Hello collective mind,

I’ve just got myself a roof bike rack and will be loading my full-suss on it in the morning for the 90 mile round trip via work to the Friday night ride and then back home but a thought has occured to me…

Do i need to worry about the forks/suspension/brakes with 70mph freezing wind hitting them for 30-40 mins during the journeys? Or am I being daft? Just thinking that the windchill temp tomorrow at that speed will be well below zero.

Cheers!

Your’e absolutely right; the wind chill will be well below freezing. If something (e.g. a stone getting flicked up by a passing car) hits your bike once it’s been super chilled, there’s a good chance it’ll shatter it into lots of pieces due to it’s brittle state. Remember the T1000? Exactly that.

Your freehub may freeze up as I once found out but peeing on it warmed it sufficiently to get it working again 😆

Sh!t. Hadn’t thought of that. Will it reform when it gets warm?

For your sakes, I hope so.

Wind chill only applies to you (skin).
The temperature the bike will end up at is the temperature of the air.
Like a fan when it’s hot. It doesn’t cool below the temp of the air.

The wind won’t make your bike any cooler than the actual air temperature, it just means it cools down to that temperature quicker than if there was no wind.

Thanks Richmars and Chamley. Problem solved.

Now we’ve sorted that out how do you keep the saddle dry on roof racks?

The same way you do when you’re riding it?

Oh……

What- my arse?

Do i need to worry about the forks/suspension/brakes with 70mph freezing wind hitting them for 30-40 mins during the journeys?

No. Worry about this instead:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yu4vEsD9WA[/video]

I’d be more concerned about someone giving your shed / garage a visit after driving around with a bike on show..

On a serious note – if the roads are salted, make sure you wash the bike down after the car trip. It will get coated with a fine mist of salty moisture that will happily eat away the bare metal parts.
I once ruined two bikes by leaving them in the shed in the moist condition.

In my annecdotal experience, if your got air sprung forks and your’re doing a long journey at high speeds in freezing weather, you might want to cycle them through a few compressions before riding them. I only mention this from having my fox floats collapse on me in a he car park of llandegla after trying to do a front wheel stoppy as soon as I took the bike off the car in a vain attempt to impress the hot girls parked next to us. Needless to say it didn’t end well. Makes sense if you the think about it, air condences in the cold and expands in the warm, hence global weather systems. I also think that if I leave my bike next to the radiator in the kitchen with the heating on for any legnth of tim the spring rate has ramped up some want. Off course it could all be in my head

Id be more worried about theft than your bike getting cold.

Where are you leaving the bike whilst at work?

Have you considered lagging it and running some trace heating to keep the bike warm?
Or maybe knit it a little scarf. 😀