joejack951

Well, it wouldn't be just 'throwing money' at a groupset 'upgrade', it would be throwing it away. Having installed both a Tiagra 4700 and 105 5800 groupset on two different bikes within about a week of each, the differences are nearly imperceptible, aside from finish and the 10 vs. 11 speeds.

Given that you bought the bike from a sporting goods store rather than a bike shop, I highly suggest either taking it to a competent LBS to go over the install or learning about derailleurs yourself and doing the same. The barrel adjusters are there to fine tune things after it has all been installed and set up properly. You won't fix any pre-existing issues with them, such as: poorly cut and/or routed cable housing, improperly set limit screws on the derailleurs, and a misaligned derailleur hanger. Any of those can cause fits with tuning the shifting on a bike and are far more likely the cause of your issues than a lemon of a Tiagra group(because there is nothing inherently wrong with the group).

As for the brakes, you got what you paid for. Install some Avid BB7s or TRP Spyres and you'll be much happier. Of course, you may find them acceptable after some fine tuning of that install as well. Disc brakes are great (IMO) but you do need to be especially anal when aligning the caliper and rotor.

Dave Mayer

Instead of folksy analogies, here is the math: the lightest viable clincher wheelset comes in at about 1,350 grams. This is the wheels, without cassette, skewers, tires, tubes etc. Tubular: just under 1,000 grams. The tubes and rim strips required with clinchers further increase the weight difference. A 1,350 gram clincher: I've ridden these. They are sketchy light, fragile and require ongling truing.

Rotating weight (far from the center of rotation) is absolutely the most important place to remove weight on a bike: so rims and tires.

This is the main reason why tubulars completely dominate competitive riding. Check the classics and Grand Tours last year. Was there a single rider riding clinchers on any stage in any race? Nope.

Don't be fooled by stories about clinchers used in competition. The promotional clincher wheels showcased in the leadup to the race are quietly swapped out at the last second, and replaced by tubulars. If the tire sponsor doesn't have tubular options, a labeling machine fixes that.

bmthom.gis

metal Lyzene tire levers. They were on a closeout, looked nice, but are ****. Went back to the chunky plastic Pedros.

69chevy

Ok...


No Tubulars Needed ? Martin Wins Worlds With Clincher Tires

PepeM

Looking forward to the source of this information.

69chevy

And BTW.. Despite any superior performance myths you may already believe, the answer is pretty simple.


Clinchers get flats more often and racers would rather not get flats, so they use tubulars.


Since they have support cars, it doesn't matter that they aren't as easy to change on the side of the road.


Most road cyclists who aren't racing use clinchers, because they are easy to repair roadside.


It's really that simple.

PepeM

Disagree, clinchers are so inferior that I only use them on my ride around the apartment bicycle. All my other bikes sit on Veloflex Records.

Tubulars, of course, none of this 'open' nonsense.

Dan333SP

Fixed that for you

HazeT

The touch screen simply sucks, it is aweful....the address navigation will get you there, but it doesn't have the "finesse" of a good planned route... It has put me on a 8 lanes avenue (4 each direction)
The wifi never worked for me, it would find my network but didn't seem to connect. Also consistently dropped data with stages power meter (not that the 500/520 are any better).

redfooj

Where are you getting these 1kg tubular wheels as easily as you get 1.35kg clinchers?

Clincher weight penalty for high-end, trusted wheelsets such as 303s, 404s, Bora Ultra, are at 200g, not 350g.
...
Grand Tour riders have mechanics who prep their 10s of 100s of wheelsets following in support cars for roadside swaps. That their tires cost 3x the price with 1/3rd of the life of high performance clinchers (say, Cont Comp Tubular vs GP4ks) is not meaningful to GT riders, but is to recreational riders.

So really that's not a very meaningful comparison, since nobody claims that clinchers yield higher performance. What would be more relevant to the thread is those who switched from clinchers to tubulars or vice-versa and whether they regretted the change.

