blitzkrieg wrote:
I worded it that way because I was under the impression that latex tubes are more susceptible to flats. Is that not the case?
I remember doing a quick Google search on that and it gave me mixed results.
Another anecdotal evidence of this is the fact in this last race... At least 50% went thru the same giant pothole and either crashed, lost their bottles or tilted their aero bars down...but very few actually punctured a tube ..forget BOTH tubes like I did!!
Got this article from "Bicycling" Magazine, interesting how tubeless tire manufacturers claims are not backed up by this little real world test, and latex does improve Crr
http://www.bicycling.com/...go-tubeless?page=0,1 Bikes and Gear Features
How Does Tubeless Compare? Lab tests comparing
tubeless road tires with standard clinchers have not been conclusive—perhaps partly because they’ve been conducted in a lab instead of out in the real world. The only consistent finding we can draw from existing studies is that companies making and selling tubeless products find them to have lower rolling resistance than tires with tubes. Companies not on the bandwagon say those claims are bunk. To help form our own opinion, we performed one of the oldest evaluations in the cycling industry—a roll-down test—on tubeless tires from Hutchinson and Maxxis, comparing them to
a standard tire from Michelin. It was a basic experiment: Starting from a dead stop at a specific spot on a hill, we coasted down until the bike stopped, then measured the distance traveled and quantified speed via GPS. We controlled as best as we could variables such as rider and position and used equal pressure (100 psi, front and rear) on the same wheels (Giant P-SLR-1) mounted on a Pinarello Prince test bike. We completed all testing in a short time span to minimize any effect from changing weather and did six trials with each combination to try to average out variables beyond our control, such as gusts of wind.
Tire Distance
( meters) Average
Speed Ave
Speed Max.
(Km/H)
Michelin Pro4 Service Course w/ latex tube 200.05 21.35 34.20
Hutchinson Fusion 3 RT 195.63 21.28 33.54
Maxxis Padrone 194.03 21.26 33.54
Michelin Pro4 Service Course w/ butyl tube 193.99 20.68 33.18
Conclusion
Although we don’t advise that you consider the results of our limited test completely conclusive, we think the broader findings are interesting and more than likely reflect real-world use: With a latex tube, a top-of-the-line clincher was fastest; the tubeless tires were grouped tightly, reflecting, we believe, the current lack of variety in products; heavier butyl tires with clinchers were the slowest combination; and, most significantly, the differences in speeds are not yet so great that a rider can’t compensate for
res, non verba
