Dear Dr. Tyre,
I’ve been all over the Internet trying to
get a straight answer to this question:
what’s the difference between the Continental Grand Prix 4000 and the
4000S? Which one should I buy?
Len P, Louisville, KY
Dear Len,
The 4000S
has Black Chili compound, which (according to the manufacturer) means that the
rubber has “special nanometric carbon soot particles” in it that give the tire
all the best characteristics of solid grip, low rolling resistance, and
longevity. (I like that these nanometric
carbon soot particles are the “special” kind, not just the regular kind.)
The 4000
doesn’t have Black Chili, unless you get the all-black ones, which do. Got that?
The only difference between the 4000S and the black 4000 is graphics.
Which should
you ride? Does the Black Chili actually
mean anything? Probably it’s a benefit,
but can’t say for sure. I can say, though, that there’s something
twee about using brightly colored tires on your bike. And do you really want to give up a potential
functional benefit just for the sake of style?
By the way,
the first time I was asked about 4000 vs. 4000S, by a friend, I hadn’t done my
homework and replied, “You want the 4000S because it’s better.” My friend asked why it’s better. I replied, “Because I have it, and I only ride
the best.” If you invoke this line of
reasoning and have your authority questioned, use your tire choice as evidence
of your superior taste. This rhetorical
trick—technically a logical fallacy—is called Petitio Principii and is the
backbone of many a successful argument.
Dear Dr. Tyre,
Let’s get down to brass tacks. What’s better: clinchers or sew-ups?
Byron T, Boston, MA
Dear Byron,
That all
depends on who’s buying. If you’re on a
pro team, with a crackerjack mechanic, and get all the tires you want, then
tubulars (i.e., sew-ups) are still the best way to go. They handle better because they deflect more
in corners, are less vulnerable to pinch-flats, and are a lighter overall
design since the rim doesn’t have to have the little shelf to hold the tire
bead. On the other hand, tubular tires
cost a lot, are virtually worthless after you get a puncture, and are really
hard to glue on properly.
Naturally,
there are those who maintain that punctured tubulars can be repaired. An e-mail thread among my bike club members a
year or so ago dealt with this very topic, presided over by our club guru, Bob
Muzzy, whose cred is established by this photo:
(Yes, that’s
Greg Lemond. Bob has just presented Greg
with a signed photo of the two of them at the start line of a race in Belgium
in 1980.)
Bob wrote
the following:
Now gather ‘round in a circle, youngsters, while I tell you a story about sew-up tire repair, long, long ago. We used to fix our own! That’s right. And we got good, and fast, at it. I swear I could do it faster than some of you can change a clincher flat… Rarely is it necessary to replace the inner tube, valve and entire base tape. I’ve even spliced in replacement sections of inner tube when there was a large blowout. Say there was a 2” long rip in the tube. I’d cut it out to square the ends, then splice back in a 4” section of tube from another salvaged tire; leaving 1” overlap on either end. I have also replaced treads; shops used to sell replacements. Most of the time the sidewall failed prior to the tread so this wasn’t a common repair. It was easier to lay down a thin layer of shoe goo to build up the existing tread. There must be instructional videos on youtube. I’ve long suggested that this would be a great business for a young person.
A buddy of mine started his own tubular repair service in the mid- ‘80s. He called it Professional Independent Sew-up Repair and didn’t realize what the initials spelled. His business, which he ran out of my dad’s basement (he was couch-surfing there at the time) was booming right from the beginning; the only problem was, he never actually fixed any of the tires—he just took them in. Years later I found PISR’s backlog, still in the basement. The PISR customer files were long gone, so there was no way to get the tires back to their owners. So I took them, along with the half dozen or so tires I’d punctured over the years, and gave them to another friend who had just started his own tubular repair business. Well, I pestered that guy every six months or so for the next three years, and then one day, amazingly, he gave me all the tires, fixed. He was too embarrassed to accept any payment, though I tried to insist. So, I went back to training on sew-ups because I suddenly had this incredible inventory of tires, but they lasted an average of one ride apiece before the stitching would blow. I went through the whole lot of them in less than a month, I think. Never again! Moral of the story? Sewing up a sew-up is harder than a lot of people think, especially for those dang youngsters these days...
To this
tale, Bob replied, “Dana, you clearly hung around with a scoundrels and
incompetents in your youth. Your parents
and I are glad to see you’ve straightened up.
A bit. Your lame buddy simply
used lousy thread. A double thickness of
sturdy waxed dental floss is recommended.”
Of course,
puncture repair is only part of the story.
Guys roll tires (i.e., an improperly glued tire can roll off the rim,
causing a crash), and did so even back in the day, when your average racer got
a lot more involved in maintaining his bike than modern-day types (I’m sorry,
but it has to be said). I marshaled the
Albany Criterium last year, and a dirtbag rolled a tire coming through a
corner, crashing the guy behind him in the process. The second guy (i.e., the innocent victim) let
us fuss over him, but the first dude got the hell out of there, rightly fearing
a tongue-lashing.
