Goatheads for Jobst

[Solvang Cyclist]

[email protected] wrote in
news:[email protected]:


> The first thing to do will be to use the U-shaped tire end as a
> template for bending a smaller U-curve. The things are apparently
> designed for a 34 mm radius tire, so my 700x26 just rattles around,
> with only a little strip of wire touching the center of the tire.

I don't think that any tire savers are designed to fit anything right
without considerable "tweaking". In all cases it's necessary to bend both
the upper arms to locate the saver and the lower wire to fit the contour
of the tire.


>
> Then I'll have to figure out something for the front brake. So far,
> nothing looks plausible. The tiresaver is wider than my brake arm
> clearance, so I can't mount them on the brake bolt and let them hang
> discreetly inside the brake area. There's no hole on the front of my
> brake, much less a bolt, so they can't hang out there. I'm pretty sure
> that Jobst would advise against drilling a hole in the middle of a
> brake arm, so I'll have to look and see if any old brakes I have in
> junk boxes have enough clearance or an accessible front bolt.

Why not just bend the upper wire of the tire saver into a sharper angle
"V" and mount it on the brake bolt between the front of the fork and the
brake arms? Usually there are some washers there. If you file the wire on
both sides to make it flat, it should fit just fine. I have the front
saver mounted there on a new Record brake. I can upload some photos if
you'd like.

Okay, I know that puts the saver in a tight spot under the brake arms -
facing forward. But anything that could grab the wire and not have it rip
out of the plastic tubes would most likely jam up in the same spot
anyway.

And between myself and some friends that still use tire savers, I can say
that we have well over 100 combined years of usage without a single
mishap. There was one incident where a friend picked up a screw in her
front tire. It hit the tire saver and mangled it a little, but there was
no major damage and the wheel certainly didn't lock up. (I would think
there's too much angular momentum for that to happen without ripping the
tire saver apart.)

Cheers,
David

 

[[email protected]]

On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 16:10:53 -0600, Solvang Cyclist
<[email protected]> wrote:

>> The tiresaver is wider than my brake arm
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> clearance, so I can't mount them on the brake bolt and let them hang
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> discreetly inside the brake area.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>Why not just bend the upper wire of the tire saver into a sharper angle
>"V" and mount it on the brake bolt between the front of the fork and the
>brake arms?

Dear David,

I hope that things are clearer now.

If not, consider that the business end of the tiresaver is three
inches from the bolt that it mounts on.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

 

[Solvang Cyclist]

[email protected] wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 16:10:53 -0600, Solvang Cyclist
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>> The tiresaver is wider than my brake arm
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>> clearance, so I can't mount them on the brake bolt and let them hang
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>> discreetly inside the brake area.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>>Why not just bend the upper wire of the tire saver into a sharper
>>angle "V" and mount it on the brake bolt between the front of the fork
>>and the brake arms?
>
> Dear David,
>
> I hope that things are clearer now.
>
> If not, consider that the business end of the tiresaver is three
> inches from the bolt that it mounts on.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl Fogel
>

Sorry Carl, I'm not trying to be difficult, maybe I'm just dense.

You stated: "The tiresaver is wider than my brake arm clearance" to
which I responded: "Why not just bend the upper wire of the tire saver
into a sharper angle 'V'"?

I still don't understand why that wouldn't work.

The Campy Record brake arms don't have much clearance, so my tiresaver
is bent quite narrow at the top to clear the brake arms, then it gets
wider at the "business end".

I uploaded a photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/68241631@N00/316745914/
which may or may not help.

Cheers,
David

 

[[email protected]]

[email protected] wrote:
>
>
> Dear Frank,
>
> The tire savers arrived a few minutes ago.

Who says you can't trust the Postal Service?

> My scheme is to fiddle around until I figure out some way to mount
> modified versions by January 1st and the 2007 season.
>
> The first thing to do will be to use the U-shaped tire end as a
> template for bending a smaller U-curve. The things are apparently
> designed for a 34 mm radius tire, so my 700x26 just rattles around,
> with only a little strip of wire touching the center of the tire. If
> they're going to work, they need to sweep barely-embedded goatheads
> out where the tread meets the sidewall. Any goathead that strikes dead
> center is through the tread and tube instantly.
>
> The next thing to do will probably be to use the back section as a
> template for bending a new piece to mount on the rear. There's plenty
> of room, but the things are bent for a tire about twice as far from
> the rear brake bolt as my frame allows. So either a wire with a
> different bend, or a 1 & 1/2 inch metal plate sticking up from my rear
> brake, with a mounting bolt.
>
> Then I'll have to figure out something for the front brake. So far,
> nothing looks plausible. The tiresaver is wider than my brake arm
> clearance, so I can't mount them on the brake bolt and let them hang
> discreetly inside the brake area.

