My Very First Recumbent is a V20

[vosadrian]

Do the paths you ride have much puncture risk? I have a couple of roads I ride on that are major puncture risk. Without tubeless with sealant, I am puncturing on them every 3-4 times I ride them. If I did not have a big puncture risk, I would avoid sealant or run the minimum I can get away with. If my punctures were rare, I would never run a tube with sealant in it (I have never run a tube with sealant even with a high puncture risk!!)... just fit a new tube when the puncture rarely happens... and you don't lose the speed from sealant sloshing around in the tube. My experience with tubeless is that you need some sealant in to seal the tyre. I tried running tubeless without sealant at one point and lost air very quickly... like 100->50psi in a few hours. Barely enough time to ride on it. These days I run 30mL sealant which is enough to seal the tyre without starting to slow the rolling resistance much.

As for getting the tyre to seal.... I have a large air compressor (My other hobby is cars and I do a lot of work wtih my cars using is) that I use with stubborn tyres. That works well. I do need a better inflator attachment as it is a bit fiddly using the Schrader adapter... but it works. Have you tried using soapy water to lubricate the tyre on the rim which may allow you to position better and the soap may have a sealing effect also? I would also try fitting with a tube and putting out in the sun. That should stretch the tyre to the rim shape. The problem with folding tubeless tyres is they have creases that can be hard to seat. Trying to iron out the creases and shape it to the rim would probably help. If that doesn't work, get a schrader adapter and locate a large air compressor. I would bring the sealant with you also..... Once you have it sealed with sealant, and can keep it with pressure for a few rides, the tyre should shape itself to the rim, and you will probably be fine with a normal pump after that.

 

[Don1]

Can u take the valve core out. If that doesn't work run it with a tube on the back wheel. U might need to start in a fresh tyre. I had trouble reseating a gp5000 so much so that I'm going back to Michelin (but the gp5000stl is v tempted)

 

[vosadrian]

I've gone through at least 7 GP5000-tl 25mm now. 4 of the 7 seated on my Roval wheels with a floor pump easily without any issue. one tyre on the Rovals required the compressor to seat the first time and was then fine after that once it has some kms on it. With the Yoeleo wheels I have only seated one on each wheel. I think one was fine with the pump and the other required the compressor.

I am lucky to have a compressor. If you have the right equipment, tubeless is super easy. If it does not seat with the floor pump, I literally walk into my garage and start the compressor and 5 minutes later I return with a tyre seated. I think if you want to do tubeless easy, you need some sort of mechanism to dump a lot of air quickly into the valve.

 

[Frito Bandito]

Can u take the valve core out. If that doesn't work run it with a tube on the back wheel. U might need to start in a fresh tyre. I had trouble reseating a gp5000 so much so that I'm going back to Michelin (but the gp5000stl is v tempted)

Yes, I have a 100mm valve core that I run on the 80mm wheel. The Pro One TLE is almost as fast as the GP5000, and doesn't have quite the protection, but I bought several simply because I read that the Bullets and Schwalbe seemed to have been designed to work together. So, I will run through those and then likely stick with the GP5000. The combination of speed and protection makes it a very difficult tire to beat. Since I have spare wheels I will install it with a tube to hopefully get it to reform enough to seat easily. I do have a Michelin Power, which is a nice tire also despite it flatting a couple of times.

 

[Frito Bandito]

Adrian, a compressor with a Presta and a Schrader nozzle would be lovely.

Thats good to know about the Yeoleos. It is hard to decide on a front with all of the choices available.

 

[vosadrian]

I've got my eye on a Presta inflator attachment for my compressor. The Schrader ones have a centre pin that open the schrader valve, and it if this is not pressed it blocks the air flow (probably safety and to prevent leaks). With the Schrader adapter on a presta valve it has no valve core, so does not press the pin, so you have to kind of angle it to get the inflator valve to open. It works, but is a bit fiddly. With a Presta inflator it would be super easy. Just set the regulator pressure to whatever you want the tyre pressure, and then hold it full open and tyre pumped up to set pressure in a couple of seconds!

 

[Frito Bandito]

I bet someone in Japan has made one that isn't fiddly haha.

 

[Frito Bandito]

I went out hoping to do a long ride today with the bottles behind my head just to confirm that it was the most aero position, but also to test out a neoprene mask I bought at a fishing shop that should fill the gap under my lense, protect my face from sun and bugs hitting it at high speeds, and to see how much it affected my CdA. Well, it started raining just enough to be irritating, so I decided to try to cut my ride short, and then do a few short runs with minor changes to see what MyWindSock (MWS) shows in my CdA. In those runs I ran with the mask and without, my arms always tucked in as much in the wind shadow of my legs as possible, some in my usual sitting position and some scooted way forward and as low as possible. It looks like the ones I sat as low as possible was the wrong way to go, likely because it made my knees stick up higher, and my upper legs and butt created a larger frontal area. Excuse my acronyms. but in the titles, (L) is when I was as "L"ow as possible, (N) is just my "N"ormal sitting position. (ET) is "Elbows "T"ucked. (NB) is "N"o "B"ottles. (NM) is "N"o "M"ask. (SA) is "S"traight "A"rmed, which is how I normally ride.



