Middrive e bike v. car drag race

I do not know how old Chalo is, but he's a bicycle mechanic and has probably changed 100's if not a thousand or more tires over the decades.

Just because something is new doesn't mean its better then the old way.

To each their own.

Chalo said:

Grantmac said:

That's why serious bikers are running tubeless.

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Haha. He said "serious" and "tubeless" in the same sentence.

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[quote="fatty"]
There are plenty of locations -- mine included -- in which commuting with tubes has simply become untenable. I would have to double my allowed travel time to account for likely punctures.

I don't understand this dismissive and derogatory attitude. We spend hundreds of hours across years researching, designing, building, and maintaining this hobby. Yet spending 10 minutes setting up tubless is to be laughed off a thread? Something kids in my local club now do unattended? Sounds like you are hopelessly stuck in the '90s.
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fatty said:

Chalo said:

Grantmac said:

That's why serious bikers are running tubeless.

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Haha. He said "serious" and "tubeless" in the same sentence.

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There are plenty of locations -- mine included -- in which commuting with tubes has simply become untenable. I would have to double my allowed travel time to account for likely punctures.

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You're conflating sealant with tubeless-- which is an easy mistake, because most tubeless setups are not adequately reliable without sealant. But you can use sealant in tubes, like we've been doing for much longer than bicycles have had tubeless tires.

Sealant in the tube is like disposable diapers. You use it when circumstances dictate. It's not terribly convenient, but at least it's simple to dispose of when the time comes. Sealant directly in the tire is more like cloth diapers. It commits you to an ongoing tiresome nasty mess that you might decide is worth it for whatever reason, but in no case is it the easy and straightforward way to get on with things.

You can put sealant in a tube and then forget about it for a long time. I did once for about 18 months on my daily ride. Or you can put sealant in a tubeless tire and keep dealing with it, and keep dealing with it.

I don't bother with sealant anymore, not for many years. Instead I use tires tough enough for the conditions, and I stay out of the gutter where most sharps collect. No diapers necessary. When I get a flat (very rarely), I fix it quickly and neatly and resume what I was doing.

Chalo said:

You're conflating sealant with tubeless-- which is an easy mistake, because most tubeless setups are not adequately reliable without sealant. But you can use sealant in tubes, like we've been doing for much longer than bicycles have had tubeless tires.

Sealant in the tube is like disposable diapers. You use it when circumstances dictate. It's not terribly convenient, but at least it's simple to dispose of when the time comes. Sealant directly in the tire is more like cloth diapers. It commits you to an ongoing tiresome nasty mess that you might decide is worth it for whatever reason, but in no case is it the easy and straightforward way to get on with things.

You can put sealant in a tube and then forget about it for a long time. I did once for about 18 months on my daily ride. Or you can put sealant in a tubeless tire and keep dealing with it, and keep dealing with it.

I don't bother with sealant anymore, not for many years. Instead I use tires tough enough for the conditions, and I stay out of the gutter where most sharps collect. No diapers necessary. When I get a flat (very rarely), I fix it quickly and neatly and resume what I was doing.

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I'm not conflating anything. I run sealant in my tubulars, and my experience -- supported by the consensus determination -- is that it offers inferior protection compared to tubeless tires due to the thin tube versus the thick tire carcass. Latex suspension sealants work best through depth.

And if you put in enough sealant to seal the tire, you're left with... an extra-heavy, extra-rigid.. "cloth diaper".

markz said:

I do not know how old Chalo is, but he's a bicycle mechanic and has probably changed 100's if not a thousand or more tires over the decades.

Just because something is new doesn't mean its better then the old way.

To each their own.

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Indeed, new isn't better. Better is better. And tubeless is vastly better for enough people that it's an ignorant look to laugh someone off the forum for using it and suggesting it.

fatty said:

I run sealant in my tubulars, and my experience -- supported by the consensus determination -- is that it offers inferior protection compared to tubeless tires due to the thin tube versus the thick tire carcass. Latex suspension sealants work best through depth.

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Oh. You use tubulars too.

Day to day practicality evidently doesn't mean much to you. Sewups are the tubeless of the older generation-- extra hassle, extra expense, extra time consuming, and without measurable benefit. At least sewups don't leave puddles of muck on the shop floor.

