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Why so much hate for Gatorskins?

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Why so much hate for Gatorskins?

Old 09-01-20, 04:12 PM
  #51  
BoraxKid
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Originally Posted by rubiksoval
Now explain how much power it takes to increase your speed by 1 mph at 10 mph, 20 mph, and 30 mph.
Not very much. It takes not very much power to increase your speed by 1 mph at any of those given speeds. Of course, the relationship you are implying is not so simple. As I already explained elsewhere, there are many factors that affect speed, and power is only one of them. How much power output it takes to travel at a given speed will depend on wind speed, wind direction, rider position, weight of the rider, and so on. The choice of tires actually matters very little compared to those things, which was entirely my point several posts ago.
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Old 09-01-20, 04:20 PM
  #52  
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Originally Posted by BoraxKid
So now you're just making assumptions and treating them as fact. Nice. You've assumed that the Gatorskins are a "stiff slow" tire, when in fact they are neither slow nor stiff.
I guess I haven't done any precise testing on the speed, but I'm not making any assumptions when I say that they're "stiff." Here's me a few minutes ago holding a Pasela and a Gatorskin in my hand:



Not massively different in tire size, both wire bead. The Gatorskin feels a lot stiffer pushing on it with my fingers.

And it's not like I haven't ridden Gatorskins before.

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Old 09-01-20, 04:22 PM
  #53  
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I've heard you give some enough rope and they'll hang themselves. Looks like it will work with Gatorskins as well! Enjoying it
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Old 09-01-20, 04:34 PM
  #54  
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I guess we're at an impasse. It's too bad that there are no independent rolling resistance tests of the Gatorskins or any calculators that could tell you what kind of power is necessary at a given speed with all other factors equal. Too bad, indeed.
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Old 09-01-20, 05:35 PM
  #55  
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Originally Posted by Seattle Forrest
Since going tubeless, the only flat I've had was that one day I used tubes.
I was actually able to ride home on my "flat"(at about 25psi), but it was a cut that trashed a new tire.
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Old 09-01-20, 06:08 PM
  #56  
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FWIW, I like Gatorskins just fine for my commuter. I don't carry a pump, spare tire, patch kit... I ride in the rain and in the dark. I have no worries about flats.

I have stickier tires on my other road bike - the one I ride faster - but I get lots of flats on that one.
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Old 09-01-20, 06:45 PM
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When we bought our used tandem, it came with 25mm Gatorskins. On our first ride, I couldn't figure out why we had trouble simply maintaining 16 mph on the flat. My stoker puts out about 1/2 my watts, probably less when we were just starting our tandem career, but anyway. I'd heard that Gatorskins were slow, so I changed them out for a set of known fast road tires - I don't remember what. We tried it again, and night and day. The bike accelerated better, was more comfortable, and easily 1 mph faster at the same effort.

Another time, I rode with a very experienced female rider on a Populaire, a metric century sort of mini-brevet for those interested in getting into randonneuring. She was trying out a new set of Gatorskins. Not having flats on long strenuous rides is a good thing. After the ride she took them off and tried to give them away. No takers, so she just put them in the garbage.

I'm riding Conti 4KIIs or 5000 on my single. I can't remember my last flat though I have had one or two in the past couple of years. I do check my tires regularly and inflate before every ride - latex tubes. We are running 28mm 4KIIs on our tandem. Tandems are flat magnets, but we get very few flats and are totally happy with them. I have a pair of 32mm 5000 for when we wear those out in a few months.
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Old 09-01-20, 07:11 PM
  #58  
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Originally Posted by Bah Humbug
I...

Wait, what? It seems like you’re serious, but you can’t possibly be serious.
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Old 09-01-20, 07:14 PM
  #59  
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Originally Posted by BoraxKid
Not very much. It takes not very much power to increase your speed by 1 mph at any of those given speeds. Of course, the relationship you are implying is not so simple. As I already explained elsewhere, there are many factors that affect speed, and power is only one of them. How much power output it takes to travel at a given speed will depend on wind speed, wind direction, rider position, weight of the rider, and so on. The choice of tires actually matters very little compared to those things, which was entirely my point several posts ago.
Politely, stop talking about things you don’t have a clue about.

