Talk to me about tubular – tubs.

So thinking about a new wheelset for the road bike, Planet X 50/50 with tubs.
What happen when I’m 50 miles from home and get a puncture.

Although touch wood I’ve only had. 1 in 4000miles with clinchers. But what the deal?
Do they roll better?

Etc etc give me info 🙂

Thing is I’m looking. At the 50/50 wheels but the clinchers are very heavy.

Lighter, smoother, faster. Suited to having a service car 😉 . I’ve just put some Tufos on an old GP4 wheelset, and they are lovely. If you puncture, you add Tufo latex, spin the wheel and reinflate (they have removable valves. A bit like tubeless.

Disclaimer: I haven’t had a puncture yet.

Lighter, smoother, faster.

Lighter – possibly, depending on what wheels you have. Smoother – that’s debateable, there’s unlikely to be a difference if you have a clincher of the same construction (you can generally get them as good as the standard tubs most people ride) and use a latex tube. Though you kind of lose that argument using Tufos which are actually stiffer than many top clinchers. Faster – definitely not, all the science and the testing shows that clinchers are faster.

They’re for racing……

So thinking about a new wheelset for the road bike, Planet X 50/50 with tubs.
What happen when I’m 50 miles from home and get a puncture.

Back in the days when i was a teenager, training on tubs was the norm, one would have an old tub, which was already taped up, underneath the saddle (in my case an £8 Dnepr tub which lasted forever, wrapped in a piece of vinyl and held in place with a toe strap)on puncturing you pulled the old tub off pumped the new one up and carried on. It’s not that complicated a job changing them, it’s fixing them which is a chore. I never remember being stranded with no spare – but i still wouldn’t use them for general riding now. As an aside I have the carbonzone 50mm tubular wheels and they are very good.

So a little case on not worth the effort these days.

Also tubs are generally expensive and a challenge to repair (needle and thread).

Very few people run them for a reason.

+1 aracer – I haven’t found they roll better than, say, Veloflex or Open Corsas with a latex tube (seat of pants comarison of course)
Didn’t Tony Martin just win the worlds on clinchers?

I suspect the reason most normal folk ride tubs is the kudos of having the spare taped under the saddle 😕

Lighter in the sense that rim + tub will be less than rim + tube + clincher. My GP4 rimmed wheels are a fair bit lighter than the MA2s. If clinchers were so much faster, then surely every pro team would be using them for marginal gains? Must be more to do with rotating weight.

There is a reason why there is no shortage of used carbon tub wheels on ebay, to be honest. I’m looking for new road wheels, and tubulars don’t make the starting list.

The problem is I guess that tubular wheels are lighter. So I were to get the Planet X :

http://www.planet-x-bikes.co.uk/i/q/WBPX52CCLHBPC/planet_x_52mm_carbon_clincher_wheelset_hand_built_by_paul_curran

Quite heavy by the time you put tyres and inner tubes in.
I guess not much point upgrading my 1400g wheelset with Stans Alpha rims then.

1800g is not light. Add on 500g for race tyres and lightweight tubes. That’s why they are so well priced. The aero advantage will cut in at about 20mph. Below that it’s a negligible gain and lighter wheels will feel nicer and accelerate faster. For reference, the new Zipp 404 clinchers (at four times the price) weigh almost the same as your current wheels.

Dave…..repeat the following 100 times.
“I am having a baby soon; I must stop spending money”

😆 😆 😆

oi STOP IT!

If clinchers were so much faster, then surely every pro team would be using them for marginal gains?

The difference in speed isn’t enough to be significant (oh, and an awful lot of people in the cycling community still believe the myth about tubs being faster), but what difference there is is definitely advantage clinchers. Pro teams have other reasons for using tubs which don’t apply to the same extent to ordinary punters, one of the most significant being the run flat ability – see for example the 1995 World Road Race, where Olano would almost certainly have had to stop if he’d been on clinchers – though that’s also a significant safety advantage when riding in a big pack.

I wouldn’t dream of using tubs everyday. Would be a real pain when you puncture and remember with the deeps they do not stop in the wet. Have got some for cross and they get scary in the wet!!!
I do have those PX clinchers for more everyday use. Fairly heavy as you say but actually ride fast. Think we averaged just under 28 mph the other week on them in the chain gang!
A bit fragile though-have broken several spokes on the back and at 72 kg not really heavy. Aluminium braking surface so no problem in the wet