April of this year and it's already showing cracks and holes. As "Trsntr" implies, Tar & Chip, (or Sealcoating) is a "Cost Effective" solution. In my 40 years of working experience a "Cost Effective" solution is one where we didn't have the funding to do a proper job of it, so we did a half-assed one and crossed our fingers and hoped that it would be good enough. Tar & Chip can be OK for a year to 2, if it's done properly, but all too often it's a "dump & run" job that leaves several inches of loose stone on the road for weeks, sometimes even months, resulting in a hazardous situation for all who have the misfortune of traveling on such roads, not just cyclists. And then after all that, it just needs to be re-done every other year so (around here anyway) . It should be banned on all but very low volume, short distance roads. I do recognize that folks in transtr's shoes would need to be provided with the appropriate funding to pull that off, but that would get us all in to a whole political/taxation/spending priorities discussion that would probably be best left to a different forum.

SpeshulEd 

And you now have an excuse to buy a gravel grinder!

Equinox

I dislike chip/seal. It is not applied correctly in my area. It is analogous to a dentist putting a filling in a tooth without removing decay. My friends have observed that the holes are still there, you just can't see them. At this time of year, as the angle of the sunset changes, it's easier to see the surface texture and it's sad. All the defects are clearly visible. It is a very short lived application.
I also want to remind everyone that chip sealing is a further lowering of standards. Our government had the resources to pave all these roads at one time, and they did a pretty good job of it. These roads need to be re- paved. I think we could make these resources available if we were smarter and less wasteful.

netman9718

I live in Southwest Indiana aka chip seal capital of the USA.
The county just today chip sealed the pot holes on my road. Those twelve potholes would take my 20 inch truck tires and give them a bone jarring jolt if I did not navigate the pot hole course correctly.
While sitting on my front porch you could tell who has been down the road before and who has not. You can tell by the sound of their wheel bottoming out in the fender well when they clobber the pot holes.
So today in traditional form the county uses the tar/chat shooter to fill the holes.