Gators versus Vittoria Corsa TL is easily over 20w a pair. Maybe closer to 30w. 30w is 10% of a strong rec rider’s hour power.

It takes a boat load more power to go 33 than 30 than 25. I can do 25 on the TT bike on only about 225. 33mph takes me about 420. Aero power is nonlinear.

You have zero clue. Give up. Some of us race time trial and do the weird experiments you see places like the GCN show screwing up for the sake of entertainment. I own all I need short of the wind tunnel.

Try again home slice.
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Old 09-01-20, 07:22 PM
  #60  
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Originally Posted by burnthesheep
Some of us race time trial and do the weird experiments you see places like the GCN show screwing up for the sake of entertainment.
GCN is much like Fox News. Once someone quotes them as a source of facts, I ignore everything they say..

Last edited by noodle soup; 09-01-20 at 07:40 PM.
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Old 09-01-20, 10:37 PM
  #61  
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Originally Posted by BoraxKid
So now you're just making assumptions and treating them as fact. Nice. You've assumed that the Gatorskins are a "stiff slow" tire, when in fact they are neither slow nor stiff. As plenty of people in this very thread and out in the real world have reported, Gatorskins are actually a fast, supple tire when properly inflated, and they have the added benefit of a more puncture-resistant tread than their in-class competitors. You can't even point to a single, fair test of Gatorskins to prove all the hogwash that people have been bandying about for all these years. Hence, your claims are dubious and show an obvious bias.
The guy you're talking to is basically today's Sheldon Brown. HTupolev knows what he's talking about, his assumptions are like educated guesses. You've got a lot of uneducated guesses. Better off learning.
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Old 09-02-20, 05:13 AM
  #62  
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Originally Posted by noodle soup
GCN is much like Fox News. Once someone quotes them as a source of facts, I ignore everything they say..
Pretty much. There is no science to their “GCN does science” stuff. It’s like, here’s this random junk we did to prove nothing. But.....we made you smile!
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Old 09-02-20, 08:29 AM
  #63  
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It takes not very much power to go 31mph instead of 30mph? For a car, I guess.
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Old 09-02-20, 08:56 AM
  #64  
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Originally Posted by Bah Humbug
It takes not very much power to go 31mph instead of 30mph? For a car, I guess.
Drag goes up with the square of velocity, bike, car, or bunny rabbit.
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Old 09-02-20, 08:59 AM
  #65  
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Originally Posted by MoAlpha
Drag goes up with the square of velocity, bike, car, or bunny rabbit.
Believe me I know. However, “not very much power” depends greatly on context. For a car, 30 vs 31mph would probably be hard to discern on gas mileage. On a bike, it’s huge, as a percent of power available.
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Old 09-02-20, 09:48 AM
  #66  
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I'm riding Gatorskin tubulars on Zipp 303s and don't have any issues with them regarding rolling resistance or bad handling. And yeah, my brand new bike cost $7+ so I'm laughing at all you haters who whine about people using them on expensive bikes.
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Old 09-02-20, 09:51 AM
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Originally Posted by Chubby715
I'm riding Gatorskin tubulars on Zipp 303s and don't have any issues with them regarding rolling resistance or bad handling. And yeah, my brand new bike cost $7+ so I'm laughing at all you haters who whine about people using them on expensive bikes.
We’re not whining; we’re laughing too.
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Old 09-02-20, 09:54 AM
  #68  
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Originally Posted by MoAlpha
Drag goes up with the square of velocity, bike, car, or bunny rabbit.
Which I believe means that power goes up by the cube of velocity. Correct?
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Old 09-02-20, 09:56 AM
  #69  
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Originally Posted by Chubby715
I'm riding Gatorskin tubulars on Zipp 303s and don't have any issues with them regarding rolling resistance or bad handling. And yeah, my brand new bike cost $7+ so I'm laughing at all you haters who whine about people using them on expensive bikes.
You have a 7k bike (that you seem very proud of) and you make it significantly slower.

