Re: riding unglued tubulars

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] wrote:

Unless you had a tire mounted on a rim without glue, you do have some
glue on there, and it will hold to some degree. If the spare tire has
been previously mounted, or you went to the trouble of pre-gluing it
(which I have never done) it will also have some glue on it. Depending
on how much and how old, plus how tight the tire fits and how much
pressure you put in it, the tire could be pretty safe or pretty scary.
I usually don't worry about it too much on the rear which is where most
of my flats happen, but I would be more careful if I was doing hairpin
descents, which I don't these days. It's a judgement call, but based on
the little info you gave I think you may have been a little too
cautious.

Agreed. I only used tubulars for a fairly short time. A used bike I
bought came with them and I figured I'd try them at least until the
original tires wore out. I was in Tucson, Az at the time, home of
untold numbers of plants with thorns, so I probably got at least 4 or 5
flats in each tire before I wore the tread down and was motivated to
switch out the rims and tires for clinchers (after a bit of practice it
wasn't that bad to open them up, patch the tube and sew them back
together).

Now I wouldn't recommend this to anyone (young and foolish, etc.), but I
never put any new glue on the tubular rims; just reapplied the tires to
the tacky surface left from the original glue. And I never had a
problem with a tire rolling off a rim or even feeling squirrelly. I
didn't race and never tried to see just how fast I could descend, but I
did go on quite a few club rides and don't think I was holding people
back - and that included rides like Kitt Peak with about a 4000' drop
and numerous rides over Gates Pass.

So after a puncture I'd certainly advise that you take it a bit easy
around turns (don't emulate the pictures of Jobst cornering on his
Avocet tires) and try to do most of your braking on the other tire. But
that should be sufficient to avoid any problems.

Thanks for the info. The reason I asked was, in part, because I saw
someone roll a sew-up on a corner at the bottom of a hill on a hard
training ride. He was an ex-pro so I presume it was a well-glued tire
but I never stopped to ask. It could have been a quick fix from a
previous ride. Anyway, it looked like it had the potential to be a lot
more dangerous than getting a flat on a clincher.