This still has more merit than the patch my tube thing. lol

If you're not a racer, there's no reason to care, but if you're racing every single watt and every single fraction of a second matter.

FWIW, I don't play baseball, so I don't understand all the fuss about the designated hitter, but I don't find it necessary to go to baseball forums and tell them how stupid the issue is.

That was a great podcast. Thanks for posting to the forum. We need more data obsessed riders.

About 3w a pair for going latex over butyl. Not ground breaking outside of Ironman or long TT.

I'd assume patches would be even less by far since the patch is only compressed or dealt with for a tiny fraction of each rotation of the wheel whereas a tube is all the way around.

So, super negligible.

Not a great idea to descend Mont Ventoux with patched tubes, might fail if you didn't do a good enough job. On the other hand, I play the "how many patches can I get on a single tube" game.

Seriously doubt it. Most rims and tires aren't perfectly balanced to begin with

If that was the case... then what patch has the least "resistance"? My money is on those clear medtape looking ones. That said; the tubes with slime or whatever, would probably be higher than any patch.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d3e3811868.jpg

You should ride naked while you're at it. You'll save a few lbs. Why don't you use worn brake pads that'll only last the race, you'll save a few grams there as well.

OP is not a racer, he's a guy who wants to save 2$.

The original post: "So i wanted to save some money and just repair inner tubes with a patch kit. I was wondering if this would increase my rolling resistance?"

I have no idea if he's a racer or not, but the question was "I was wondering if this would increase my rolling resistance?". It's an interesting question. People do a lot of things to go faster, and they add up. The concept of marginal gains has been around for a while and for a reason.

You have a great day.

Bare skin is slower than well-fitting clothing. That's been tested and measured.

No, all things don't always "add up". There is also not much reason to worry about tiny things if larger contributors are not being done.

There isn't any clear reason to expect that there would be any marginal gain at all related to having patches tubes.

It doesn't seem worth discussing the effect of patches without knowing what tires he's using.

I'll respectfully encourage you to dig a little deeper into the notion of marginal gains. If the type of glue used on a tubular tire can have a measurable impact on rolling resistance, it is entirely conceivable that a patch could impact rolling resistance. While there may well be an interactive effect with tire design, one would first need to determine the effect of a patch with all other variables held constant.

As to whether is it worth discussing, I can only note that you apparently decided it was worth discussing and opted to post an opinion.

BB

I am a racer

I use GP 5000 28mm

Technically, it may be Spring, but functionally it is Winter,

so we need marginal topics to consider.

Continuing to be house-bound, there may be ample time for discussions of

wheel balancing, tire sprue clipping, and aero cable housings.

The mass of the glue is likely at 100 fold more than the mass of a patch. So, no, that doesn't make it necessarily conceivable that a patch would matter at all.

I was really discussing your notion that every "marginal gain" was worth it (which is certainly false). But it's not surprising that point went right by you.

Mass isn't the relevant characteristic. Given that some of the better minds in cycling and engineering have acknowledged the possibility of a patch having a measurable effect (see R Chung's post above), it is clearly conceivable. The questions of exactly how much it matters remains to be answered, but it isn't an inconceivable issue.

BB

I think the Continentals have reasonable rolling resistance but there might be tires with significantly lower rolling resistance.

Is there any rolling resistance difference between 25mm and 28mm tires?

I suspect if there's any effect of a patch or two, it's very tiny (I would think it's much less than the difference between the rolling resistance between models of tire).

Do you have a wheelset that you only use for racing? If so, use the patched tubes for training.

If you think the patch might keep you from winning third or better, you should definitely use unpatched tubes!

What if an array of patches, like dimples on a golf ball,

was actually faster?

Glue around the whole circumference of the wheel is not really anything like one patch. So, using glue as a justification for worrying about a patch doesn't make much sense.

A "possibility" is really weak. "Everything is possible", so saying it's "possible" is rather useless.

In any case, the interest doesn't seem to be whether it is "conceivable".

It would seem the real interest is "whether it has a real/practical effect".

"The questions of exactly how much <whether> it matters" is really what people should be trying to answer.

It seems very likely that it wouldn't really matter at all.

https://analyticcycling.com/ForcesTires_Page.html

From this, road glue (flexible) shows a significant increase in rolling resistance over track glue (stiff) and clinchers.

There is little difference between the rolling resistance of track glue and clinchers.

(There's nothing in this that would seem to be applicable to the effect of a single tiny patch.)

I like to refer to things like that with ”Something being true doesn’t guarantee that it’s important”.

I was hoping you'd come in to post that.

Presumably, the increase in rolling resistance is because thicker tubes are stiffer overall.

The effect of the very small area of the patch is probably lower than the simple linear scaling you are using. So, your estimate might be a large exaggeration.

If his tires don't have low rolling resistance, it's odd to worry about the tiny effect the patch is likely to have.

In any case, it doesn't seem the OP should be spending any time worrying about 0.0088 of a second.

And, I can do a pretty good job of it sometimes. :)