Carl, I'm with David on this. You can easily bend those things any way
you need to! Don't let the fact that they're priceless antiques scare
you in the least. Bolt them in place, grab a couple pairs of pliers,
and customize them.

Seriously, nobody ever expected a tire saver to fit perfectly.
Everyone who ever installed one bent it to shape.

- Frank Krygowski

 

[[email protected]]

On 13 Sep 2006 21:40:46 -0700, [email protected] wrote:

[snip]

Pueblo caught a little of the two storms that have been keeping Peter
Chisholm out of mischief up in Boulder, so I hadn't been for a ride
since December 26th, a full week.

Today, a chinook wind raised the temperature to 57 degrees, so I
decided to walk my bike a few blocks to the main road, which I'd
scouted and found open. The main roads always become passable sooner
than the side roads.

I felt guilty because I'd forgotten to bend and mount the wire tire
savers from Frank Krygowski, but with the snow plows it seemed
unlikely that I'd have a flat tire from goatheads. Besides, Frank
would much rather have me go for a ride than worry about missing one
day of testing.

I was soon consoling myself that the tire savers would have thrown up
an even bigger mess on the wet roads.

So the flat tire near the top of the hill here was just coincidence,
not the gods punishing me for sloth:

http://i14.tinypic.com/2z5rbec.jpg

Somewhere in all that sand on the shoulder was some broken glass, a
rare cause of flats around here. The tire savers might have thwarted
the little chunk of clear glass, but we'll never know.

Even with the chinook dying down, the hill was good for 45.5 mph going
back later.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

 

[[email protected]]

[email protected] wrote:
>
>
> I felt guilty because I'd forgotten to bend and mount the wire tire
> savers from Frank Krygowski...

Well, at least you felt guilty.


> So the flat tire near the top of the hill here was just coincidence,
> not the gods punishing me for sloth:
>
> http://i14.tinypic.com/2z5rbec.jpg

I contacted some of the gods. They were pretty evenly divided. The
first half of them claimed they punished you for sloth. The second
half of them were trying to illustrate how stripes (whether fog stripes
or bike lane stripes) prevent cars from sweeping a riding surface
clean.

(The amount of trash outside the fogline is striking, isn't it? One
reason I greatly prefer wide unstriped lanes.)

Of course, the third half of the gods were saying "Hey, we rolled the
dice, and it just came up as Carl's turn for a flat. Again."

Get those tire savers on, or mail 'em back!

BTW, some folks have found ways to make them work with fenders. But
you'd need a bike with fender clearance.

- Frank Krygowski

 

[[email protected]]

[email protected] wrote:
>
> Somewhere in all that sand on the shoulder was some broken glass, a
> rare cause of flats around here. The tire savers might have thwarted
> the little chunk of clear glass, but we'll never know.

Sounds like causing flats in Pueblo is more often a job for Goatsheads.

-dkl

 

[[email protected]]

On 3 Jan 2007 21:01:09 -0800, [email protected] wrote:

>
>[email protected] wrote:
>>
>>
>> I felt guilty because I'd forgotten to bend and mount the wire tire
>> savers from Frank Krygowski...
>
>Well, at least you felt guilty.
>
>
>> So the flat tire near the top of the hill here was just coincidence,
>> not the gods punishing me for sloth:
>>
>> http://i14.tinypic.com/2z5rbec.jpg
>
>I contacted some of the gods. They were pretty evenly divided. The
>first half of them claimed they punished you for sloth. The second
>half of them were trying to illustrate how stripes (whether fog stripes
>or bike lane stripes) prevent cars from sweeping a riding surface
>clean.
>
>(The amount of trash outside the fogline is striking, isn't it? One
>reason I greatly prefer wide unstriped lanes.)
>
>Of course, the third half of the gods were saying "Hey, we rolled the
>dice, and it just came up as Carl's turn for a flat. Again."
>
>Get those tire savers on, or mail 'em back!
>
>BTW, some folks have found ways to make them work with fenders. But
>you'd need a bike with fender clearance.
>
>- Frank Krygowski

Dear Frank,

Are you sure we should spend time on actual testing?

I once read in a book that a few hours spent reading can save months
of time in the lab. Other people sometimes find the idea attractive
and repeat the saying.



As for the "fogline," RBT broadens my horizons--I'd never heard the
phrase. Around here, we just call those white lines on the highway
shoulder stripes.

If you view that picture full size, you can just make out the first
rumble strip, next to the first reflector post, a few inches from the
white stripe.

Normally, the whole width of the highway is clean, with little
difference between the two lanes and the shoulders.

