Lance Armstrong rides aged tubulars - Page 3

Mike Krueger wrote:
> Discovery Channel aired a TV documentary yesterday entitled, "The
> Science of Lance Armstrong". In one segment, Lance's longtime Belgian
> mechanic was profiled. He took the camera crew down into his "wine
> cellar", where he stores scores of tubular tires for the pro team. He
> had stacks of tires specifically designated for Paris-Roubaix, the
> other spring classics, and, of course, the Tour De France, for which
> he claimed the tubular tires had been specially *aging* for up to
> seven years to improve their performance characteristics. This guy's
> been a pro mechanic for 40 years, so he might know something about the
> subject.
> Comments?

He was aging the glue. He explained that the glue has to lose its surface
tack before it can be fitted reliably to a rim.

Tom.

Peter,
Please tell us with FAQ is wrong and why?!

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 22:06:05 +0200, m-gineering
<ikmotgeenspam@m-gineeringpunt.ennel.nl> wrote:

>carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
>
>>
>> When I ponder this notion of a mechanic supposedly aging
>> tires 7 years, it occurs to me that neither traction nor
>> wear matter much in the Tour de France.
>>
>> As far as I know, Armstrong and the other riders aren't
>> testing the limits of traction much.
>
>
>there will be plenty of pile-ups in the first week. If better traction
>means the difference between staying upright and unsticking the sheets
>the morning after, i'm sure Armstrong CS will have a preference!

Dear Marten,

My impression is that the pile-ups are due to collisions
during traffic jams, not loss of traction.

That is, I don't think that the riders are leaving
skid-marks before they collide.

Carl Fogel

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 17:25:08 -0400, "David L. Johnson"
<david.johnson@ptd.net> wrote:

>On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:56:03 -0600, carlfogel wrote:
>
>> When I ponder this notion of a mechanic supposedly aging
>> tires 7 years, it occurs to me that neither traction nor
>> wear matter much in the Tour de France.
>>
>> As far as I know, Armstrong and the other riders aren't
>> testing the limits of traction much.
>
>Every time they take a corner fast, they are testing the limits of their
>traction.
>>
>> If their tires actually lost traction when cornering, they'd probably
>> fall.
>
>Which certainly happens. If they weren't close to the limits, they would
>not fall (except for when they hit gravel or water on a downhill turn).
>
>>
>> They aren't doing panic stops with the rear wheel coming off the ground,
>> so the traction isn't likely a problem during braking.
>
>Nor is it for anyone else. Cornering is the real issue.
>
>> Rainy days are probably as close as we get to a real traction test. It's
>> fairly notorious that the Tour loafs along and takes it easy when it's
>> wet and cold.
>
>You must have missed that time trial in '03.
>
>>
>> The Tour is primarily a test of the motor, not the rubber.
>>
>> If there's any data showing that 7-year-cicadas--er, tires have a lower
>> rolling resistance, that would be interesting, but it's unlikely that
>> the difference would amount to 10 seconds in a stage.
>
>Although I doubt that aging tires is anything more than myth and lore, 10
>seconds in a stage can be several places. 10 seconds per stage is 3
>minutes overall, less than the winning margin of most Tours.
>
>> Does anyone know what specific "performance characteristics" (if any)
>> that the mechanic claimed were improved by sitting in a cellar?
>> Traction, wear, rolling resistance, fewer flats, easier mounting? And if
>> so, how much?
>
>I aged some tires in my cellar. Nice tires, silk Clements. The tubes
>rotted.

Dear David,

Aren't most crashes in the Tour a matter of collisions,
spectators, unanticipated problems like gravel, and what
some on this newsgroup have described as simply poor
cornering skills? Not a tire that offered a tiny bit less
grip?

I'm open to correction, but I don't recall anyone claiming
that cornering plays much role in the outcome of the Tour.
That is, I don't know of any winner who credited his triumph
to cornering or tire adhesion--it's heart and lungs uphill,
not downhill slaloms.

As for the habits of Tour riders on wet, cold days, your
counter example is nice.

What I had in mind was the rainy day in 2001 when Armsrong
and about 160 other riders all finished in a pack 33 minutes
behind the 13 no-name riders who said to hell with it and
rode off instead of loafing:

http://www.velonews.com/race/tour200...es/1163.r.html

Carl Fogel

"Mike Krueger" <skubanut@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1119988071.166866.292550@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Discovery Channel aired a TV documentary yesterday entitled, "The
> Science of Lance Armstrong". In one segment, Lance's longtime Belgian
> mechanic was profiled. He took the camera crew down into his "wine
> cellar", where he stores scores of tubular tires for the pro team. He
> had stacks of tires specifically designated for Paris-Roubaix, the
> other spring classics, and, of course, the Tour De France, for which he
> claimed the tubular tires had been specially *aging* for up to seven
> years to improve their performance characteristics. This guy's been a
> pro mechanic for 40 years, so he might know something about the
> subject.
> Comments?
>
I read an article about an early British Tour de France team that suffered from a lot
more punctures in their first Tour de France than the continental teams.