I'll note in regard to your above statement that
1) tubes come in lots of different thicknesses, and
2) not all sealants use latex. The one that got me by for a year and a half without intervention was glycol based, in regular weight butyl tubes.

fatty said:

Indeed, new isn't better. Better is better. And tubeless is vastly better for enough people [snip]

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Better how? Not in any way that you can measure of even quantify.

I think they're "better" like hydraulic discs are better, or rear thru-axles are better. Which is to say, better because new hotness, because someone said they were and you believed it.

Chalo said:

I think they're "better" like hydraulic discs are better, or rear thru-axles are better. Which is to say, better because new hotness, because someone said they were and you believed it.

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Hahahah. I was just about to post "don't get chalo started on hydraulic disc brakes". Hahahah.

Time to evolve you friggin dinosaur.

Chalo said:

Better how? Not in any way that you can measure of even quantify.

I think they're "better" like hydraulic discs are better, or rear thru-axles are better. Which is to say, better because new hotness, because someone said they were and you believed it.

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Better however they define it, among the many quantifiable benefits. Which, in the absence of any opposing quantifiable data from you, makes your reply a baseless personal attack that contributes nothing to this forum.

serious_sam said:

Chalo said:

I think they're "better" like hydraulic discs are better, or rear thru-axles are better. Which is to say, better because new hotness, because someone said they were and you believed it.

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Hahahah. I was just about to post "don't get chalo started on hydraulic disc brakes". Hahahah.

Time to evolve you friggin dinosaur.

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Yeah, but real bikes will still be around when all this fashion-driven nonsense is long gone. I remember when low-profile cantilever brakes, bar ends, headset gaiters, 22" wide handlebars, and 1.9" tires were new hotness. And lots of other "vastly better" things that really weren't, when it came down to it.

Oh yeah, and Hite Rites. Those are back again for a visit, but they'll soon go away again. Can you believe they've gotten some suckers to pony up 800 clams for the new-new hotness version? Better because hydraulic, because hydraulic equals better!



This too shall pass.

Chalo said:

Oh yeah, and Hite Rites. Those are back again for a visit, but they'll soon go away again. Can you believe they've gotten some suckers to pony up 800 clams for the new-new hotness version? Better because hydraulic, because hydraulic equals better!

This too shall pass.

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Assuming you're talking about dropper seat posts?

Damn they are the best idea. I wish they were around when I was riding heaps. Nothing worse than stopping to raise and lower the seat for every hill. Especially when riding with a group. Can't climb efficiently with a low seat. Can't decend fast with a high seat. Midway compromise sucks. Best of both worlds with a dropper post.

Competition, unlike opinion, will always produce the best engineering.
Show me one competitive MTB without hydraulic discs? Or (other than DH) without a dropper?

fatty said:

Unsprung weight approaching sprung weight is a fundamental physics problem -- it cannot be "modded and tuned" to "make good handling".
A motorcycle wheels as heavy as ebike motor wheel is not an apt comparison, as such a motorcycle has much greater sprung weight, and even there, every effort is made to reduce that wheel weight, to the point of exotic magnesium and carbon fiber wheels.

There are compelling -- even overwhelming -- reasons to use hub drive. But we should distinguish between fundamental physics problems and mere engineering challenges (to wit: a mid-drive competing with a high-power hub).

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With a total riding weight 270 lbs, a 36 lbs rear wheel is definitely more that I would want, but I did succeed to tune the suspension and geometry to keep it on the ground on the city surface at the sub 70 mph speed that I ride. That is enough for me to prefer my hub to any mid drive that would give the same performance. Yet I find it is hub build limit, and I would use mid drive motorcycles if I wanted more power and speed for a street bike. Another reason that would make me prefer mid drives, is at the other end of performance range: low power, with light weight bicycle feel and riding qualities. And, as those bb drives mtb now offered on the market are getting much better lately, I am thinking of giving up my dirt bike performance to go back into light mtb handling. You see, bikes at both ends of performance range, light weight bb drive ebikes and e-motorcycles, are available on the market and I would buy them eventually instead of building my own. A fast city commuter is not available anywhere in the ebike industry, but that is exactly what I need, thus I build and ride the best I can for this purpose and that is a hub.

