Did Lance Armstrong "age" his race tyres?

I saw the show a few years ago...it was very interesting...but if I recall they were aged for around 7 years...and it was on Discovery channel

According to their old school mechanic they did. Showed a cellar full of tubulars tires.

Anyone know why they did this? It seems weird to age your tires.

rudycyclist said:

Anyone know why they did this? It seems weird to age your tires.

All I heard is they are like wine, get better with age. They said makes them harder too flat.

Maybe the resin dries up and makes the tire more solid? I dunno! It's amazing the king of xtremes these people are willing to take it to (VERY maybe) get a tiny advantage...

It's probably one of those theories that is thought to work but never really tested or proven in the real world. If it was proven to work, we would hear much more about it.

From what I understand their mechanic has been wrenching for eons... it used to be that the rubber that was used in tires really did get better as it aged.
Nowadays the rubber compounds are supposed to be a lot better, they are made to perform well right out of the box and to not change drastically with time, so at least in theory, it shouldn't help at all to age your "toobalers" in a wine cellar.

Maybe tires is code for "blood products", and a basement in Belgum is code for "Dr. Ferrari's secret blood doping lab"....Easy there Disco fans, i'm just kidding.......

warriorcliff77 said:

Maybe tires is code for "blood products", and a basement in Belgum is code for "Dr. Ferrari's secret blood doping lab"....Easy there Disco fans, i'm just kidding.......

thats a bad joke... i wouldn't want to shoot up 7 year old blood

Eden said:

Nowadays the rubber compounds are supposed to be a lot better, they are made to perform well right out of the box and to not change drastically with time, so at least in theory, it shouldn't help at all to age your "toobalers" in a wine cellar.

Huh?
You make it sound like Lance was doing this 30 years ago. Have tire really changed that much in the last 5 years or so?

Personally, I age all my tires. It is [censored] that you need a basement in Belgium, all you need is a hot humid garage with no ventillation. The sewups will grow mold within a month. The mold serves to preserve and condition the rubber. Once a year, soak the tire in a good Merlot for 24 hours, drain, rinse and hang up. Three years later, you are ready to mount and ride.

Ok, seriously here. Just what benefits are there with this aging? Are there studies or other web write ups on this? And is it something specific to tubies? Or is it something that also applies to clinchers? I find the whole concept beyond explanation. 😕

sogood said:

Met this cyclist who claimed that riders on the US Postal/Discovery team used tyres that has been aged for 2-5 years. Lance would use 4-5 years old tyres for the race. Apparently, these tyres were all stored in a basement in Belgium. According to this guy, he heard this on a Discovery Channel program.

Is there any truth to this? I am very sceptical.

Thanks.

Yep, although sponsored by Hutchinson, the rumor was that Lance rode re-badged Dugast silk tubular tyres that were aged over 3-5 years. When punctured, they were repaired and reused over and over. The ageing process is supposed to make the rubber more supple and eliminate the friction between the silk casing and the rubber outer. Could be compelling physics, could be complete [censored] simply designed to give his guys a little mental edge on race day (much like Ullrich's over size rear jockey wheels on his rear mech?).

I love bicycle mysteries...

Fat Otter said:

much like Ullrich's over size rear jockey wheels on his rear mech?. I love bicycle mysteries...

Tell me more

janiejones said:

Tell me more

JU used 13T (or was it even 15T) jockey wheels, primarily on his TT bike. The idea is that if the jockey wheel has to do fewer revolutions, it saves a few watts.

n

sogood said:

Ok, seriously here. Just what benefits are there with this aging? Are there studies or other web write ups on this? And is it something specific to tubies? Or is it something that also applies to clinchers? I find the whole concept beyond explanation. 😕

A few old school riders have said this to me before as well. Some jazz about the tyres being more supple underneath you.

In practice, I can't see it making a meaningful difference to most riders out there. But then that extra 0.5W that you save in RR could mean something to you 😉

n

Ullrich used a 15 tooth carbon jockey wheel on a custom rear mech made by german company Speedware. The theory behind this was to reduce the bend the chain had to go through when going through the rear mech jockey wheels (reducing the chainline friction). Ullrich claimed a power saving of around three watts. As the device was never intended for sale to the public this claim was not being made to sell more product. So Ullrich was either a. making it up to make his competitors nervous or b. saving about 3 watts.

Interestingly, Normann Staddler (who has now won the Hawaii Ironman twice) also used this device after completeing a training camp with the T-Mobile team (back when The Jan was riding for them).

9202 said:

Huh?
You make it sound like Lance was doing this 30 years ago. Have tire really changed that much in the last 5 years or so?

Personally, I age all my tires. It is [censored] that you need a basement in Belgium, all you need is a hot humid garage with no ventillation. The sewups will grow mold within a month. The mold serves to preserve and condition the rubber. Once a year, soak the tire in a good Merlot for 24 hours, drain, rinse and hang up. Three years later, you are ready to mount and ride.

Dude -I thought I was clear enough that I wasn't talking about LA, but the head mechanic (Julien DeVries). He HAS been wrenching for probably more than 30 years - he was Eddy Merkx's mechanic when he was racing the TDF - it was back then that he (DeVries) learned to age the tires.
I'm not a dumb [censored] thanx.

nerdag said:

JU used 13T (or was it even 15T) jockey wheels, primarily on his TT bike. The idea is that if the jockey wheel has to do fewer revolutions, it saves a few watts.

n

I can see the logic in it. Not forcing the chain through such tight arcs as it passes through the mech would help reduce friction as well.

Does it make much difference on its own? Probably not. But combine it with a lot of other little things and the difference can become significant.

I heard the same story - LA rode silk Dugast tires. $200+ each, aged 5 to 7 years. In a fit of extravagance, I bought a pair of cotton Dugies. Don't know that they're any faster, or that they're actually worth the $90 each I paid for them, but lord are they smooth... definitely old school - the latex tubes go flat after about three days. And don't leave them in a car on a hot day, the rubber will start to come loose on the edges. (tire glue fixes it)

Whatever he was doing, it worked. It was very rare for LA to get a flat or have any sort of mechanical trouble. The man defined meticulous.

Many, many moons ago, when I was spending summers wrenching in a bike shop, we visited the cycle distributor, where I saw a box full of track silks. Beautiful tires, with the thin strip of rubber and silver silk casing. Wholesale was $80 each in 1980, when a dollar was worth a lot more than it is today.