1. Not applicable to all situations. Mine were exceedingly easy to mount. Theoretically if I flat i could stuff in an innertube just as before. What's the change?

2. Why would that be relevant unless you were forced at gunpoint to stick with tubeless? Supposing you decided to switch to tubeless, you would have had already found a suitable tire. And if you don't like it down the road, what's to stop you from going back to traditional tubed clinchers?

Hiro11

OK Mr Picky, I'll qualify. In the VAST MAJORITY OF SITUATIONS, tubeless tires are infamous for being relatively difficult to mount. On Shimano rims, they are generally very, very tight indeed. I've personally found that there's a tradeoff: tight beads are a pain in the ass to mount but result in a more reliable seal and fewer problems in the future. Looser beads are easier to mount but far less reliable, especially at higher pressures. Regardless, stuffing a tube in a tubeless road tire is a complete pain in the ass in the VAST MAJORITY OF SITUATIONS.
This seems like tortured logic to me. Road tubeless tires are:
a. very expensive compared to non-tubeless tires.
b. available in far fewer options that non-tubeless tires.
That's the extent of my point and both points seem irrefutable.

redfooj

vast majority being... you?

go read bf tubeless threads. just as many easy-mounts as there are hard-mounts. and there have always been hard-mount complainers with traditional clincher setups, enough so that your venn diagram would look like 1 mis-shapened circle.

if difficulties remounting a tire is what makes stuffing a tube difficult, then replacing a tube is difficult, regardless of the clincher setup.... ignoring the fact that the point of tubeless is to lessen occurrences of both pinchflats and minor punctures.

popular, high performance tires: schwalbe one tubed sells for 30 euros. schwalbe pro one sells for 40 euros. if you dont like em, you can go back using tubed tires on your bontrager/stans/whatever rims. youve lost 20 euros in premium. whoopie.

rowebr

Here is my two cents in response to the two comments about difficult tire mounting on the A23 rims. First, using traditional cotton rim tape on these rims will make tire mounting extremely difficult. So use a thin tubeless rim tape like Stan's, or a cheaper substitute like fiber reinforced packing tape. Second, the best technique for mounting tires on the A23 and similar rims is to push the tire bead into the deeper center well of the rim as you work. Doing so provides more slack to get the last section of tire bead over the rim wall. In contrast, if the whole bead is sitting on the higher outer shelf of the rim bed, you'll find the last section of tire bead is really tough/impossible to mount.


So yeah, definitely try changing the tire in your basement. Especially now that its winter it would suck to wrestle with a disagreeable tire as your fingers go numb. I've been there...


Finally, some tire-rim combos are just a PITA to mount. On my A23s, the GP4000s goes on fairly easily, but mounting a Gatorskin was a tough fight.

Psimet2001 

You guys discussing what racers do is funny.

Speaking as a person who has directly put out pro sponsorships for wheels and outfitted teams for use in racing on both road and cyclocross I can actually answer with some direct authority.

Racers race tubulars on the road because that's the wheelsets they are given. Just like they'll race disc if that's what they're given, etc. The number of riders and/or teams that have the LUXURY of shopping around for a system they want or a particular gear setup they want is extremely small and reserved only to the top tier of pro tour level teams.

Domestic racers - or any racer you're seeing racing here on the soil in the US race what they're given if they're given anything. The ones that pay for their own stuff and choose tubular will have a ton of reasons to do so. Ask 5 and you'll get 5 different sets of reasons. Similar to posting a thread here in BF. Turns out actual racers really don't know. They're great at racing. They're also superstitious and look for ways to always control the variables that might affect them on race day. If they have spent their career racing on tubulars they don't want to switch.

Now...the ones that do get to pick on their own without having an equipment sponsor tell them what they want them to ride or a team that thinks they know better come up with some sort of combination for them - those riders have more frequently been choosing 2 things: 1. Clinchers. 2. Shallower wheels.

