Re: [CR]Tubulars... Price vs. Longevity

(Example: Framebuilders:Rene Herse)

Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 15:50:25 -0600
From: "John Thompson" <JohnThompson@new.rr.com>
Organization: The Crimson Permanent Assurance
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: Re: [CR]Tubulars... Price vs. Longevity
References: <012120060008.5069.43D17B77000A702C000013CD2200750744020E000A9C9D0A08@comcast.net>
In-Reply-To: <012120060008.5069.43D17B77000A702C000013CD2200750744020E000A9C9D0A08@comcast.net>


hersefan@comcast.net wrote:
> I'm going to respectfully disagree - strongly on this one. Cheap
> tubulars have always given me terrible reliability. And over the
> years when I owned Bicycle Classics inc. most folks confirmed this
> observation as well. Some people do tend to get more flats in
> generall. You also need to try a large number of tires in order to
> get a good statistical sample. But after riding cheap tubulars in my
> younger years, I started riding top quality tubulars in the early
> 1990's - and I was amazed at how reliable the good ones are.

I'm going to agree in general with what you've said, but I have had some cheap tubulars that seemed to last forever -- some Michelin "Falco" tires I literally rode down to the threads before retiring them -- at least three seasons. On the other hand, my experience with cheap Hutchinson tubs was so bad I swore never to buy another Hutchinson tire again, and I didn't until last year when cheapness got the best of me and I picked up some Hutchison "Tempo" tires at an astonishingly low price. And I have to admit I've been quite pleased with them -- they're straight and true and have held up quite well so far (one season) except for one tire that failed at the valve stem, not a puncture. All in all, they compare favorably to the mid-level tubs I've used in the past.

High-end tubs are the best but oh does it hurt when they do flat or fail. I still have a NOS set of Vittoria Corsa CX SETAs that I'm afraid to even mount...
>
> A friend of mine in high school used to insist that top quality
> tubulars were the cheapest way to go. In fact, he stocked up on
> large quantities of Vittoria CX and CG's - but they were so reliable,
> that years later he sold me a bunch of them since he was using so few
> of them and they were lasting so long - he had too many!

--
John (john@os2.dhs.org)
Appleton WI USA