Did Lance Armstrong "age" his race tyres?

[CAMPYBOB]

For 35 years I have aged my sew-ups in a cool, dry closet. I have some that are probably 'too' aged...I'm guessing 15+ years old. Aging tires was just something you were taught to do. I was always under the impression that the purpose was to improve the strength of the casing.

Clincher tires I just mount and run.

 

[limerickman]

For 35 years I have aged my sew-ups in a cool, dry closet. I have some that are probably 'too' aged...I'm guessing 15+ years old. Aging tires was just something you were taught to do. I was always under the impression that the purpose was to improve the strength of the casing.

Clincher tires I just mount and run.

Agreed : the idea of ageing tyres doesn't belong to anyone : it's an age old method employed for decades.

 

[sogood]

Agreed : the idea of ageing tyres doesn't belong to anyone : it's an age old method employed for decades.

Is the method still applicable to modern day tubulars? Or is it one of those old art that applied in its days?

 

[limerickman]

Is the method still applicable to modern day tubulars? Or is it one of those old art that applied in its days?

as far as I am aware it is still used for tubulars.
I know the guys in the club apply this same methodology.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

As i recall the aging process applied more so to 'cheap' sew-ups...something about the good ones having a carefully hand-glued tread-to-carcass union and the cheapies being quickly vulcanized.

It's been too many years and the brain cells are failing me, but i always thought the procedure was as much hype as science.

I've had freshly bought cheap sew-ups go 2000+ trouble free miles and aged high-end ones puncture repeatedly.

Anyone remember re-coating sidewalls to keep the threads protected?

 

[9202]

Dude -I thought I was clear enough that I wasn't talking about LA, but the head mechanic (Julien DeVries). He HAS been wrenching for probably more than 30 years - he was Eddy Merkx's mechanic when he was racing the TDF - it was back then that he (DeVries) learned to age the tires.
I'm not a dumb **** thanx.

Dudette,

No offense, I was being cute.

 

[BikingBrian]

What a bargeload of hooey....rubber doesn't improve with age, it detiorates, hardens, and developes cracks. Take a look at:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Labor...ffect+on+the+oxygen+content+in...-a0122702294

Although this was looking at the oxygen content in tests on rubber aging and how that affected the results, it has some valuable info for us: namely, that higher O2 content (iow, an aging process) results in degradation of the tire rubber.

Whether or not Lance used aged tires is, like what many pro cyclists supposedly do or don't do, completely irrelevant.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

I just looked at my stock. The 10 to15 year old tires look and feel just as good as the ones i bought from The Yellow Jersey last winter. They are still soft, pliable, no tread separation, sidewalls not peeling.

UV and ozone can ruin a tire in short order, but squirreling them away in a cool closet hasn't seemed to hurt them any.

Disclaimer: my fingers have not been calibrated to shore 'A' durometer testing by NIST.

 

[BikingBrian]

I just looked at my stock. The 10 to15 year old tires look and feel just as good as the ones i bought from The Yellow Jersey last winter. They are still soft, pliable, no tread separation, sidewalls not peeling.

UV and ozone can ruin a tire in short order, but squirreling them away in a cool closet hasn't seemed to hurt them any.

Disclaimer: my fingers have not been calibrated to shore 'A' durometer testing by NIST.

True, if you want to preserve your tires when you're not using them, then keeping them in a cool, dark place is recommended. For example, at the end of the season I put away my track tires, since I won't be using them for at least another 8 or 9 months. But the real question is: Does doing this make them BETTER than new tires??

Disclaimer: my fingers have not been calibrated to shore 'A' durometer testing by NIST.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

I think the 'old guys' were on to something. They knew the game better than (for their era) than the young pups do today. Hell, when's the last time you even saw a pro change their own tire? Nowadays the support car pulls up and racer X doesn't get his hands dirty...and usually tosses his bike in the ditch if the change takes longer than three seconds.

The old cats WORE their tires as they raced over way worse conditions than today and lost MINUTES during even a fast tire change. Having the ultimate in durability was in their best interest.

A little aging of the tire probably did improve the bond between the carcass and rubber tread. It probably gave the sidewalls a chance to blead out solvents or whatever. A little extra hardness to the virgin tread rubber may have even helped cut resistence.

However, I'm pretty sure my 10 to 15 year old 'aged' tires have gone past their prime...wine, they are not!

As far as aging improving rolling resistence, I would guess any change (if it does exist) to be so small as to be unmeasureable.

We have a hardness tester at the shop. I wonder if it can give me a shore scale reading. You guys have me wondering what that rubber has done over all those years.

 

[Tim Lamkin]

Yep, although sponsored by Hutchinson, the rumor was that Lance rode re-badged Dugast silk tubular tyres that were aged over 3-5 years. When punctured, they were repaired and reused over and over. The ageing process is supposed to make the rubber more supple and eliminate the friction between the silk casing and the rubber outer. Could be compelling physics, could be complete **** simply designed to give his guys a little mental edge on race day (much like Ullrich's over size rear jockey wheels on his rear mech?).

I love bicycle mysteries...

How did they fix a puncture?

 

[JohnO]

How did they fix a puncture?

