choddo

Are you sure you know what a tubeless tyre is? ;-)

Atlas Shrugged

These never ending screeds that point out only selected and skewed one sided merits and ignoring counterpoints makes all these comments superfluous. With this approach one could endlessly defend the use of solid rubber wheels even though anyone with any reason knows the idea is ridiculous. Yes tubulars were the pinnacle of tire technology for decades however their development had stagnated. Modern tire solutions overcame the advantages of tubulars with huge gains in convenience, reliability, performance, etc. People have chosen and tubulars are just a vestige of cyclings past. The fundamental flaw with tubulars include; mounting is a pain especially for none enthusiasts, puncture resistance is average at best, on road spares are very inconvenient, at most one flat per ride otherwise you are screwed, expensive, repairing a tire is difficult. Those problems had doomed tubulars.

Lastly, for every clincher, hookless or not which has unseated and caused an incident there are just as many if not more with people which had rolled a tubular.

Sy Reene

Well, yes you're correct. But I think Dave's point is that for a professional cycling team that runs support vehicles, there really is no reason to choose clincher tires (tubeless) over tubulars, or is there? Leaving aside the fact that sponsors can't sell tubulars, so they don't want their pro teams riding something that won't sell. :-)

Atlas Shrugged

A few reasons. Improved puncture resistance, tubeless systems with sealant are orders of magnitude better for flat resistance. Yes you can inject sealant through the valve stem however top tier sealant wont go through the stem because the will plug the opening. Next there is no development going on with tubulars so minimal support is being offered, just legacy tires and rims. Teams have limited resources and the time and financial requirements to maintain tubulars is not worth it especially if the gains are minimal to none, it could be argued performance is worse. If there were real advantages then teams would do it, many teams do not even have wheel sponsors mandating tires and wheels much less tubular.

PeteHski

Well it’s been a long time since I used them, so I could well have forgotten if it wasn’t for your endless lectures about how amazing they are.

Despite being “superior in every respect to a clincher rim” very few people seem interested. If the tubular advantage was so great then pros and keen amateurs would ALL be racing them and Big Bike would be selling them to weekend warrior Dentists with platinum cards (or is it gold cards now).

DaveSSS 

Thanks. So my Pirelli P-Zero race TLR tires are are TSS, as are most tubeless tires these. These tires are also clinchers. If you make a tubeless road tire today that's not TSS, then you're behind the times.

genejockey 

You forgot it's for a ride to the coffeeshop.

Dave Mayer

Thank you! Yes, there is no reason whatsoever for someone to be riding on clinchers (regular, tubeless or hookless) where there is money at stake.

This applies to every cycling discipline, whether 'cross, MTB, road, track whatever. For 99.9+ percent of the riding done, regular tubed clinchers are adequate, or with sealant if you tend to ride on tires that are too lightweight and susceptible to punctures for the conditions you ride in.

The only reason for the pro team migration to clincher/tubeless/hookless is that tubulars will not sell to the gold-card weekend warrior, and they needed another solution. So here is a sorry chronology of events:

1. Circa 2015 carbon rim brake tubulars rule road racing. Carbon is a superior rim material, but with braking heat management issues
   
2. Tubulars do not sell to the wider public, so carbon clinchers are developed. Carbon clinchers are a bad idea, due to poor heat dissipation during braking, and the fragility of the rim hooks. Plus the hooks cause pinch flats. In contrast, carbon tubular rims dissipate heat better, do not cause pinch flats, and are much stronger against impacts.
   
3. Disc brakes are ported over to road riding, as carbon clinchers just don't cut it. Braking duties are moved to disc rotors, which obviously adds a bunch of weight and safety issues. 2 pounds of extra ballast to every bike.
   
4. Clincher rims still cause pinch flats, so tubeless is developed. In order to get this airtight, messy sealant is required. Every few months.
   
5. Clincher rims are still too heavy, and cause pinch flats, so hookless is developed, with all the associated problems and safety liabilities.
   
6. Unlike tubulars, clinchers blow off rims and are unrideable in the event of flat. So pool noodles are inserted in the tires.
   

See how far we've migrated from the perfect solution: tubulars.. Weird journey indeed. Bet the pros and the team mechanics love this..

tomato coupe

Is this what people mean when they refer to "fan fiction"?

