road racing and mechanical repairs
- jules21
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road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby jules21 » Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:42 pm
i'm attempting a return to regular road racing after a loong time, have been doing crits. in a crit, you just walk your bike back to the pits if something goes wrong. that's not really an option for road racing.
what is the norm? spare wheels in follow car? CO2?
- twizzle
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby twizzle » Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:49 pm
Beats waiting for the tail car, who might not have space for a bike anyway.
If using tubes with removable valves - make sure the valves are in tight BEFORE the race.
...real cyclists don't have squeaky chains...
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby jules21 » Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:04 pm
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby toolonglegs » Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:18 pm
Here I carry nothing except my iPhone for strava ... laps are no longer than 12k's so I can ride back happily on a flat tubular. Longer races spares go in the follow cars.
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby lock_ » Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:23 pm
Of course I take it all with me in a road race, for fear of being stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Rode over to the Northern Combines Hell of The West race on Sat. After fulfilling my volunteer duties I positioned myself near the end of the gravel section, probably had about 4-5 guys puncture in front of me. Most carried enough equipement to get them back to the start line. The one guy on tubulars had to wait for the follow car to come through, and scored a ride back. Now, at least in the Northern Combine, there's only 2 follow cars spread across 5 grades (+juniors). So you may be waiting a while for a wheel. It's pretty much a race-ender really, no lap outs in a road race. If you're running tubulars; well I'd see if the follow car is willing to take a spare for you just to get you home.
- MREJ
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby MREJ » Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:10 am
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby toppity » Tue Apr 16, 2013 9:35 am
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby ironhanglider » Wed Apr 17, 2013 6:14 pm
Just a correction lock_ The one bloke with no spares got stuck out on the road, any of the others would have been in the same position without spares. A tubular can be peeled off, replacement installed, inflated and have you back on the road faster than clinchers. (Only if you have a tyre lever, last time with a well glued tyre, I nearly tore my thumbnails off trying to remove the tyre.)lock_ wrote:I've always been a pump+multitool+spare link+tube+patch+levers kinda guy. Raced many a crit with all this hanging out my back pocket, that is until a more experienced racer mentioned I didn't want to land on my back with that stuff in there. So from then on, for crits, I just left it a the start/finish line.
Of course I take it all with me in a road race, for fear of being stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Rode over to the Northern Combines Hell of The West race on Sat. After fulfilling my volunteer duties I positioned myself near the end of the gravel section, probably had about 4-5 guys puncture in front of me. Most carried enough equipement to get them back to the start line. The one guy on tubulars had to wait for the follow car to come through, and scored a ride back. Now, at least in the Northern Combine, there's only 2 follow cars spread across 5 grades (+juniors). So you may be waiting a while for a wheel. It's pretty much a race-ender really, no lap outs in a road race. If you're running tubulars; well I'd see if the follow car is willing to take a spare for you just to get you home.
My experience is that if you can chase back on after a puncture you are probably in the wrong grade.
My club also stipulates that riders have both a spare and an inflator as part of the race rules, however I don't know of anyone being penalised for a breach.
Sealant is good, but not as good as a spare. I'm fortunate that punctures in my race wheels are pretty rare, so I don't penalise myself with sealant, it also means that I can repair it afterwards. It all depends on your puncture profile, I don't recall having patched a tubular more than twice during it's life.toppity wrote:I run sealant in my tubulars which has saved me a couple of times. I carry a multi-spanner as well.
Cheers,
Cameron
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby toppity » Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:59 am
- Derny Driver
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby Derny Driver » Thu Apr 18, 2013 10:47 am
My dad repairs tubulars but he's 90 and has enough to keep him busy with the guys from my club.toppity wrote:^^ good post. I tried to have a go at repairing the last tubular that I got a flat in as it was nearly new. I couldn't even get the backing tape off in one go so I gave the attempt away. I wish Jack was still about God rest his soul.
Its a dying artform.
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby lock_ » Thu Apr 18, 2013 1:00 pm
- jules21
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby jules21 » Thu Apr 18, 2013 1:07 pm
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby ironhanglider » Thu Apr 18, 2013 3:25 pm
I'd be happy to race on it (not that there's much racing left at that stage). My spares have old glue on them, the rim has glue on it, and combined with the pressure from a 16g CO2 canister it will hold well enough for road racing. The corners in road races are not usually at the limit of traction unlike a crit. Someone on rec.bicycles.tech once did the maths and figured out that with ordinary cornering, the forces are still acting within the width of the rim and so would not roll the tyre. The problem is when you get extraordinary forces typically when the wheel gets airborne and lands with a sideways force, such as what happens with a pedal strike or landing a bunny hop. (I have known riders who bought a wheel and tyre and raced on it happily for weeks before discovering that there was no glue on it at all!)lock_ wrote:Good point ironhanglider, forgot about that. There's still a few guys you see racing with a folded up tubular jammed under their seat, not too many these days though. Good to get you home, but I can't imagine you'd want to race on it after a roadside repair, but you're going to be at least 5 minutes down by then anyway.