When I
worked tech support for races in the ‘80s, I prided myself on being a hard-ass
and flunking as many bikes as I could by rolling the tires off the rims with my
hands. Guys would complain and I’d
remind them that I’d done them—and the rest of the peloton—a favor. A properly glued tire should be impossible to
push off a rim while inflated. Alas,
gluing tubular tires (like patching them) is a lost art. So unless you have lots of money and you
really know what you’re doing, just stick with clinchers. The modern ones are very good.
Dear Dr. Tyre,
I’ve been dieting and have lost ten pounds
over the winter (even though it meant huddling by the radiator a lot of the
time). Plus I have been working out in
the gym, and am getting loads of base miles.
In other words, I’m really stepping up my game. So I’m thinking: is it time to go tubeless?
David M, San Diego, CA
Dear David,
Not to be a
jerk or anything, but I frankly couldn’t care less about your training program,
your “efforts,” your “game,” and your racing, and I’m sure my readers couldn’t,
either.
Sorry, I
guess I’m still riled up thinking about guys who roll tubular tires. Anyway, my approach to tubeless tire systèmes is that, while they afford a
pompous advice columnist the opportunity to throw around terms like “système,” they should be approached
cautiously. Will tubeless really catch
on? And if it does, will it be a lasting
innovation, or just a fad? I sat out the
whole Biopace “revolution,” and while it’s easy to downplay oval chainrings
now, a lot of people paid perfectly good money to replace their perfectly good
round chainrings with Biopace, only to come full circle and pay more money to return
to round chainrings. Same with the
roller-cam brakes and U-brakes that came after them. Meanwhile, if the technology does end up
sticking around, it’ll only get better and cheaper over time. In my opinion, the only reason to go tubeless
at this early stage is to show off (though maybe that’s reason enough for you).
Dear Dr. Tyre,
I’m going to make my own studded snow tires
for my mountain bike! Any advice?
Kate S, Buffalo, NY
Dear Kate,
While there
are several web resources for this project (for example, here, here, and here),
I haven’t come across one that addresses the biggest problem with this
idea: longevity. The standard method is to use wood screws as
studs. Wood screws will wear down
really, really fast. This is not a story
my people tell, but something I know myself.
To get
around this problem, you can buy expensive studded bike tires (e.g., this one) that have tungsten carbide studs, or you can try to buy the tungsten carbide
studs by themselves to make your own studded tires with, as my brothers and I
managed to do in the ‘80s. It was
terribly hard work, drilling a small hole in each tire knob and pushing the
stud through by thumb. I’m sure we’ll
all have arthritis from the manufacturing process. But the tires were indestructible! I used to cruise into the garage at speed and
lock up the rear wheel, carving grooves in the concrete. We had to use Mr. Tuffys in the tires to
protect the tubes, and the whole setup weighed a ton, but once you had the bike
up to speed, it was good times. I wish I
had a photo, or for that matter the tires themselves. Where did they go? Who knows.
We all moved away from Colorado and the ‘rents must have pitched
them. A pity. Anyway, here’s a photo of a proper (commercial) studded tire.
I’m kind of a connoisseur of print ads. What is your favorite ad for a bike tire?
Sheila S, Boston, MA
Dear Sheila,
There are
lots of great old ads for tires, but two of them leap readily to mind. First, this one:
The other
one, alas, I can’t find anywhere, but the following photo has much in common with it: the same guy, on this same giant
bike, pitched over in a turn at the same angle:
This second ad was
for the new Avocet Fasgrip tire, which had no tread whatsoever. It was sort of the Atkins diet of the bike
tire world: take everything we thought
we knew about tires and reverse it. Completely
bald tires. The actual ad showed the guy
on a wet road, fearlessly banking over like that. The text promised that the tire really would
stick like glue in the wet, and I think it even gave some silly reasons why
slick was better.
I guess if I
have to pick between these two favorite ads—and I clearly do, based on your
question—I’d go with the Clément ad because it doesn’t promise, or indeed even
say, anything at all. The man and woman
seem to be fighting over the tire, but the woman looks bored. Then there’s the guy in the back in the suit
… what’s his story? You might question
whether this is a persuasive ad, but it sure worked on me. I refer you to last week’s question about
my favorite tire, and to the fact that Clément was a runner-up despite my never
having tried it. Its mystique owes a lot
to this ad, I think.
The Avocet
ad, meanwhile, didn’t convince me, but did convince my brother Geoff. He completely trusted those tires, up to and
until the rainy day on which he took the turn into the bike shop parking lot at
breakneck speed and slid right out, crashing hard. He ended up with close to thirty stitches in
his chin. From that day forward
(actually, probably from the very beginning) we called the Avocet tires
“Fas-slip.” (To be honest, they probably
weren’t any worse for traction than any other tire. The ad alone is at fault in suggesting the
impossible feat of cornering that hard in the wet.)
The guy in the Avocet pic is Jobst Brandt.
ReplyDeleteRIP, Jobst.