I got some last gen vittoria corsas for like $40 on excel towards end of last year.

I don't know anyone who uses things cheaper than Conti Comps/Vittoria Corsa Evo/Veloflex Carbon/Extreme

I'm hearing good things about Conti Competitions and other ones as well. Sounds like a pal will be sending me some used tires gratis though, so for now I guess it might be a little moot.

Newbie here, and had a couple of questions.

I am still currently on my first road bike purchased a year and a half ago, I have a goal weight loss of 70lbs at which point I will buy a new bike, have lost 55lbs so far and have begun racing this year. That being said, I am wanting to be racing at the best possible position on my bike. I have a Specialized Secteur Elite, and I always feel like my position isn't as aggressive as I would like it to be, I have done 3 crits and the VOS stage race. Most of the races left that I will be doing are crits, so I would like to have a good position. My thoughts from looking around, was to get a new stem, same or longer length but with a -10 degree or more. The problem is that I have no idea how to tell if I already have a negative degree or if it is just straight, I looked on the stem and it doesnt give me much of anything other then the torque required and it says Length:100 and material. So I assume it is 0 degree?

Is that the best place to start in terms of getting a better "racing" position? I am a bigger guy, around 195lbs, so every bit of aero saving I can give really helps with power. Would just like to get this bike in as good race position as possible before my next bike purchase which will probably come after this race season (looking at the Venge).

Hope that helps to explain what I am trying to do. Thanks in advance!

If it's a zero-degree stem it would be the same angle when flipped. Not sure if anybody actually makes those. Most bikes seem to come with a 6-degree stem, in which case if it's currently installed as +6 degree you can flip it to get -6 degree (a pretty big difference) and see how that feels before deciding if you need to buy a new stem or not.

If it's the stock stem, it's prob a -6/84 stem (as per Specialized's website). If you do get lower, you may get more aero, but may lose power due to the new position. Everyone says get a fit and you can do that or just tinker with percieved (or metered) power output relative to your position. You could get a -8, -10, or -17 stem and drop your front end a little bit to a little bit more, but not a ton. That'd come with a new bike.

There are 0 degree stems, but yeah, it's almost certainly a -6.

If you are still friendly with the shop where you bought it, they might let you borrow one of those specialized multiple angle stems (not an adjustable stem, they use different shims and rotations to get different angles), so you can try some different positions out to see how they feel.

Perfect, I looked on the specialized site for my secteur and none of the stem labels gave a degree, so was assuming 0. That is great, I will at least flip it and see how a -6 feels before I go and buy a new stem. No torque wrench yet, so probably best to take it to the shop and have them do it?

Appreciate the help!

Here is a pic of my stem right now.. is that a 6 degree in the positive?

That is in the negative position. If you want to get lower, you'll have to pull the stem off, remove a couple of spacers, replace the stem, put spacers over stem, then ride. Tighten headset first, then stem. Torque wrench is good, but it's doable without.

What hack said.

thanks for the replies, gents

or -30!

Thanks for the help Hack, here is the finished product. Definitely feels a bit better when I tested it, will see on my ride tomorrow/this weekend.

Really appreciate it!

Cool. As always, make sure things are still tight after a few miles.

Ha! I'm a bit behind the curve on the carbon wheel thing. I got these mostly for cross, but I might as well get some use out of them in the summer as well. I have some cross tubular knowledge, but on the road, nothing.

Help; I need it.

In the crit yesterday I was sprinting up the side of the field to move up, when out of nowhere my chain dropped off the big ring (to the outside). Besides nearly eating **** in front of a bunch of pros, and hitting my chin on my bars, I'm mostly baffled as to how that's even possible.

I wasn't shifting, hadn't hit a bump, etc. The chainring is about 3 years old, chain is much newer, but have never had a problem with it until now. Chorus fwiw.

I did see a tiny nick on one of the teeth of the big ring; I wonder if that was from the gravel stage the day before or something..

Anyway what can cause this, and wtf can I do to fix it??

I need confidence in my chain again!!

shift the ring to 53/11 or whatever and take a picture of the space between the chain and the outside of the derailleur arm. Then tighten up that limit so the gap is a mm or so.

Check the rear derailleur pulley arm. Clean up the spring and make sure it's putting the same tension on the chain as it usually is. Springs can go bad or riding through miles of dust/gravel could have it gummed up so it's not keeping tension on the chain?

Is the crank torqued on properly? Chainring bolts?

yeah I've been dropping off to the outside too.. usually during a soft peddle shifting from inner to large... annoying. Also on the trainer during Zwift sprints it's falls when hitting 800-900w.. I can kind of feeling it, so I let off. I'm on 9070 Di2... pretty much did what Chris is saying... it's been good for 2 weeks now both inside and outside.

Dear, I need confidence in my chain again:

I suspect the gravel / dirt may have gunked up the chain momentarily. Fudgy and I use a local shop that has a great mechanic who is very good at trouble shooting stuff like this. Fudgy can give you the particulars if you are interested.

You go to the same shop? Veloro is awesome and Matt is a great mechanic. Seriously, best I've ever worked with.

Rant:

Challenge tires.

Absolute hot garbage. I own 6 Challenge tires. 2x MTB tubs, 4x CX tubs.

Just bought another one (for gravel road racing), hoping that somehow, I've just been on the receiving end of a bunch of bad luck.

Well, this makes 7 out of 7 tires that have serious wobbles in their casing, the entire tread is off center, or the tread came off during a warmup or first race.

I realize tire making is an imprecise art, but ****. If you're getting it wrong more often than not, perhaps it's time to call it a day.

I've never had this problem with Schwalbe, Vittoria, Zipp, or Tufo (they make great MTB tubs).

I had a similar incident. I don't know what caused what but I found the following:
- I broke a cleat. It might have caused the whole incident, unclipping in a sprint effort, or it might be that I unclipped due to the chain derail and I broke the cleat when I stomped the ground with the shoe.
- I had a twisted link on my chain. No idea how it happened, first one in decades. I discovered it at a race a few days later. DA or KMC chain, Missing Link, the actual chain was twisted.
- I had a bent tooth on my big ring. When I soft pedaled the bike the chain would hop a bit on that tooth. I tried bending it back but didn't feel like working it through so just put a different ring on.
- Front derailleur was twisted, but I think it was due to the derailment under duress and the resulting "chain being pulled through the derailleur wrong at 1000 watts" moving the derailleur. I normally adjust the derailleur the same way, outer cage is parallel to the chainring, and if the cage is bendable metal I squeeze the nose of it so the "chute" for the chain is narrower than stock.

Since I didn't discover them all at once I don't know if one caused another caused another.

The bike has very short chainstays (39 cm) so it's more likely to throw the chain off the outside of the derailleur.

From a friend that worked for a wheel manufacturer. Tire making is a super precise art. Bad tires are really bad because it means that the molds etc are off.

Rim manufacturing (other than molded carbon rims)? Not so much. Extruded tubes, looped, welded, and ground down so they appear straight? Talk about crap manufacturing tolerances.

The pre-machined-sidewall Mavic rims (and probably others) were extruded from some normal pipe, it's like the Allen trunk racks using electrical conduit piping to make trunk racks. Mavic, as the demand dropped for their rims, couldn't use the mega-length rolls of pipe so they had to start making rims like normal. They developed the machined sidewall so that the apparently "not-very-straight" extruded rims would be "true". Now machined sidewalls are the norm.