Tubulars or clinchers? This is not a question that will be settled today. Personally, I like clinchers. They offer good grip,
comfort, durability and seem pretty fast to me.
Tubulars would be
lighter, provide even more grip and, given that professional riders use them
and must have good reasons for doing so, more speed. If I used tubulars,
however, I would have to carry a spare or two, just in case, as they
used to do when they wore them across the chest.
The extra
weight would eliminate all of the advantages of a tubular.
When
misfortune strikes, changing a tubular is not something to be done on the spur
of the moment. It takes time, and the outcome can be ghastly, if the exchange is performed incorrectly. Which is why race riders have professional bike mechanics to do
it for them. Usually there is no team car behind me when I ride. So, there you
have it, it’s clinchers.
Still, not all clinchers are equal. What to look for, when I
buy a set? When I started paying nearly daily visits at the BikeNüt shop, I asked
questions, researched the manufacturers websites, read Bicycling Magazine, and got more confused than ever--too much information. It took some
experimentation and improved bike-handling sensibility to figure out what I
liked.
What is my ideal clincher tyre? I consider five determining
factors: rolling resistance, comfort, grip, weight, and durability. There would
be a sixth factor, cost, if it weren’t for the sad truth that clinchers are all
in the same price range, within a few dollars from one another.
Rolling resistance. Do you have the impression that you can
go as fast as you want, or that the ground is as smooth as an egg shell? That
is good. If the clinchers you use give you such feedback, keep using them: that
is low rolling resistance.
Comfort. Often, surface conditions are less than ideal on
our beautiful roads. There are cracks, potholes, bad repair patches, loose
debris, and, in some cases, the surface is so worn out that it feels as rough
as sand paper. Good clincher tyres, while not entirely insulating us against
the ills of modern road surfaces, can at least alleviate their worst symptoms.
I have discovered that the higher the thread count (TPI = Threads Per Inch) the
more comfortable the tyre feels and the less rolling resistance it develops.
Grip. This is an attribute we usually think important when
going downhill. If you are descending at more than 40 miles per hour, and your
tyres give you the impression that you are drifting, that is not a good thing.
Please change them as soon as you can. If, on the other hand, you can lean into
the curve until your knees touch the road surface, that is good grip. Keep
them.
Weight. We all know that a light bike is
faster than a heavier one. Tyres contribute to the overall weight, and
therefore we want the lightest we can find. As usual, we must make compromises:
a very light tyre is more prone to annoying punctures than a heavier one. A
heavier one will probably last longer, too.
Durability. Tyre weight is not the only
indicator of long life. The rubber chemical compound is another variable: a
harder tyre, however less comfortable, will outlast a softer-compound tyre.
Perhaps most important of all is where we ride. Urban roads are less kind on
our wheels than country roads, smoother surfaces easier on the tyres than rough
ones, and neck-break cornering is antithetical to long life.
In the end, it all comes down to personal preference, as I
mentioned earlier, based on solid experience. BikeNüt carries at least four
tyre brands in their lineup, Continental, Michelin, Schwalbe, and Vittoria.
Here is a comparative table with some of these tyres.
TPI
|
Weight
| |
Continental GP Attack
|
370
|
190 g
|
Continental Grand Prix 4000S
|
330
|
207 g
|
Michelin PRO² RACE
|
127
|
229 g
|
Vittoria Open Corsa Evo Slick
|
320
|
210 g
|
Vittoria Rubino Pro Slick
|
150
|
215 g
|
Schwalbe Ultremo R.1 HS 380
|
320
|
180 g
|
No comments:
Post a Comment