Originally Posted by
Ataylor
I've read that they're "better" with lighter tires. Has this been true in your experience?
If you're using a tire that's suppler and has less hysteresis, then the tube makes up a greater proportion of the stiffness and damping of the tube+tire system. In a certain sense I guess you could argue that this increases the relative impact of the tube. But it's not like their benefits just disappear with a beefier tire.
It's like when people argue that weight doesn't matter on a heavy bike. A pound off a 15lb bike makes it 7% lighter, a pound off a 30lb bike makes it 3% lighter, but in both cases it reduces the gravitational cost of raising that bike up a 1000-foot hill by 1355J of energy.
I have one old road bike with 27" wheels, where the low availability of tires in that size means I'm using very basic non-PT Paselas, but I'm happily running latex tubes with them.
Some people say using tires like the Turbo Cotton by Specialized or the Corsa G Plus would justify buying a tube like that. I don't know if they mean that you can't feel the benefits (i.e. the speed and comfort) using a heavier tire like the GP5000 or if they mean that it's just not as noticeable a difference.
What do you mean by "heavier"? Vittoria Corsa is hardly a weight-weenie tire, and it's typically heavier than GP5000 in like-for-like sizing. Turbo Cotton I think tends to be pretty close. And it's not like GP5000 has especially sluggish burly construction, it's a very fast tire that competes well with those other two in rolling performance.
Didn't want to stuff the subject header with info, but the other thing I was wondering about was whether or not they're good for daily (or maybe every other day) road use.
Yes. If anything I seem to get fewer flats on latex than butyl, and they take patches more easily than butyl tubes (you can actually just use pieces of an old latex tube as patches, works great).
Lastly, maybe a weird question, but how do they go flat?
Pretty much how you'd expect a tube to go flat. If a tire takes a big slash from a huge stabby thing, causing a large rupture in the casing and inner tube, then air will exit quite rapidly just like it would with similar damage to any tire setup. With small holes, air escapes gradually, as it does with other tubes.