The interesting thing is that in my warm up ride for today, my CdA was 0.172, which was the best of any of my test runs. Normal riding position, straight arms, no mask, which is where I will start from the next test, except I will move the head rest bars back a little, so hopefully get my head out of the airflow.

 

[vosadrian]

I think you may have a setting wrong on MWS to get that much CdA variance with basically the same setup. You should expect arm positions difference to make <20% difference to CdA. But you have literally halved it. I found out on BROL that you can set Crr in MWS. This made a difference to my results. I think I had Crr set to high. This caused Crr to take more of the power and leave less for CdA so the CdA figures were lower. Try doing some research on what you expect you Crr is and setting it to that and see it makes the results more consistent?

 

[Frito Bandito]

I have been following that thread and found where to adjust Crr on MWS but not exactly sure what values to put in it. I had my MWS Crr at the stock setting of 0.005 but just changed it to 0.00350 a few moments ago. I am using a Schwalbe Pro One Tubeless on the rear at 80psi (12.3RR) and a Schwalbe One Tubeless (with a tube) I guess at about a 15RR.

 

[Frito Bandito]

Henlybegins seat bag dh-708

It is a 4L sized bag that fits under a V20s seat kind of like kidney bags. I couldn't get them to sit flush with the frame due to my rim brakes, but with disc brakes they would work at a slight aero penalty.

 

[vosadrian]

I think a good tubeless tyre on a good surface is going to be around 0.03. I think an average road tyre with tube is going to be around 0.05. On not so good surfaces it will go up from there. I've left mine at 0.05 default for the time being as I don;t want to be consistent, but at some point I will probably put mine at 0.04 which is probably about where I would be on my average road surface which is less than perfect.

I can't work out how you get such variation in your CdA. I have never gotten that. For a given setup, I generally find all my rides are within 0.03 of each other. For the same loop (road surface and terrain), the are within about half that. When I get a chance I will check out the power data for your rides.

 

[Frito Bandito]

Yep, something seems screwy. It was rainy, wet asphalt, very windy along the edge of the path, and 1 thing that comes to mind is that along the edge of the path, which is kind of on a ridge on the river's side was a row of 3' tall thick growth that the wind was blowing over. Depending ont he direction I was traveling, the wind would have been coming from either the 3:00 or 9:00 position. Riding closer to the growth would offer some protection since the wind was sliding up the slope, then having to go over the thick growth. Riding in the middle of the path would have been affected more by the wind. I tried to keep a consistent power and speed, but I didn't pay much attention to how close I was riding next to the growth to be hit by the wind. Really, 3-4m away from the growth was enough to be affected by the wind quite a bit. So, we might have to take that data with a grain of salt. The warm up ride was directly into the wind on public roads with light city traffic.

 

[Frito Bandito]

Oh No!

I ordered another one already but I glued this back together just now with a 2 part metal epoxy that I use for other projects. When I loosened it I noticed that it was quite loose already, and once I was done doing what I needed to do I put it back together and it snapped before I even put any real pressure on it. It will probably hold but it's good to have a spare.

 

[DavidCH]

Oh No!
View attachment 12231
I ordered another one already but I glued this back together just now with a 2 part metal epoxy that I use for other projects. When I loosened it I noticed that it was quite loose already, and once I was done doing what I needed to do I put it back together and it snapped before I even put any real pressure on it. It will probably hold but it's good to have a spare.

You must be thumping those pedals inorder to do that

 

[Frito Bandito]

I wish lol. My FTP is going up, but it is either over tightening, or 11,000km this year so far. Probably the 1st guess. Got it bonded back together so let's see if it works.

 

[Frito Bandito]

The 2-part metal epoxy didn't hold. Looks like I will be out of commission until the new clamps arrive unless I can find an aluminum welder in Japan to repair the broken clamp

 

[vosadrian]

I thought someone used a hose clamp on an earlier Vendetta... Wrap a clamp around the old parts and tighten the worm drive. You may need to modify the clamp with a file to fit it?

 

[Frito Bandito]

Yeah, Tor did that. Unfortunately, mine doesn't seem to have a place for it to fit on the bottom unless I wrap it all the way around that plate with a hole you can see on the bottom that is welded between where the forks join the BB. A large hose clamp might work. I'll measure it and give it a try since I am off tomorrow. If it doesn't work it will give me a bit of time to get my DF bike rolling, as well as get some other stuff done until the part arrives.


With that said, I went to a small metal (steel) shop nearby and showed the head honcho my aluminum bracket and asked if he knew anyone that could weld it, or have a temporary one made in steel. He first suggested gluing it but I told him that I tried it with a metal epoxy but it broke when I tried putting it on. He advised against making one in steel, and confirmed that welding mine would probably not work. We discussed 3D printing a new set but that seems too expensive.

 

[DavidCH]

I thought someone used a hose clamp on an earlier Vendetta... Wrap a clamp around the old parts and tighten the worm drive. You may need to modify the clamp with a file to fit it?

Yes it was @Tor Hovland