Perception and Reality

[Fullylugged]

There was a thread that I can't locate today, discussing the "feel" of Rambouillet. I've had mine since 2007 and put 12,000 miles on it. It has 2 sets of wheels. Today I did a fund raiser for a Grist Mill restoration project (Great ride near Birmingham AL btw) and put on the "race" set. These are road wheels using Ultegra hubs with Conti Ultra Gatorskins 28s and the bike felt quick, nimble and pedaling was pretty effortless most of the time. (Samba sneakers on sneaker pedals) A few stiff ups, and some contrary breezes towards the finish. I felt good though and was eager to see what Garmin recorded for me, pace wide.  Avg was 14.6. (I'm slow, always ride in the 13 - 15 range avg). I checked my bike journal to see how that compared with my last ride on the "slow" wheels. These are Phil hubs and heavier Synergy Aeroheat rims. I have 37s on these wheels and also refer to them as my comfort set. They feel slow and waddling but float over coarse chip seal. You can hear them singing when you ride. Okay, last ride on the same bike, with a heavier slow feel?  14.6 mph avg.  Duh? okay same engine both rides. It comes down (at least for me) as what do I want to ride today? 

The Ram tubeset has a heat treated down tube and chain stays so it is a solid bike. The other non HT tubes dampen buzz. The double taper seat stays are just pretty. I like my older Riv with Reynolds 753 better, or an older Trek with 531c better as well, but Ram is pretty nice. It has more miles than the other two combined.  Needs paint. Can't decide on the color though!

Tailwinds

[Patrick Moore]

You make me think twice about selling my Ram ....

What tires are your 37s?

Aside: the Challenge Parigi Roubaix tires that now shod/shed/shid/shood the older Open Pros on the Ram are wonderful tires and, at about 30 mm after stretching, plenty wide enough for me. 

Interesting: although the older Open Pros are not heavyweights, and although the P-Rs are certainly lightish tires at 330 g or so, the Ram just feels more ponderous than my customs, with 559/571 bsd wheels. OTOH, I do notice very strongly a "feeling" that the bigger, 700C wheels maintain momentum better. Also, the Ram is slower in the "turn-in" while being no more stable in a straight line. Horses for courses, of course; one gets used to things and judges other things in reference to them. We'll see. 

I should add a pair of these to the Ram: http://www.trisports.com/zipp-404-firestrike-cc-wheelset.html?Color=BLK&gclid=CNz20MyHqcQCFVCVfgod9SEA6g

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[Fullylugged]

You didn't think for too long!! :)   I run Panaracer Pasela 1 1/2" tires. They come in at 37mm. Some brands of 1 1/2" measure 38. They're not especially long lived, but they're also not pricey and I like how they look.

[Ron Mc]

Patrick, I found a pair of Eroicas, which have have the same single PPS as the P-Rs.  I run pressures way down, it doesn't slow them down, and it's like riding on a cloud. 

On Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 7:04:51 PM UTC-5, Patrick Moore wrote:

[alan lavine]

 Now that you've brought that up, what are the tube diameters and thicknesses for the Ram?  Has that ever been revealed?  I find it a little on the stiff side, although not nearly as much as my LHT.  For more in this topic, see the current edition of Bicycle Quarterly, where Jan tried an oversized down tube with a standard sized TT to see the difference.

Thanks, Alan

[Cyclofiend Jim]

8/5/8 as per the early announcements.

http://www.cyclofiend.com/Images/rbw/rr23_pg40.jpg

[Bruce Herbitter]

Yes Alan.  The original catalog write up gave the tube brand, size and thickness. It's been posted here before. You should be able to google search it.  If you run into difficulty, I'll fish the write up out of the drawer and re send it.

