Fibre-Lyte wrote:Warblade wrote:alienator wrote:Fashion? Maybe also because people are used to seeing grooved or patterned tread on car and motorcycle tires. A lot of people don't really understand how tires work. When I was racing motorcycles the occasional person would ask why I used slicks..."aren't they slippery?"
That's funny! It's actually quite the contrary for slicks. They're incredibly sticky. I was at the International Motorcycle in Seattle in December and Metzler had a display there. Their slicks are amazingly slicky.
I'm not sure exactly how cycle tyres work, but bear in mind that motorcycle slicks are incredibly sticky in the dry (mainly due to the compounds), but the minute you get water on the track, they're virtually useless
Hi,
Yep. OTOH, as Alienator correctly explained, bicycle tyres have a much smaller foorprint and run at much lower speed.
Personally I love slick tubulars and wish there were more of them.
Whether a tyre adheres well under wet conditions will depend mostly on the composition of the compound IMHO.
Now, for the Veloflex tubbies, I've ridden a couple of seasons on most of them bar the Criterium, mostly because on paper these are heavier and I'd wanted an all black set as these were, dare I say it, my everyday tubbies.
While the Carbon is probably one of the best if not the best in it's category, the SC and Record are a whole league beyond.
They are however more prone to puncture than the Carbon but all of them are very easy to repair.
The best combo seems to me a Record on the FW and a SC on the rear. It's simply lighter and the FW is the only place where the Record is going to be worth it's salt unless of course you'd rather put it aside for special occasions.
Similar in riding qualities are the top Gommitalia (Platinum) and some of the Deda Tre even though the latter are noticeably heavier.
Once you've been totally spoiled by the Veloflex everything else seems to ride like a pair of old socks. That's of course disregarding the Dugast tubbies of which the silk ones are really in a class of their own.
New on the market are FWB, an ex Dugast employee making the same range as carried by Dugast and operating from France.
I haven't tried any of them but maybe Adrien has.
Looking forward to hear if Adrien's findings will coincide with my own. Always reassuring....
Oh, one last note. The Veloflex Carbon now claims a pressure range from 7 to 10 bar, which may have something to do with the increased weight as all my older ones where much closer to the claimed 240g.
If that's so, I wish they would have kept things the way they were before, 8 bar seemed smack in the middle of the comfort zone for that model to me......
Ciao,
Being a snob is an expensive hobby.
