Eclipse Road Tube 20/25mm

jevans636 wrote:

Hi Shaun, I imagine you and other road cc testers get through a lot of tires & tubes, not to mention the site's readers. So I was a bit surprised by the casual reference to landfill. It's good to be aware of the options for recycling these items: https://www.velorim.co.uk Cheers

It's a shame that velorim need a contribution for recycling them - in my opinion, recycling costs should be built into products (especially expensive tubeless tyres) which the recycling company could then recoup from the manufacturer.

(Not intended as a criticism of velorim)

The BRR testing was just rolling resistance though, wasn't it, not rotational weight? I would certainly share your scepticism that you can't feel a single watt difference in rolling resistance, but a 40g difference in rotational weight might well make a wheelset feel "zippier". BRR does say "In our opinion, the ~ 40 grams TPU tubes clearly perform better as they are lighter, roll faster, and air retention should be at least equal or better."

(I should say this is all purely theoretical for me, £30 in my world is more what one spends on a tyre, not a tube!)

The tube is 40g, which is almost a 100g saving over a Butyl tube isn't it? (too lazy to check). Saving 100g per wheel or 200g in total might feasibly be something you could feel, especially right at the outside of the wheel?

IanEdward wrote:

The tube is 40g, which is almost a 100g saving over a Butyl tube isn't it? (too lazy to check). Saving 100g per wheel or 200g in total might feasibly be something you could feel, especially right at the outside of the wheel?

Maybe...maybe not. I know when I swapped my butyl inner tubes for latex I couldn't really tell the difference. I know that when I rode tubeless and had a puncture that wouldn't seal, and I put a butyl tube in to get home, I wasn't bugged by the feeling that my rear wheel was "palpably" less "zippy". But then maybe I'm just some kind of cycling troglodyte. I've no doubt some other readers will be certain than they can tell the difference, and I'm equally certain they'll have never tested that claim with a blind test. 

It's so ridiculously easy to actually do an unbiased test the claim of whether the inner tube give the benefit of

Quote:

palpably lower rolling resistance than a butyl tube

that it's almost negligent not to do it. The cycling industry in general is full of "journalists" parroting manufacturer's claims verbatim, without any kind of actual analysis, and here we are with the simplest test possible and it's not done at all. We're instead to believe in the "expertise" of the journalist in question, whose experience in testing equipment can be summed up to "I ride bikes a lot". The bike felt "palpably zippier"? That could be anything, from what the reviewer ate that morning, to how much the sun was shining.

The lack of willingness from the journalist to remove the potential for their own unconcious bias is a joke, and without some actual evidence to back up this rolling resistance claim, it's just...horseshit. Sorry, but it is. 

I guess the percentage of total wheel or rim weight is a factor, i.e. these would have more impact on a set of 1200g wheels than a set of 1600g deep section carbons, but I take your point: Road.cc. tends to spin out these unscientific reviews that try to substantiate lab-tested marginal gains on the gravel-chipped roads surrounding Bath. Still...I'm reading it!

Mathemagician wrote:

 

some kind of cycling troglodyte

Wouldn't they spend all their time in their 'pain cave'?

Kraig Willett's post on the non-importance of rotational weight has vanished, along with his old site, but is still available here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190119221729/http://www.biketechreview.com...

The TL;DR is that wheel rotational inertia is far less important than aerodynamics and overall mass. With a 70kg rider and 10kg bike, you're looking here at saving 140g for two tubes - that's less than 0.2% of the total system weight, which is not going to make a difference you can feel.

I visited Finnish tyre test lab Wheel Energy a few years ago. They said they'd found that the most sensitive riders could detect a five-watt difference in resistance between set-ups, and most riders could detect a 10-watt difference.

I agree that it's very unlikely the small difference in rolling resistance between this tube and a standard butyl tube could be detected while riding.

Confirmation bias is a massive problem in product reviews. One of these days I'll get round to doing some double-blind tests to find out if our reviewers actually can detect a weight difference between wheels or whether they're just fooling themselves.