Bruce

Sent from my iPad

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[dougP]

Here's a really old one:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/rbw-owners-bunch/Is$20the$20ram$20the$20perfect$20riv/rbw-owners-bunch/LVS55Pkm2Vc

Lots of Ram riders are passionate about them, and use them for go-fast rides as well as light touring. 

dougP

[Bruce Herbitter]

Actually, the bike in practice was not made with those tubes. When they sourced them at Toyo in Osaka, they went with Japanese tube as well.​

 new doc 1.pdf

​

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[Patrick Moore]

No, I didn't! The Ram was a nice bike, but I've been spoiled by 3 customs.

[Patrick Moore]

I'll have to look up the Eroicas. Don't suppose they are made in the 559 or 571 sizes ....

[Peter Adler]

Nope; the Eroicas were a 700c tire, as are the P-Rs. Challenge doesn't make 559 tires at all; the only mountain tires they make are 29er and 650B tubulars.

When the L'Eroica folks in Tuscany terminated their sponsorship deal with Challenge and signed a deal with Continental, Challenge renamed their 30mm gravel/road tire as Strada Bianca, and did a dual-layer puncture protection (PPS) change, heavying the tire up a bit, in an effort to address the alleged fragility of the P-R design. The current-gen P-Rs have the same dual-PPS layer. I'm not clear whether the change was made in both models at the same time, but that seems likely.

As a company, Challenge seems to be aggressively clueless about selling tires into the US market. I had my LBS (Missing Link in Berkeley CA) pursue them for Eroica/Strada Bianca skinwall tubulars for nearly a year, but they kept saying, "oh, signore; you can buy them at your local shop" (we are a local shop; how do we buy them?). Euro-Asia and QBP are distributors, but Euro-Asia hasn't updated to list the Strada Bianca (maybe they still have Eroicas?), and QBP's catalog lists only a limited range - no skinwalls at all. Honestly, who would want to buy spendy fatso road tires except us retro-fetishists? Who do they think is buying these things?

Unless you get a buy off CL or eBay, I think the best Challenge bet for a US buyer is Wiggle in the UK; they seem to have a fairly complete selection, at rather appealing prices. I'll support local merchants when I can, but there has to be a limit.

http://www.wiggle.com/cycle/tires/?ea=4294789336

Patrick, if you're using older P-Rs, aren't you getting...(ahem) adverse results from those goatherds?

Peter Adler

who doesn't have to deal with Mother Nature's wrathful debris, but only the city trash of his fellow man in

Berkeley, CA/USA

[Peter Adler]

Goatheads, not goatherds, obviously. Stupid Google spellcheck; leave my words alone.

[Steve Palincsar]

On 03/15/2015 05:48 PM, Peter Adler wrote:
>
> When the L'Eroica folks in Tuscany terminated their sponsorship deal
> with Challenge and signed a deal with Continental, Challenge renamed
> their 30mm gravel/road tire as Strada Bianca, and did a dual-layer
> puncture protection (PPS) change, heavying the tire up a bit, in an
> effort to address the alleged fragility of the P-R design. The
> current-gen P-Rs have the same dual-PPS layer. I'm not clear whether
> the change was made in both models at the same time, but that seems
> likely.

Based on my experience with the Parigi Roubaix, I can affirm that the
fragility of the design is very, very real. This has to be the most
flat-prone tire I've ever seen. It's also, at least in its original
pre-PPS form, one of the nicest riding. It's actually uncanny how
smooth this tire can make badly eroded and cracked pavement feel. It is
also without a doubt the most difficult tire to mount initially.
Volumes could be written about how hard it is, and the arcane tricks you
have to resort to to mount these tires. Fortunately, after a week or so
on the rims and inflated to pressure they stretch enough to make
dismounting and remounting not too problematic -- a good thing, because
chances are by then you'll be doing so by the side of the road.

[Patrick Moore]

My query about a 559 size was really a forlorn and plaintive wish for such a thing. But now we hear that Jan/BQ/Compass will make a lightweight 559X32 ...!!!!!!!... so that perhaps our sobs were heard.

(When will that tire become available? Will production be ongoing? -- ie, it won't disappear from the market after six months?) I will stock up!