Grantmac said:

Competition, unlike opinion, will always produce the best engineering.
Show me one competitive MTB without hydraulic discs? Or (other than DH) without a dropper?

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Not talking about those 2 examples but in general: competition does produce the best performance oriented development, but often at the cost of high maintenance and short term reliability. We need it to complete the race, no matter if it does need to be replaced or rebuilt right after. Racing requirements have little to do with practical commuting. Competition is a test lab where engineering is developing technologies that will eventually evolve into the reliable, practical requirements of daily commuting.

Grantmac said:

Competition, unlike opinion, will always produce the best engineering.
Show me one competitive MTB without hydraulic discs? Or (other than DH) without a dropper?

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Show me one professional racer sponsored with products other than those meant to sell to suckers at a premium.

All those things I mentioned earlier that are now acknowledged to suck? They were on racers' bikes too. In 20 years, all your "vastly better" favorite geegaws are going to look like this:

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/this-1999-scott-endorphin-is-everything-that-was-wrong-with-mtb-tech-in-the-90s/

MadRhino said:

With a total riding weight 270 lbs, a 36 lbs rear wheel is definitely more that I would want, but I did succeed to tune the suspension and geometry to keep it on the ground on the city surface at the sub 70 mph speed that I ride.

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On a saddled bike where the rider can be expected to post up on the pedals over big hits, I don't believe rider weight can simply be added to sprung vehicle weight, because such an action effectively forms a tertiary suspension (primary being the tire, secondary being the mechanical suspension). Therefore, (full) rider weight doesn't directly react to unsprung weight.

In any case, I didn't mean to discount your perceived satisfaction with your hub builds, and I don't doubt they are sufficient and desirable for your uses. But on a rear suspension bike, an equivalent mid-drive will always provide superior roadholding.

Chalo said:

Oh. You use tubulars too.

Day to day practicality evidently doesn't mean much to you. Sewups are the tubeless of the older generation-- extra hassle, extra expense, extra time consuming, and without measurable benefit. At least sewups don't leave puddles of muck on the shop floor.

I'll note in regard to your above statement that
1) tubes come in lots of different thicknesses, and
2) not all sealants use latex. The one that got me by for a year and a half without intervention was glycol based, in regular weight butyl tubes.

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So before I was a sucker for new hotness, and now I'm a sucker for the older generation?
No, I use the best product available for my use case. You're a contrarian who doesn't have a complete grasp of how these products work, so you respond with these unfounded, overbroad personal attacks.

1) No tube is thicker than a tire intended for an equivalent use.
2) My experience was with latex suspension sealant, but all suspension sealants seal by aggregation through depth.

There are compelling reasons to use sealant in tubes, as we both do. But to laugh someone off a thread because they use Tubeless, which prevents flats more effectively than sealant in tubes, is wrong. That's not an opinion; that's not even a consensus determination -- it's fundamental to how sealant seals.

Chalo said:

I think they're "better" like hydraulic discs are better, or rear thru-axles are better. Which is to say, better because new hotness, because someone said they were and you believed it.

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More great examples here.

I still run a rim brake, but hydraulic disc allow greater and more consistent braking force with less effort. These characteristics are fundamental to the operating mechanism.

I still run nutted and bolt-on axles, but thru-axles are much stronger for the same weight, or much lighter for the same strength. These characteristics are fundamental to the product design.

Nobody is saying that previous products don't work, or that the new products always provide sufficient benefit to justify the cost for you. But to attack them out-of-hand illustrates you don't understand how they work. Which seems so oblivious that it calls into questions whether your 8000 posts are simply trolling. If not, enjoy using your wooden block brakes and nutted axles...

markz said:

I do not know how old Chalo is, but he's a bicycle mechanic and has probably changed 100's if not a thousand or more tires over the decades.

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Bike tech is a high school and college gig, not a career. Anybody that makes it a career didn't have a choice.