There's one pro in particular who is constantly on the national podium who very politely hoped and asked if I could put her on clinchers. Turns out that years and years of racing on tubulars was a complete and total hardship. "It's fine if you have a mechanic but even then you're taking up their time every time you flat." She's been traveling on her own for a while and just decided that with the travelling, training where you can and need to, etc that clincher was by far a better option.

She was the same with depth - "Sure it's nice to have deep wheels for a few key events but the variation of event type and terrain and travelling, etc it's nice to have a better all around setup." Around that same time all of the other athletes I sponsored started repeating the same thing.

This is where I have always had a problem with all the hand wringing about types of tires and depth of wheels or aerodynamics, etc. Everyone always says, "there's a benefit to X and it matters when you're racing" when in reality it actually doesn't matter when you're racing. That's the one time where nothing seems to matter other than the system's reliability and ability to get you to the end of the race in one piece. Flats cost you races. Mechanicals cost you races. 38mm vs 50mm vs 90mm doesn't cost you the race. Even then I am sure some TT head will talk about fractions of a second they lost some TT in so let me preface that statement by saying by races I mean the ones that 90% of domestic races are - crits and road races.

So no....racers don't choose tubulars because they have less of a chance of flatting. If you cite a study and some data that says that's true and you tell a racer that they may carry that bot of info around as baggage and claim it in their justification of using tubulars but in reality they are picking tubulars because that's what's been given to them if they are lucky enough to receive it. If not it's because some old coach or mentor fed them some old wives tale that they still feel is somehow true in the bottom of their heart.

I had a discussion with a gentleman who was a pro on 7-Eleven back in the 80's. He was shocked that some people were running clinchers now for racing and blown away that most racers are running 80-95 psi on 25mm tires. "We used to run as high as we could pump them."

So many times I've seen someone race on their "training" alloy clincher wheel and still win the pro event. You can only see that kind of thing happen so many times before you just have to admit it's 100% about the engine. The gear isn't needed. It can make the ride nice. It can make it more enjoyable for most/many but it quite simply isn't needed to win races. That winning races bit or "for racing" bit is the "justification" that so many people use in their discussion of why things are the way they are and it just isn't true in reality. It is true in marketing meetings and in bike shop discussions, forums and banter on group rides. Not in reality when people pin on numbers and actually race.

Dave Mayer

Here: 1,080 gram tubular wheelset for $425. I not associated with this seller, or anyone in the industry, but they do have a solid reputation.

700C Carbon Wheels - YOELEO Super Light 700C Carbon Wheels Tubular 20MM Yoeleo

The most important part is the rim weight: an advertised 270 grams per. This is not possible in clinchers - not even close.

This vendor does sell a sub-1,000 gram tubular wheelset, but I'll leave it up to you to dig around their large website.

Tubular tires: I am using $35 Tufos. They are tough and reasonably light. 20cc (20 grams) of Stan's sealant pre-injected through the valve core makes them almost impenetrable. I ride 22mm Tufo tubulars on gravel almost daily. Only one flat this year.

Psimet2001 

There are rims out there that I have had customers start to really complain about. I used to laugh about tight rim and tire combinations. I have meat claws for hands and have almost never found a combination that I've had a problem with. I laughed until I heard stuff like, "Hey just a heads up - a bunch of people in the Wednesday night ride want to buy your wheels but 2 or 3 of them who are on them have had flats and it's taken 5 or 6 people all trying to get the tires changed. It has a few of these guys apprehensive about getting the wheels."

It's a real problem that this industry is quite simply not addressing. It's not us/guys in the shop that have a problem with them it's the rider on the road.