I typically use a mostly worn out, repaired tyre as a spare. When I have gone to pull it off afterwards it is still quite a job, I'd be quite happy to race a road race on it.
Thanks for the kind words suggesting that I am some kind of artisan dinosaur by repairing tyres, but the fact is that I am simply too cheap to buy new tyres more regularly. In fact when I returned to the tubular fold I only bought two tyres, and the guy at the shop gave me two more punctured ones which I repaired for use as spares.
The tyre companies are making it harder, I have heard that some tubulars (newer Vittoria?) are now made with the base tape so firmly attached that it is virtually impossible to remove, and Tufo tyres are tubeless and therefore not able to be repaired at all.
There is an American company'Tire Alert' which apparently pulls the whole tyre apart, inserts a new tube, sews it back together and installs a new base tape for a reasonable fee. It'd be nice if a similar service existed in Aus.
Cheers,
Cameron
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby you cannot be sirrus » Thu Apr 18, 2013 3:46 pm
If I do puncture it would be race over but I'd rather fix it and ride back (plenty of short cuts on most of our routes) than wait for the following car and get back later.
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby toppity » Thu Apr 18, 2013 3:48 pm
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby toppity » Thu Apr 18, 2013 3:52 pm
the reason why I mentioned sealant Jules is because in last years C grade Sale to Bairnsdale I punctured 20kms in. The sealant did it's job. A bloke even tried to convince me to stop because he saw "heaps of white stuff come out". I kept on going and still snuck a win.jules21 wrote:appreciate all the replies.. i'm not worried about chasing back on - once I've got a puncture, I assume my race is over. i'm happy to just be able to ride back to the pits.
- jules21
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby jules21 » Thu Apr 18, 2013 4:01 pm
fair point toppity - unfortunately i'm running clinchers with tubes, so for me a puncture means getting off the bike. with decent tyres, I rarely get a puncture, it's more just on the off-chance of being stuck in the middle of nowhere.toppity wrote:the reason why I mentioned sealant Jules is because in last years C grade Sale to Bairnsdale I punctured 20kms in. The sealant did it's job. A bloke even tried to convince me to stop because he saw "heaps of white stuff come out". I kept on going and still snuck a win.
- Derny Driver
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby Derny Driver » Thu Apr 18, 2013 4:08 pm
No mate, you cut the base tape in half and peel up about 4cm of it. That's all you need.toppity wrote:IH, mine was a vittoria that I tried to repair. I got about 6" of base tape off before I tore it.
The trick is to peel the base tape and unpick the stitching at EXACTLY the spot where the hole is.
To find that exact spot takes a lot of practise and time, you need little clamps to clamp off sections of the tyre. You clamp sections off and inflate the rest of the tyre and leave it ... if it stays up then you know the hole is not there. By a process of elimination over a period of hours / days / weeks you pinpoint the exact 4 cm section where the hole is. Unpick there, patch it, stitch it and reglue the SMALL section of base tape.
I should get my dad to do a youtube clip or something. You need a lot of patience and lots of practise. Most people just buy a new one rather than fiddle with them.
Talking of punctures in races, I rode off second scratch in a club handicap race once, got a flat, changed it and pumped it up with a mini pump, and jumped onto the scratch bunch who had started behind us at 3 minutes. It was probably about a gap of 2:30 by that stage. That was a few years ago but Im still pretty proud of that. I reckon I could go under 2 mins with a CO2 canister.
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby toppity » Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:08 pm
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Re: road racing and mechanical repairs
Postby nickobec » Thu Apr 18, 2013 5:58 pm
Looking at my damaged rim & buckled wheel, I decided my race was well and truly over, threw my bike over my shoulder and was walking down to the marshal on the corner to try and cadge a lift back at the end of the race. When the Club Commissaire stopped and gave me a lift back to the start finish line.
Next week the Club Commissaire gave all riders a lecture on the rule that requires you to carry a spare tube and inflation device. Note, he saw my toolkit including tube, CO2, tyre levers, so I don't think it was aimed at me, but the timing was strange.
If I was in the middle of nowhere I would of replaced the tube and attempted to get home, but all the metal shards on the rim would of made it a slow job to get it right.
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