You aren't a true cyclist until you have repaired a tubie.

First, peel the tire off of the rim.

Locate the puncture. Peel back the inner strip around the puncture, exposing the stitching.

Cut the stitching, opening the casing.

Pull out the inner tube, and patch the puncture.

Push the inner tube back into the casing, restitch the casing. Be sure to use the old stitch holes if you can.

Glue the inner strip back over the stitching.

Glue the tire back on the rim. That's the really time consuming part. Piece of advice - when you're setting up the rim and tubie for gluing, put on the 2003 Tour, and watch Beloki crash after he locked up the rear wheel and the tubie popped off. Good motivation to get it glued on properly.

And aging has it's limits. Couple of years ago, I bought a classic Falcon San Remo that had been hanging in a garage for 20 years. Still had the original Clement cotton tubies on it. The rubber was actually in good shape, but the casing had become so brittle as to make the tires uninflatable.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

johno,

Remember over-lapping the new stitching into the old? Using tweezers to pull the cut stitches/thread out? Talcum powdering the tube? Using the pencil supplied in the Velox patch kits to mark the leak area? Which kit contained the pointed little blade that looked like an ex-acto knife blade?

Old sidewalls can be dressed with latex solution, but weathered chords (wet-rot, sun-rot) are toast.

In 35 years of cycling I've been fortunate. I've never rolled a sew-up. I have heated up the glue and moved the tire on the rim a few times. Finding that valve stem at a 30 degree angle after a wild descent or hard-braking race is always a wake-up call.

Regards to all the old guys that used sew-ups back in the day!

 

[3Sensei]

You aren't a true cyclist until you have repaired a tubie.

First, peel the tire off of the rim.

Locate the puncture. Peel back the inner strip around the puncture, exposing the stitching.

Cut the stitching, opening the casing.

Pull out the inner tube, and patch the puncture.

Push the inner tube back into the casing, restitch the casing. Be sure to use the old stitch holes if you can.

Glue the inner strip back over the stitching.

I know you probably do the important step that's missing from your description, but for the sake of completeness:

After patching the puncture, check very carefully for any remnants of what may have caused the puncture.

I'm not saying that it ever happened to me, but if an extremely small shard of glass was still in the casing it might eventually work through the tube and cause another puncture. Then the poor idiot would have to do all that work again. Not that it ever happened to me. No matter what my wife may say about my cussing about it.

Agree that repairing a tubular is probably the most 'manly' of any bicycle related task that I've ever had to do. Since I just ride for fun and exercise nowadays, I use clinchers. But I do remember having that wonderful red Tubasti all over my fingers. And yeah, I know that it's the worst adhesive, but this was 25 years ago.

Happy riding.

 

[CAMPYBOB]

Just TRY getting General Motors 'Fas-Tac' (the stuff the carmaker used to permenantly glue bodyside moldings onto car bodies) off your hands 15 minutes before the race started...right after the gorilla tech inspector with leather work gloves on managed (after 2 minutes of trying!) to push off part of your best glue job!

Syphoning gasoline out of a car to use as an emergency cleaning solvent is NOT recommended! Belching up gas fumes for the first 20 laps of a crit is an unpleasant expirience. Having your sticky, gasoline-smelling hands almost glued to the bar tape is also low on my list of recommendations...again...not that intelligent folks like us would know about such things.

The one good thing about Fas-Tac was NO one was going to roll a tire once glued with that stuff. Of course, your next tire de-mounting destroyed the tire.

 

[sogood]

Thanks guys for all the great stories from years past. I am sure glad that cycling equipments are so much more rider friendly these days.

 

[thedeacon]

One other note on repair of tubulars. Way too frequent an event - when having gone through all the trouble of demounting the tire, cutting the stitching out, tube extraction and patching, and restitching - yep, what happens on the last stitch?? Puncture the tube. Start over.

 

[thedeacon]

I think a zealous tire salesman made a deal on 1000 sew-ups to some Director Sportif. So the team put them in the basement and they're still using out of the same inventory 7 years later.

 

[alienator]

Originally Posted by thedeacon .

I think some zealous tire salesman made a deal on 1000 sew-ups to some Director Sportif. So the team put them in some basement and they're still using out of the same inventory 7 years later.

Or the tubes that were used, Hutchinson tubulars previously only available to Pro Tour teams and the like, were made with a tread that wasn't vulcanized and had a high natural rubber content, a tread that actually saw benefit in aging.

 

[oldbobcat]

Back in the day we tried to ride aged tubulars but we were often too broke to not use them right away. If they were aged, it was while they were hanging on the hook in the shop. Maybe the Clement Criterium Setas and Paris-Roubaixs got more aging than the $9 D'Alessandro "trainers."

The rationale we were given was longer wear and better flat resistance. The tread on "green" tubulars would be somewhat tacky, picking up and holding road debris, while aged tubulars seemed to throw it off better.

I never noticed a difference in handling, but I remember one set of red silks that were fast as hell but downright slick in the corners. Their loss of traction was always predictable, though, so they never took me down.

I've got a 26-year Vittoria Pave CG on the back wheel of my old Masi now, and it's sublime. Wish I had at least three more.