It's also why a lot of the big tire names aren't making tubeless tires. Too much of a liability for them.

redfooj

So why not compare like for like?

here's their 475$ "super light 20mm" equivalent, weighing in at a stated 1250 - only 170g difference.
Bike Road Wheels - YOELEO Super Light Carbon Bike Road Wheels Clincher 20MM Yoeleo

if one is supposedly fragile, why isnt the other one?

spectastic

how are tubeless rims different such that mounting tires becomes a pain? I have a set of tubeless wheels that I have no intention of actually using for tubeless. I believe it's a 19mm inner width, with 28 mm tires. They didn't really give me any trouble at all..

Dave Mayer

The rims on the clinchers are 360 grams vs. 270 on the tubulars - per rim. So the rim difference is 180 g for the pair; rim weight is critical in performance cycling. Rotating mass far from the axis of rotation.

Of course, with clinchers, you need to add tubes and rim strips.

Finally, you see the two rim 'hooks' that are required to hold on the clincher tire bead? They are fragile. They get smashed during impacts. And they are sharp, so they cause pinch flats. And they transfer heat poorly - hence the dodgy reputation of carbon clinchers.

So no, these super light clinchers are more fragile than the tubulars.

Seattle Forrest

This is one reason why there will be nothing but disc brake wheels in road cycling before a decade has passed.

rowebr

I can't speak for all tubeless rims, I just have a lot of experience using the A23 with clincher tires. (I've never used tubeless). Below is the cross section for the A23. If the tire bead is sitting up on the outer shelf instead of down in the deeper center channel while you are working on mounting the tire, mounting will be difficult and frustrating. The solution is to push the bead down into the center well as you work. Of course, the beads get pushed up onto the shelves after you mount and inflate.

redfooj

yes, we've established the difference between clincher is ~200g, not 350g+ as you stated ("the lightest viable clincher..."

raise your hand if you've smashed just the hook/edge/lip of a clincher rim to render the rim/wheel useless. anybody? bueller? any impact that damages a clincher wheel will likely do the same to a tubular wheel.

transfer heat poorly? do manufacturers use different aluminum alloys or carbon construction/sheet between their clincher vs tubular models? if you're talking thermal mass, clincher walls would need to be reinforced so theres as much "meat" behind the braking surface of a clincher rim as there in a tubular rim. (unless you think braking surface is on the hooks alone...which they arent).

"dodgy reputation of carbon clinchers"...there are a few things here:
-carbon rims, or special treatment on carbon rims, do not match braking performance of alloy rims. this has not to do with clincher vs tubular
-heat resistance. older or dodgier carbon rims cannot withstand high braking temperatures. might delaminate. this has to do with manufacturing, but once again not specific to clincher vs tubular.
-heat causing tires to blow. nothing new or specific to carbon. same issue even on alloy. and if there is enough heat to blow tires, there is enough heat to melt glue. potatoh, potahto.

buncha things being comingled here.

redfooj

i can imagine that

(1) people over-do taping the center section due to how critical the seal is, that it takes away some depth in the center well for the tire to seat
(2) tubeless tires have differently shaped beads to get a more secure seal. im not sure that that means a taller bead, which decreases the inside diameter of the tire.

thats in theory. in practice, for my rims, seating the schwalbe one vs pro one is identical in terms of effort. i.e. nothing at all

Dave Mayer

We're going off topic here: but no. Going through the logic:

All high-end competitive cycling will be done on tubulars - until the end of time. Except a rare occasional flat time trial stage where tire and wheel sponsors dump a truck full of money on a star rider.

Tubular rims don't suffer with heat transfer problems as much as clincher rims. So disk brakes aren't as much an advantage with tubular rims.

Tubular rims are about as light as it is possible to make. Removing rim braking tasks from tubular rims does not allow them to be made much lighter.

Finally, disk brakes introduce major weight penalties both in the calipers and frame/fork reinforcements. Non-starter there.

Seattle Forrest

So you don't agree that moving weight from the rims where it rotates in toward the hub is a good idea. Even though you said it was just earlier. It's no surprised that rim brake holdouts are confused, as we can see here.