That's a delicious and comical combination of hubris and irony.
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Old 09-02-20, 09:57 AM
  #70  
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Originally Posted by Chubby715
I'm riding Gatorskin tubulars on Zipp 303s and don't have any issues with them regarding rolling resistance or bad handling. And yeah, my brand new bike cost $7+ so I'm laughing at all you haters who whine about people using them on expensive bikes.
I didn't even know that Gatorskin Tubulars were a thing. A quick glance at specs makes me think that it's an entirely different tire from Gatorskin clinchers - for example, the tubulars have the black chili compound. The only apparent similarity is that they have extra flat protection. So possibly not a fair comparison.
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Old 09-02-20, 10:03 AM
  #71  
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Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy
Which I believe means that power goes up by the cube of velocity. Correct?
Aerodynamic drag and power, yes. So the bike at 30 MPH, where aerodynamic drag is say 85% of the total, power is to very close to the cube of the (air) speed, But a car is so much heavier and has so much more internal resistance, aerodynamic drag is a far less percentage of the total and hence the increase from 30 to 31 MPH is going to be closer to linear for drag and quadratic for power. (60 to 61 MPH starts looking more like the bike's cube of velocity.)

Ben
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Old 09-02-20, 10:12 AM
  #72  
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Originally Posted by Bah Humbug
Believe me I know. However, “not very much power” depends greatly on context. For a car, 30 vs 31mph would probably be hard to discern on gas mileage. On a bike, it’s huge, as a percent of power available.
Exactly so. The poster's use of meaningless and obfuscatory terms like, "not very much" is what got me going.
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Old 09-02-20, 10:17 AM
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Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy

I'm riding Conti 4KIIs or 5000 on my single. I can't remember my last flat though I have had one or two in the past couple of years. I do check my tires regularly and inflate before every ride - latex tubes. We are running 28mm 4KIIs on our tandem. Tandems are flat magnets, but we get very few flats and are totally happy with them. I have a pair of 32mm 5000 for when we wear those out in a few months.
For all the obvious reasons, I haven't ridden Gatorskins for years, but for a long while I rode Conti 4 Seasons on most of my road bikes (I still do on one of them). I considered them a good compromise between flat protection and performance, and I still think that's true. Then I switched to 5000s, and though I absolutely love their performance, I get quite a few more flats. I think I've had 5 or 6 this spring/summer, and I'm not doing extraordinary mileage (about 800 miles/month). For the improved ride quality, the trade-off is worth it to me, but definitely in my experience the Conti 5000s are more flat-prone than tires with more protection.
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Old 09-02-20, 10:17 AM
  #74  
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Originally Posted by MinnMan
I didn't even know that Gatorskin Tubulars were a thing. A quick glance at specs makes me think that it's an entirely different tire from Gatorskin clinchers - for example, the tubulars have the black chili compound. The only apparent similarity is that they have extra flat protection. So possibly not a fair comparison.
Still horrendous.

Doubly so because they use butyl inner tubes.
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Old 09-02-20, 10:24 AM
  #75  
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Originally Posted by BoraxKid
So now you're just making assumptions and treating them as fact. Nice. You've assumed that the Gatorskins are a "stiff slow" tire, when in fact they are neither slow nor stiff. As plenty of people in this very thread and out in the real world have reported, Gatorskins are actually a fast, supple tire when properly inflated, and they have the added benefit of a more puncture-resistant tread than their in-class competitors. You can't even point to a single, fair test of Gatorskins to prove all the hogwash that people have been bandying about for all these years. Hence, your claims are dubious and show an obvious bias.
Stop digging.
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