The P-Rs were absolutely impossible on even nice, smooth, new area pavement because of their susceptibility to goathead punctures. I applied 20 (twenty, XX) patches in the first week. My 290 gram 650C skinnies are far, far far more goathead resistant. 

But Stan's solved the problem and I've  not flatted in 2K miles. Occasionally I'll hear a soft shhhhh or see little wet spots on the tread, but I've not lost appreciable air. Note that this Stan's is in tubes; at 50+ psi it seems to work in tubes where, at 20 psi or less it doesn't.

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[Patrick Moore]

Again, Stan's squares this particular circle. Mostly -- both front and rear have developed small cracks in the tread perpendicular to the tread's travel direction, but they do not reveal any fabric. I've smeared with Shoe Goo and kept riding.

I daresay that any extralight Compass tires will be absolutely impossible in goathead country without a good sealant, but Stan's and, I hear it's even better, Orange Peel or somesuch is there to save the day.

Hell, I run 360 gram on a Pelouze mail scale 50X622 Furious Freds on dirt here with Stan's, tubeless, and they are fine.

BTW, my P-Rs had been mounted, ridden a bit, and then sold (to me) and were difficult to mount but easier than the 650C X 23 Pro Race 3s on the gofast.

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[Steve Palincsar]

On 03/15/2015 06:02 PM, Patrick Moore wrote:
>
> I daresay that any extralight Compass tires will be absolutely
> impossible in goathead country without a good sealant, but Stan's and,
> I hear it's even better, Orange Peel or somesuch is there to save the day.
>

As far as goatheads are concerned, the Compass extralights should be
about the same as the regular weight Compass tire: impossible without
sealant, as you say. And who could possibly know better than you,
living as you do in the innermost circle of Goathead Heaven? ;-)

[Patrick Moore]

I can't sing the praises of Stan's long or loud enough. It really is a life saver -- at least, a tire saver. (Haw haw haw.) 

Now I laugh at goatheads.

Slightly more seriously: it is very interesting how different tires respond to goatheads in the same terrain. The 559X1.35 Kojaks (so labeled) roll very well -- not as well as the P-Rs, though; and though I've found fatter tires pick up thorns more than narrow ones, they are relatively immune from goatheads. Ditto the much fatter but still, relative to casing and size, Big Apples: I could ride those sans sealant in our bosque and get only occasional flats. 23 mm Conti GP 3000s or Pro Race 3s get more thorns than the Kojaks, but surprisingly few given their light construction. Paselas, as wide in reality as the Kojaks, got many more than the skinnies. I got a goathead flat on the unprotected P-Rs literally every 5 miles or less.

Last segway: a couple of summers ago commuting to my temp summer job at Stevie's and taking a short cut down a particular street down the Mesa, I would pass a field of 1-2 acres that was literally covered end to end with goathead plants. The park near my mother's house was invaded and poison control removed half an acre of grass from the park's perimeter. I torched (propane), poisoned (half gallon), and dug up a 3' square patch in my mother's front yard; a year later it was starting to come back.

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[alan]

Thank you all for the Ram info.

[Ron Mc]

Maybe you're running pressures too high.  In about 3000 miles I flatted two P-Rs.  One was a Y-shaped stick in a pile of chert - that destroyed the tire (I had a fold up).  The second was bailing wire on the road.  Glued the tear in the tire with zap-a-gap, and put an ounce of stans in the tube - it's still holding up

Alan, sorry about the thread derail

[Steve Palincsar]

On 03/17/2015 10:14 AM, Ron Mc wrote:

Maybe you're running pressures too high.  In about 3000 miles I flatted two P-Rs.  One was a Y-shaped stick in a pile of chert - that destroyed the tire (I had a fold up).  The second was bailing wire on the road.  Glued the tear in the tire with zap-a-gap, and put an ounce of stans in the tube - it's still holding up

I've had the tires flat on pieces of glass or slivers of stone half the size of grains of rice.  Pressure is as appropriate on the BQ tire pressure chart estimating width as 29mm.