Probably not healthy for the forum to congratulate, and thus reward, these unfounded personal attacks.
Don't feed trolls.

fatty said:

On a saddled bike where the rider can be expected to post up on the pedals over big hits, I don't believe rider weight can simply be added to sprung vehicle weight, because such an action effectively forms a tertiary suspension (primary being the tire, secondary being the mechanical suspension). Therefore, (full) rider weight doesn't directly react to unsprung weight.

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Word.

fatty said:

Bike tech is a high school and college gig, not a career. Anybody that makes it a career didn't have a choice.

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You've been on a roll up to this point. But this comment is pure bullshit. Get down off your high horse.

I don't know about Chalo, but my caution about new hotness, from having been a casual bicyclist since the '70s, is that these benefits are often not real meaningful to me, or to the very many of us who don't have any reason (if there even can be a reason?) to engage in any kind of competitive cycling. Competition is a separate universe that can take care of itself, just like ordinary motorcycle riders don't need to be concerned about how their ride is going to take to going around corners with one knee resting on the ground. But from generations ago, and I suppose it's still true, this weird pursuit casts a certain glamor on the gear that's developed for it, hence the many ordinary cyclists back then riding out to work or to get groceries on what were essentially road racing bicycles. It's kind of like getting titanium silverware because you heard the astronauts get it.

Oh hai. another bike mechanic here deciding to chime in as the thread has been off topic since the first page anyway

while i agree as a mechanic, i sort of disagree as a cyclist on several things. that being said, i am an aggressive rider that solo rides almost exclusively and often at night. Tubeless is a godsend for me as there are lots of thorns here, and i can run less air pressure and get better traction. i do carry a tube just in case but have yet to have a catastrophic failure in the wild.

hydraulic brakes are another thing i've come around to appreciating. on customers bikes they all suck

Funny thing is that in 1997 when i was like 14, i had the first disc brakes that Hayes came out and i had no clue how to work on them so i brought them to my LBS, who proceeded to contaminate them and then had to wait a couple of weeks for parts and them to figure it out. So then, when they were the "new hotness" they sucked a lot more.

that being said, i also remember a few cantilevers that were a real pain in my ass and just never seemed to adjust right, sometimes due to the cable routing etc of the frame itself. and the incompatibility of lever pull with canti and linear pull that some manufacturers like giant seem to still have problems getting right on their hybrids.

its kind of like when i used to work on Bmw/rover/porsche, the best tech drove a shitty old bronco. i always asked why he didn't have a BMW or something, customers would have an 8k bill and decide they didnt want the car, someone would hydrolock an engine and it sit. he could of had his pick of 740il's, s500's, rovers for next to nothing

his answer was, "work on these pieces of shit all day long, last thing i want is to be in one when im not here"

what works best for one person isn't necessarily best for others. a lot of "serious" cyclists would say ebikes suck. I am a retro grouch at heart, if it were up to me i'd be riding one of the 30+ 90's hardtails i collect with my seat a foot in the air and a negative rise 130mm stem clamped on to my mag 21. Unfortunately, as i approach 40, i found that the bright side of the additional weight of modern bikes and heavy forks, and the increased rotational mass of 29ers is offset by being able to walk the day after i ride. my mag 21sl weighs half what my fox weighs

ALSO- I consider wrenching on bikes to be a noble profession. For me, it is my zen time that i am fortunate to be able to charge people for. Unlike cars and other things, it is very rare to have a bike issue that can't be resolved in an hour or two. its the perfect balance of mentally stimulating enough, without sending someone with ocd over the edge. It is the only job that hasn't followed me home in a negative way, only in a way that finds me spending more time in my off hours on sites like this because it is what i enjoy. I know a lot of people with "careers" making less at the end of the day as well, and while i've done things that made more, it isn't all about the money.

serious_sam said:

fatty said:

Bike tech is a high school and college gig, not a career. Anybody that makes it a career didn't have a choice.

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You've been on a roll up to this point. But this comment is pure bullshit. Get down off your high horse.

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After a handful of tech startups, and being employee #5 at one of the high profile private space programs you have heard of, I decided I was retired. So I retired to what I had been doing for a long time at my own expense... making and fixing bikes.

I had the new richest man in the world introduced to me personally by the previous richest man in the world, in my machine shop.

What I do now is of more lasting value.

Carlos Slim?

Jeez um, I have no idea what this thread is about anymore