twist nipple, then hold nipple with pliers and reset the spoke is how the mechanic at Veloro did mine after I tried to true wheels.

yeah i'm thinking this is the best bet too.

Good thing this conversation is about bikes.

I switched from a 50/34 170mm crankset to a 53/39 175mm crankset mostly out of curiosity. I was expecting to like the 175s on short punchy climbs but it wasn't the case (at least not until I get used to them). I liked the 39/175 combo (hate the 34 - I find it too small to be used anywhere but on long slow climbs) and felt good climbing where I was expecting to like the shorter 170s more. Only first impressions but I'm a little surprised to experience the exact opposite of what I expected! The ride was without power because I told myself I would make strictly one change at a time.

did you phone shimano?

. Not yet. I'm traveling for work. But yes, good point I need to do that.

park tools boots are awesome.

won two races on this tire. that's the boot you can see poking through a bit. slashed my front the other day too, so finally replacing this one while I was dealing with that.

**** man maybe you should take that lucky tire all the way to Nationals!

i agree that the boots do a pretty good job, but a serious question: did you consider just tossing that tire?

if i had to boot a tire i personally wouldn't race it (i basically wouldn't enter a race with a known issue....a tire failure could have consequences that affect other racers). i'd be more inclined to train on it (i'd still toss it, but my thinking is that a tire failure would probably only affect me).

obviously you were safe and the tire (tread) was just fine....and those park boots are good (but i think they even say for emergency use)... but that repair definitely doesn't decrease the chances of something going wrong.

if i noticed one of my tubulars had a dead spot in the glue, i wouldn't race it.
[MENTION=77814]carpediemracing[/MENTION], [MENTION=196014]shovelhd[/MENTION], [MENTION=364302]Doge[/MENTION] and others might remember a time when officials tested tubulars at the starting line. i know they don't do that any more, but if an official saw that at the start, would they say something?

genuinely curious. not picking on you here but your photo raises the topic.

why stop there? take it (domestic) pro!

Sure do. Drove me crazy. Even now, I have a gluing method that I have no interest in someone breaking the seal on when they somehow feel the need to check my gluing job. Road glues re-bonds, track glue not so much. I go between track glue and road glue and put a lot of effort into that and don't want some expert messing with it. Avoiding flats seems to be the latest issue.

On a similar topic I get "used" tires from a pro-tour team (that has won several grand tours) and there is hardly any glue on the tires and its down the center. I would not have had my kid ride on that - mostly for rolling resistance, but clearly their mechanic want's an easy change.

yes--i've gotten a few wheelsets from a world tour team and it was shocking how easily the tires were pulled. as i've been told, they have so many wheels to glue that unless you're a guy like cavendish you don't get the ultra-fast glue job. i've removed one of those types of glue jobs and that's similar to what i do for my own wheels (i.e. overkill, but i'm ok going with overkill on the safe + fast aspect).

Safe is of course important, but even when safe rolling resistance and handling suffer if there is not a tight bond at both edges of the rim.

I have been known to check tires at the line and in the pits.

I really need to suck it up and learn how to glue my own tubulars!

I never saw someone pulled for having a booted or otherwise visually less than 100% tire. They were more concerned with rolling tires.

CDR has a great write up.

what's a dead spot?

also the tire on one of my wheels was last glued in Spring 2013. Held fine last year and still seems fine. Should I pull the tire (has probably 700 miles or so) and redo?

Sprinter della Casa: How To - Glue a Tubular

When they induced the Missus on a Thursday I glued a tire before I went to the hospital. That was about the most "under pressure" glue job I'd ever done and I did it in maybe 10 minutes tops. I'm pretty sure I'm still on that glue job.

Btw, all hail our new Benevolent Overlord CDR, peace be with him

Typically around the valve, it's a spot that has a glue void. It's a place that could invite tearing off.

A proper glue job should last the life of the tire if the wheel is in active use. Problems start when they are allowed to sit and dry out on the shelf.

Hear, hear.

I had planned to change it, then forgot, and did a silly strava-KoM ride that involved a 3-minute steel hill where I previously had snapped my chain. After I realized it and checked, the spot hadn't deflected any further or changed at all. I figured it was safe. I kept an eye on it.

Important to note that it was a rear, so even a blowout was unlikely to kill me. I thought about other racers, but if we're being honest, I care a lot about my skin, so if it's safe enough for me to ride... Besides, riding a booted conti-gp4k is more reliable and less likely to cause a stack-up than the vittoria tubulars everyone races on around here, imo.

agreed. i care about safety, but it isn't that hard to glue a tubular so it is safe. i do the full-on fast glue jobs to improve rolling resistance--mainly because i know how to do it and i can, and since rolling resistance doesn't scale with power it is higher percentage of my power vs that of a world tour rider. i'm not cavendish but if i have the time to treat my tires like his, why not?

a proper glue job does make a measurable difference on tubulars, as you know.

i've never been around when a check was performed--not even at CX. didn't know if they still happened on the road.

it's pretty easy. some people think it is tough but basically it is an arts-and-crafts project. some glue, a paint brush, and a little bit of care goes a long way. i advocate people do their own glue jobs because (a) most shop guys these days don't know more about tubulars than you do (sad) and (b) in almost all cases, YOU care a bunch more about your gear than anyone else does, even when paid to do it. if you mess up the glue job a bit it's almost always fixable. if someone else messes it up it may be harder for a newbie to detect.


since i've never seen any check at all, i wondered if an official might say something if they noticed another problem while doing the check for rolling a tire. e.g., if you get stopped at a DUI checkpoint but have a *** on your carseat, you don't just get waived through.

i understand that when checking was prevalent, most/all riders were running tubulars. now, with many (most?) racers running clinchers, rolling is not a thing.

if you were an official and noticed something you felt was unsafe at the start (tire or whatever), what do you do--esp if the race is going to start in 30 seconds?

dead spot is a gap/void int he glue. as shovel pointed out, they can often happen around the valve stem (may tires have a double wrap of base tape there and it can ride up on the rim, esp if someone didn't bore a slightly larger hole for the valve. i personally don't worry quite as much about a dead spot there as the valve is a mechanical block to rolling a tire.

i know some people intentionally leave an unglued spot on the tire to make it easier to pull, but IMO i want a tire to be as fast and safe as possible--i don't do a glue job with the express purpose of making the tire easier to remove which generally happens only once in it's life....at death.

i bet your tire is fine. i can't say whether you should pull it or not, but if you decided it was OK to ride/race a while back, i'm sure it didn't physically change since that time....assuming your criteria for a safe/fast tire didn't change.


agreed. my wheels remain in an uninsulated garage (can get to ~0F in the winter when we have extended sub-zero temps), and glue jobs last multiple seasons for me. the tires die before the glue job does.

thanks. again i wasn't questioning you per se, but your picture brought up the topic for me. you just posted a photo of a tire (which looked a bit gnarly), but i'm not there to see it in persona dn to really know what was up. i just wanted to segue into another topic.

what do you think is wrong with vittoria tubulars? they wear faster than some other tires (like race tires) but anything that flats a vittoria flats pretty much any other tire, other than something that none of us would want to race.