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Well my repair attempt didn't hold up. I've had to replace my repaired Tufo tires with a new spare because the repair failed. The hole in the tire kept on leaking air. From the looks of it, the super glue doesn't doesn't bond well to the rubber. I might try a different glue like Gorilla glue or the new Elmers Ultimate glue.
My rear tire flatted on the way to work yesterday. This was the first time I’ve had to change a tubular tire on the side of the road. I didn’t have much problems getting the tire off and putting the spare on but removing the valve extender from the flatted tire to the spare was a pain.
Buying extra valve extenders and pre-installing them on my spare tires would of saved me about 10 minutes. The whole process of changing the tires, adding Tufo tire sealant and inflating them would have taken less then 5 minutes if I already had the valve extenders installed.
Once I got to my office, I inspected the flatted tire and found a 5 millimeter cut in the middle of the tread. I once read somewhere on a forum that you could repair Tufo tubular tires with some superglue and Tufo tire sealant. Since the tire was relatively new, I decided to give it a try. I glued up the cut on the tire with superglue, put in some sealant and pump it up to about 120 psi and felt and listened for any leaks. A couple of hours later I checked the tire and found that it was still holding strong so I mounted the tire back onto the wheel and crossed my fingers while I rode home in the rain.
Well, I made it home without any problems and the tire was still roughly the same hardness as when I first inflated it so I left the tire on and rode in this morning with it. The cut on the tire is still sealed and the tire is still at the right pressure after 40 miles of riding so it looks like the repair with the superglue worked.
I wiped-out on the way home from work yesterday. I was at the intersection of 6th and Stewart in downtown Seattle trying to beat a light when my chain broke. I was peddling hard out of the saddle at the time so I came crashing down onto the pavement when the chain snapped.
The PowerCranks aren't very forgiving when you loose tension in the drive train. Luckily I was able to walk away with just a bruised tush and a few scratches. Bike came through unscathed except for a scratch on my saddle and rear scewer. I thought there would be more damage with the force that I hit the pavement with but even my bike shorts came through without a scratch even though i landed squarely on my behind. I put a spare link onto the chain and now i'm riding with my butt firmly planted on the saddle until I get a new chain. I've got to do a better job of regularly cleaning all the grit and grease off of my chain cause this is the third chain I've broken in the last six months.
When I got home tonight I found a big box from Inside Ride on my front porch courtesy of FexEx Ground. My E-Motion rollers had arrived. After getting my bike into the garage I brought the box inside and rushed upstairs to take a quick shower.
Nice big E-Motion box I saw these rollers at the 2006 Seattle Bike Expo last month and was impressed with how easy they were to ride on considering they were "rollers". Being the crazy bike gadget guy that I am, I placed my order at Inside Ride for my own set of E-Motion rollers and now I've got a nice big brown box in my great room.
I've been riding inside on my CycleOps Fluid2 trainer on the weekends because of the cold and rainy Northwest winters. The Fluid2 trainer has served me well but I've always wanted to ride on rollers because of all the benefits I've read about but I've been reluctant to get one because of the steep learning curve. Rollers like the Kreitler and CycleOps are also not meant for hard sprints and out of saddle cycling because of the difficulting in on the rollers.
The rollers came packaged very well. Everything was in it's proper place and it came mostly assembled. The only thing that needed to be attached was the fly wheel. My initial impressions were that this was a very well constructed piece of equipment. All the joints were very solid and clean.
I've been riding with the PowerCranks for almost 5 months now and I've seen big gains in both power and 'fluidness' in my peddling. I'm not too entirely sure if my power gains can be attributed to the PowerCranks since I just started cycling a few months before I got the PowerCranks and I had very little power to begin with.
My power gains could of been gained just from riding on regular cranks since I had very little power to begin with.