I do know that latex tubes make a nicer noise, my buddy even asked why my wheels sounded like that so it can't be confirmation bias 😎

When I was running Michelin's latex in my conti 2.1semislick supersonics it sounded as though I was riding on balloons.

I think that you feel the benefit of the latex tube when running quality and supple tyres.  Or maybe it's all marketing nonsense, of course my ti frame doesn't feel any better than a bso assembled very badly from a supermarket.

ktache wrote:

Of course my ti frame doesn't feel any better than a bso assembled very badly from a supermarket.

Don't assemble a BSO from a supermarket - it'll be too large to ride, and people won't have anywhere to get their groceries.

mdavidford wrote:

ktache wrote:

Of course my ti frame doesn't feel any better than a bso assembled very badly from a supermarket.

Don't assemble a BSO from a supermarket - it'll be too large to ride, and people won't have anywhere to get their groceries.

Still, better that than assembling a BSO from the internet, this website would go offl.........

IanEdward wrote:

I do know that latex tubes make a nicer noise, my buddy even asked why my wheels sounded like that so it can't be confirmation bias 😎

I've long suspected that a lot of what people characterise as bikes and in particular wheels and tyres feeling 'nice' is acoustic and reflects the type of noise that gets through to the rider as vibration you can feel and as actual sound. Certainly the 'whoosh' that some deep-section wheels make as you whiz along is rather pleasing. On the other hand I seem to recall Josh Poertner of Silca (and formerly Zipp) pointing out that to make a noise wheels have to be losing energy so whooshing wheels may not be desirable.

jaymack wrote:

Anyone spending £21 on an inner tube probably thinks Hans Christian Andersen wrote a best selling bicycle repair manual.

Hans On Repairs?

Very good, chapeau!

To play devil's advocate, IF you're just trying to shed grams, £21 to save 70g over typical butyl tubes is 3.3g/£. That's not bad at all.

It's double the price of a latex tube with similar ride quality and rolling resistance but without the fragility and rapid loss of pressure.

While £21 is expensive compared to other tube types, it's small beer in the scheme of things. And it's not as if that's a recurring cost (like Strava, Zwift, smartphones, GCN+, Netflix and a hundred other subscriptions people have nowadays).

I'd like to think that the price will come down once they've been around a while. After all, moulded polyurethane is not a rare material or difficult to work with.

In the end if someone feels the benefits are worth the cost then what's the problem?

I think I have decent tube-patching skills, but out on the road swapping for a known-to-be-good tube is pretty much idiot-proof. Tubes should be patched in a nice cosy workshop.

The weight savings here is totally inconsequential though, and if you're bothered about extracting every last skerrick of performance from your tyres, you're using latex tubes.

John Stevenson wrote:

if you're bothered about extracting every last skerrick of performance from your tyres, you're using latex tubes.

Aerocoach and BRR found that some TPU inner tubes are pretty close to latex for rolling resistance:

https://www.aero-coach.co.uk/inner-tube-rolling-resistance

https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/specials/tpu-inner-tubes

I agree re. swapping tubes at the roadside, save the repair for when you get home.

You cannot carry around the coconut abrasion device for use by the side of the road.

I would like one of these fancy tubes as my carry around spare, now that I've gone tubeless, but the chances of them making a 3 inch 27.5 are low, the butyl is just so big and heavy.

When running latex I'd always carry a spare, and a quick patch kit, with a proper kit at work (just in case, and another spare tube) and my full kits at home because it should take an evening, in a comfy chair, dry and warm helps, its not always going to be summer. Too many times in my youth trying to use rubber solution at the side of the road in the dark, trying to get shelter from the wind and rain.

ktache wrote:

You cannot carry around the coconut abrasion device for use by the side of the road.

Exactly!

Actually, I tend to run quite a large saddlebag so I probably could. Maybe I'll make a lightweight version

By the roadside I find it quicker & easier to patch than replace, especially the rear, so long as I can locate the source of the puncture (i.e. most times). No need to remove the wheel, and only unseat enough tyre to access the hole in the inner tube.

And if you can't locate the source of the puncture then replacing the inner tube is anything but proof against idiots.

ktache wrote:

Ohhh, transparent...

Yes - then you can see the air in it.