Afterwards they found out that the continental mechanics always aged their
tubulars for important races.

bfd wrote:
> Peter,
> Please tell us with FAQ is wrong and why?!

I don't have specifics but some I have seen by some contradict what
others have seen in the 'real world', Things about the 'top repeated
subjects', like Delta brakes, tying and soldering, ageing tubulars, for
a few examples. My point is that an answer for any FAQ is not
neceesarily written on some stone tablet.

carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
> As far as I know, Armstrong and the other riders aren't
> testing the limits of traction much.

I don't know either, but my long-ago experience going downhill on paved
mountain roads tells me that sometimes traction is a factor on
switchbacks.

> And they certainly aren't smoking the back tire and
> fishtailing up the Alp d'Huez,

What about going down the Alp d'Huez? (I know it's usually a stage
finish.)

> The Tour is primarily a test of the motor, not the rubber.

It's a test where everything about the bicycle has the potential to be
decisive.

> If there's any data showing that 7-year-cicadas--er, tires
> have a lower rolling resistance, that would be interesting,
> but it's unlikely that the difference would amount to 10
> seconds in a stage.

There have been breakaways that were either caught <10 seconds before
the finish or whose finishing margin after being away for half the
stage was <10 seconds.

> As for wear, it's hard to imagine a tire wearing out in a
> single day's ride on pavement, or a Tour rider who couldn't
> afford to replace it for the next stage.

I don't think wear itself would normally be an issue, but it might on
occasion be decisive. It might be the difference between blowing out a
rear tire or not from grabbing the rear brake too hard, or it could
make the tire more resistant to cuts, which seems to be what I've seen
on my accidentally aged tires.

> In the Discovery program, the mechanic may have explained
> what "performance characteristics" he thinks improve over
> the years, but so far there's been nothing in this thread
> more specific than that catch-all phrase in the original
> post.

I am taking the role of a devil's advocate here, suggesting merely that
there is darn little evidence to reject this mechanic's decades of
experience, but on the other hand apparently no test data to support
him either.

> I suspect that what the mechanic's aging habit (if true)
> tells us is that Armstrong does just about as well on an old
> tire as a new one.

LA is known to be very demanding in regard to his bike, and for
whatever reason obviously trusts his mechanic. Much of Armstrongs
success seems to me to be a result of his (or his team manager's)
perfectionism, insisting that every little aspect of the race be nailed
down. One or two flats instead of five is three or four fewer chases to
get back on, and that much less wear and tear on the team. It could be
just one of countless small things that add up to victory.

itsa cover for an EPO lab!!

I watched the show you all are talking about. The mechanic had what
looked like thousands of tires, literally hundreds from each year
dating back at least 7 years or so. He didn't say a whole lot about
why he did it, because the segment was kinda short. I believe what he
did say was that it made them softer, more compliant. He pulled an
"old" tire that Lance will have at his disposal, and showed it to the
host of that segment. He then pulled a much newer tire that had only
been aging for a year or so, and asked him to feel the difference. The
implication was that the older tire was softer. I didn't hear anything
about glue.

On 28 Jun 2005 12:47:51 -0700, "Mike Krueger" <skubanut@aol.com>
wrote:

>Discovery Channel aired a TV documentary yesterday entitled, "The
>Science of Lance Armstrong". In one segment, Lance's longtime Belgian
>mechanic was profiled. He took the camera crew down into his "wine
>cellar", where he stores scores of tubular tires for the pro team. He
>had stacks of tires specifically designated for Paris-Roubaix, the
>other spring classics, and, of course, the Tour De France, for which he
>claimed the tubular tires had been specially *aging* for up to seven
>years to improve their performance characteristics. This guy's been a
>pro mechanic for 40 years, so he might know something about the
>subject.
>Comments?

Years ago when ABC first started covering NASCAR races their pit
reporters noticed that on some pit stops the crews were cranking away
at a fitting accessed through the rear window. They were told the
crews were adjusting the wedge. When they pursued the subject further
someone told them there was a big wedge of steel in the trunk area and
the screw shifted the wedge from left to right, adjusting the balance
of the car. This they dutifully reported on their telecasts for some
time until at last someone revealed they had been hoodwinked.

Could this be something similar?


jeverett3<AT>earthlink<DOT>net http://home.earthlink.net/~jeverett3

in a similar vein-
we now read all riders passed the drug tests.
this would mean no riders have ingested drugs. is that possible?
or the drug tests cannot find the new ones
i say its behind the brick wall.