PeteHski

It would be if any of this was actually true. But I’m more curious about the format of your bullet points. It’s as if you just copy/pasted this garbage from somewhere else.

Dave Mayer

Right on schedule: good rebuttal. Good analysis and data. Good research. Do you know anything about bicycles or the bike industry?

Anyway, off to the shop to actually work on bikes; no time to waste.

elcruxio

Is that the magical bike shop where fellow mechanics aren't competent enough to mount tires without them blowing off rims and they pay you enough to let you buy bikes with unlimited budget?

PeteHski

Since when have you been interested in data and analysis?

Yan 

https://www.globalcyclingnetwork.com...sh-at-uae-tour

Association of Professional Cyclists president Adam Hansen says the riders' association is "100 percent against" hookless technology. Hansen pointed the finger of blame solely at De Gendt’s hookless rims in an interview with Velo.

“This crash is why the CPA are 100 percent against hookless rims,” Hansen said. “Tires should not come off a rim. The maximum PSI these hookless tires can have put in them is 73, and if you hit something for sure it goes above the maximum 73psi rating on impact. That is why tires are coming off.

He continued. “But the manufacturers really like them because it is much easier to produce the rim, you need less moulds for this. The rims are much lighter, it is easier for production so they are pushing for this.”

tomato coupe

Well, they've never been wrong about safety before:

elcruxio

I have never seen you respond to valid arguments or criticisms.

Yan 

They can be wrong about one thing but that does not automatically mean they are wrong about everything forever until the end of time.

Your doctor has told you for decades that light drinking of red wine has cardiovascular benefits. Last year it turned out from new research that this was bogus all along and red wine is just as bad as any other type of alcohol.

Did you stop visiting your doctor as a result? He's an ignorant peasant now, right?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/17/w...rt-health.html

Building regulations used to allow cancer causing asbestos in insulation. They were wrong. Does that mean building regulations lost their authority forever? So many such examples one can mention...

elcruxio

Perhaps that doctor thing is generational thing, because not a single doctor I know recommends red wine. They all are quite clearly of the opinion that any amount of alcohol is detrimental. But they're all in their 30's so...

And I know a lot of doctors. Having them in the family does that.

PeteHski

That’s right. He usually just goes away for a few weeks and then repeats the exact same dubious claims in his usual derogatory style. Then complains when he gets it straight back. His posts are often primed for ridicule, which makes me think it’s just a comedy act.

DaveSSS 

It's sad when the CPA president makes such ignorant remarks. Disc brakes should be better when extreme braking is required. The increase in bike weight is meaningless when all riders use them. There's absolutely no significant weight difference between hooked and hookless rims. Either rim could be built to be dangerously weak to save weight.

​​​​​​Hookless rims have been successfully tested at up to 150% of the suggested maximum. The tire won't blow off at a few psi over 73, it's built right.

It's been determined that Degent's wheel hit something severely enough to break it, causing the tire to come off.

​​​​

tomato coupe

That's true. As they say, even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut -- eventually they are likely to get something right.

PeteHski

Certainly came across like he was shooting from the hip.

Koyote

Twenty one pages, and I've lost track: has anyone asked Thomas DeGent if he's a fan of hookless?

seypat

That may not even be Hansen's own opinion. He's just communicating the association's opinion.

surak

It's disingenous to lump Adam Hansen's representative concerns over hookless with disc brakes when he wasn't the CPA president then (and by accounts, the previous president was more of a bureaucrat than a knowledgable former pro who's built his own bikes, amongst other accomplishments).

And saying Zipp's passed all the tests is leaving out crucial details like what tests, assuming the ISO standard is sufficient, and also ignoring what Josh Poertner wrote in an article from last year that I posted some hundred comments ago, stating that his independent tests have shown some tires blowing off hookless rims even within the required safety margins.

When the Roval Rapide CLX came out saying they weren't tubeless compatible, the story goes that Specialized realized industry standard testing failed to account for certain conditions where catastrophic rim breakage could occur. Rather than claim it was too rare to be concerned, they added new test protocols and shared them with other manufacturers. Not seeing Zipp make much of an effort to shore up their product (other than stealthily adding weight to later revisions of the 353 with no explanation). Not really confidence-inducing.