But the infrequent snow storm always brings out the sand trucks, the
dirty, sandy snow packs up on the undersides of the cars, the cars
keep driving, and then the stuff melts and falls all over. No sand
trucks visit my quiet street, but it looks about like that hill.

Fenders are an intriguing notion. I gather that they're used on
bicycles where it rains, but they're mostly decorative here in a
near-desert pocket. We get some thunderstorms in summer, but not much
snow in winter. Peter Chisholm has been buried up north in Boulder,
and the National Guard is dropping hay bales to starving cattle east
of here, but we just got a few inches of snow that packed down hard
and still hasn't melted in a week. Lots of posters wouldn't even have
noticed what Pueblo got.

To illustrate just how little snow we've had, here's something that my
sister in Massachusetts gave me for Christmas years ago:

http://www.yaktrax.com/productswalker.aspx

Yak Trax snap over shoes like skeletal galoshes in about two seconds.
The thin steel springs coiled around the sole criss-crossings bite
into snow and ice.

Last night, I finally dug my Yak Trax out and used them--I'd never had
had enough snow and ice to walk on in all those years to use them,
much less need them. They worked surprisingly well.

It should be warm enough tomorrow to work on the bicycle out in the
garage and go for a ride, so I'll see about getting a tire saver on
the rear. My first attempt at bending one would call for considerable
tact from an art class teacher, but I'll keep at it.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

 

[Michael Press]

In article
<[email protected]>,
[email protected] wrote:

> I once read in a book that a few hours spent reading can save months
> of time in the lab. Other people sometimes find the idea attractive
> and repeat the saying.

It will if you spend time in the laboratory. Otherwise
it will not save any time in the laboratory.

--
Michael Press

 

[[email protected]]

On Jan 4, 5:01 am, [email protected] wrote:
> [email protected] wrote:
>
> > I felt guilty because I'd forgotten to bend and mount the wiretire> saversfrom Frank Krygowski...
>
> Well, at least you felt guilty.
>
> > So the flat tire near the top of the hill here was just coincidence,
> > not the gods punishing me for sloth:
>
> >http://i14.tinypic.com/2z5rbec.jpg
>
> I contacted some of the gods. They were pretty evenly divided. The
> first half of them claimed they punished you for sloth. The second
> half of them were trying to illustrate how stripes (whether fog stripes
> or bike lane stripes) prevent cars from sweeping a riding surface
> clean.
>
> (The amount of trash outside the fogline is striking, isn't it? One
> reason I greatly prefer wide unstriped lanes.)
>
> Of course, the third half of the gods were saying "Hey, we rolled the
> dice, and it just came up asCarl'sturn for a flat. Again."
>
> Get thosetire saverson, or mail 'em back!
>
> BTW, some folks have found ways to make them work with fenders. But
> you'd need a bike with fender clearance.
>
> - Frank Krygowski

Dear Frank,

Unexpected failure with tire savers . . .

Alas, the bulky plastic tubing and the thick 2 mm wire on the
commercial tire savers defeated me. They're really designed for
fatter, older tires on frames with brake-bolts much higher from the
tires. Even with two pairs of pliers, I only made a mess of them while
trying to bend the wires to match my thinner tires and yet somehow
keep the plastic tubing out of the way.

So I made all-wire imitations out of 1.8 mm spokes. They were
embarrassingly crude, but they attached to my brake-bolt mounts, they
touched my thin tires (well, kinda-sorta touched them), and I could
always claim that I was testing something that a clumsy child had
made.

With the temperature near 60 yesterday, I set off on the dry roads for
my daily ride. (Well, it used to be a daily ride, but not this
winter.)

I didn't like the noise, but I figured that you wouldn't accept that
excuse, so I kept pedaling.

By the time that I noticed the dead coyote on the other side of the
highway about four miles out, I decided that I could stand the noise,
but I wasn't sure if I could stand the dust.

I was coughing so much and my eyes were tearing so badly that I didn't
even notice the dead coyote when I went back past it, tucked in on my
daily descent.

To hell with it. The tire savers came off and will stay off. Maybe
they can be endured by upright riders, or by riders without sinus
trouble and allergies, or by riders whose roads are washed clean by
frequent rains. But they scrape too much dust and grit off the tops of
my tires to be worth using.

Jobst was right about how tire savers leave your pants dirty, but I
didn't expect the nearly invisible cloud of dust to lead to coughing
fits, a running nose, and streaming eyes. It was a striking
demonstration of how the turbulence circulates around a rider.

I knew that smoke and perfume from pedestrians lingers for a few
seconds after you pass them and that you can smell smoke from damaged
parts on a moving motorcycle, but it never occurred to me that dust
scraped off the tops of the tires would leave me coughing like
tubercular children forced to attend the opera.

To be fair, I didn't get a flat tire.

Ah-choo!

Carl Fogel