Tom Orr wrote:
> Mike Krueger wrote:
>
>>Discovery Channel aired a TV documentary yesterday entitled, "The
>>Science of Lance Armstrong". In one segment, Lance's longtime Belgian
>>mechanic was profiled. He took the camera crew down into his "wine
>>cellar", where he stores scores of tubular tires for the pro team. He
>>had stacks of tires specifically designated for Paris-Roubaix, the
>>other spring classics, and, of course, the Tour De France, for which
>>he claimed the tubular tires had been specially *aging* for up to
>>seven years to improve their performance characteristics. This guy's
>>been a pro mechanic for 40 years, so he might know something about the
>>subject.
>>Comments?
>
>
> He was aging the glue. He explained that the glue has to lose its surface
> tack before it can be fitted reliably to a rim.
>
> Tom.
>
>

I didn't hear that. He said "Aged toobalers (I love his pronunciation)
are supple, new ones are hard - that's the difference." He also pointed
to a pile of the 7-year old ones and said "Those are the last of them.
When they're gone, Lance is done."

He was an interesting guy with lots of good stories, but not a technical
type.

--
My bike blog:
http://diabloscott.blogspot.com/

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 17:52:57 -0600, carlfogel wrote:

> Aren't most crashes in the Tour a matter of collisions,
> spectators, unanticipated problems like gravel, and what
> some on this newsgroup have described as simply poor
> cornering skills? Not a tire that offered a tiny bit less
> grip?

Most, probably, but not all. I recall 2 or 3 years ago that Jalabert
(sp?) was off the front on his own, struggling to stay away, and crashed
on a downhill corner. I don't know about gravel there. Certainly that
nasty crash Beloki took was related to road conditions. Some of the big
pile-ups could have been started by a rider who went past the traction
limits.

--

David L. Johnson

__o | You will say Christ saith this and the apostles say this; but
_`\(,_ | what canst thou say? -- George Fox.
(_)/ (_) |

On 30 Jun 2005 07:49:50 -0700,
SocSecTrainWreck@earthlink.net wrote:

[snip]

>> I suspect that what the mechanic's aging habit (if true)
>> tells us is that Armstrong does just about as well on an old
>> tire as a new one.
>
>LA is known to be very demanding in regard to his bike, and for
>whatever reason obviously trusts his mechanic. Much of Armstrongs
>success seems to me to be a result of his (or his team manager's)
>perfectionism, insisting that every little aspect of the race be nailed
>down. One or two flats instead of five is three or four fewer chases to
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>get back on, and that much less wear and tear on the team. It could be
>just one of countless small things that add up to victory.

Dear SS,

So is the idea that a 7-year-old tire averages 3 or 4 fewer
flats per Tour?

It's fascinating that this thread seems to claim no specific
"performance characteristic" for ancient tires--maybe the
mechanic explained it in the program, but browsing this
thread suggests that we're mostly trying to imagine possible
improvements gained by tires made in the previous century
that have been sitting around in the dark.

Carl Fogel

On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 10:04:04 -0700, Diablo Scott
<N0SPAMdiabloscott@terra.es> wrote:

>Tom Orr wrote:
>> Mike Krueger wrote:
>>
>>>Discovery Channel aired a TV documentary yesterday entitled, "The
>>>Science of Lance Armstrong". In one segment, Lance's longtime Belgian
>>>mechanic was profiled. He took the camera crew down into his "wine
>>>cellar", where he stores scores of tubular tires for the pro team. He
>>>had stacks of tires specifically designated for Paris-Roubaix, the
>>>other spring classics, and, of course, the Tour De France, for which
>>>he claimed the tubular tires had been specially *aging* for up to
>>>seven years to improve their performance characteristics. This guy's
>>>been a pro mechanic for 40 years, so he might know something about the
>>>subject.
>>>Comments?
>>
>> He was aging the glue. He explained that the glue has to lose its surface
>> tack before it can be fitted reliably to a rim.
>>
>> Tom.
>
>I didn't hear that. He said "Aged toobalers (I love his pronunciation)
>are supple, new ones are hard - that's the difference." He also pointed
>to a pile of the 7-year old ones and said "Those are the last of them.
>When they're gone, Lance is done."
>
>He was an interesting guy with lots of good stories, but not a technical
>type.

Dear Mike and Tom,

Seven years to get glue to stick?

Rubber becomes more supple after drying for seven years
instead of cracking?

And this guy didn't bother to buy more tires six years ago?
He's Nostradamus and just knew through clairvoyance how long
Armstrong's career would be?

Sheesh.

Carl Fogel