Posted on 09/01/2020 9:03:05 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Welcome to The Bicycle Thread. A monthly PING List for bicycle enthusiasts to share experiences, information and ideas.
Great Link 🚴♂️😀
I see the Tour de France is finally underway, and they even allow spectators (with some restrictions). But it looks pretty much like any other Tour except most of the fans are wearing masks and they aren’t allowing vans and RVs to camp along the route.
A bike ride every day - keeps the doctor away!!!
I fished out a long sitting Canonndale. The tires appear to hold air.
Might as well try to ride the thing.
Astonishing!!!
I've only put about 100 miles on them but have set numerous PRs for speed where I ride. They are VERY fast.
BTW, the tires I took off were Bontrager R3s.
A few months back I was looking for a simple GPS system for my mountain bike. I didn’t want anything too complicated, but I definitely wanted off-road mapping capability. Reviewed some options on the dcrainmaker website. This is a fantastic site, by the way, if you want to know *all* the details about any GPS system. The guy does super in depth reviews.
Ended up going with a Garmin Edge Explore for about $250. It’s worked out quite well. It has a touch screen, which I like over the push-button type controls. Not as responsive or quick as say an iPhone, but then it’s a fraction of the cost. Downloaded Trailforks maps for off-road navigation. It seems to maintain GPS lock well. Good minimal battery drain even running it on continuous display. I’d give it a solid B+ / A-.
Anyone have experience with Slime tubes?
After getting a string of flats on my Mountain bike, I decided to try a pre-slimed tube. When I changed the tube and was filling it up with air I noticed the tire wasn’t seeded correctly. OK, it happens no biggie, but when I let some air out to try and re-seed it slime came out of the value and ended up sealing the value.
So now I have a tube I can’t put air in and I can’t let air out of.
So I can’t ride the bike, and worse because there still some air in the tube I can’t get the tire off the rim, and I won’t be able to get it off and replace the tube and ride the bike again for probably months until the air inside naturally and slowly diffuses out of the tube on its own.
So obviously I don’t recommend pre-slimed tubes.
Even if the tire seeded properly, in summer I often bike after work and put the bike in the trunk of my car, where I have to let air out of the tires because it gets 140°+ in there and if they were fully inflated they would pop. So I would have run into this issue anyhow.
Buy tubeless tires and the goop at a bike shop. No flats short of a giant puncture. I ride gravel often and no problems
I have a new Garmin 830 for my road bike. Works great. Also use a Garmin Varia rear radar which also works great.
So far in 2020 I have ridden 4000 miles on a bicycle. My goal is 5000 miles, should actually get to about 5500 by the end of the year.
I have had to use slime tubes on my road bike when I lived in Albuquerque. Yes, road. The goat heads grow through the cracks in the pavement, even on the highways, and goat heads will even go through Kevlar belts. I had a flat 10 miles from the finish line in Los Lunas during my first road race in New Mexico thanks to goat heads - and since associated goat heads with something evil - Rolling Stones Goat Head Soup album has Sympathy for the Devil.
An unpredictable Tour so far. Anyone know why Ineos didn’t bring Froome and/or Thomas? Their only GC prospect is Bernal. Looks like Jumbo-Visma is the ringleader team this year.
Sometimes Slime tubes work for me and sometimes they don’t. Lots of goatheads where i live. I just use them on my all-purpose bike which has tires that are about 2” that i run at about 45-50 psi. I’ve never had a valve seal up. My tubes have presta valves. I position them at the top when air goes in or out. Not sure if that makes a difference.
My road bike’s tires are getting pretty thin. I may give those a try.
I was frankly shocked at how much faster they were than my Bontrager R3s.
I ride the same course pretty much everyday at a nearby state park. Lot's of hills.
Given that it's a 5 mile loop and I have set a Strava segment on the toughest hill, I am able to gauge things like speed pretty accurately. As I said in my earlier comment, I have set a bunch of new PRs.
On the tough hill segment, I moved up from 13.5 mph to 14.8 mph (REALLY tough hill BTW, short but tough). That's a rather shocking improvement and I have to attribute either to my new tires or the extra banana I ate before the ride (I think it's the tires).;-)
If it is a Schrader valve (the same type autos use) then you need a simple valve remover (here are two for under $2 w/ free ship. on Ebay) You can keep one on your key ring. Or a better single one for under $3. Some valve caps also have a valve remover, like this one. Both kinds you should be able to find at a auto parts store.
Although I do not recall having a valve plugged up by Slime in fixing flats (part of a ministry in a low-income city) over the years, yet I do not recommend Slime sealer since it usually does not seem to work, and hinders patching of the tube since it contaminates the rubber where the puncture (or pinch rupture) is.
As for flats, that has been an often recurrence around here, and (thank God) though I have been able to get most tubes for under $3 (last year) and more tires under $10, yet sometimes when the tire is worn thin then I have cut the thread section out of an throw away tire and put that in as a type of rim strip. A bike with an 22" tire was here yesterday.
And while I do not like Slime sealer, yet for patching I have found that Slime rubber cement (# 1050; 8oz for $6.39 at Pep boys) works very well. I use them with the best-working low cost patches I have found on Ebay 32 x 50mm (10 for under $2.00) I do not like to support China, but the US effectively farmed out such industry to foreign nations long ago.
Hope this helps.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.