Powerblocks or SB8s
Powerblocks seem way too treadless ?
They are, I didnât see you wrote âloose steep chunkâ until just now.
Probably Race Kings then
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I am doing this local hill climb competition. Its strava based. 5 hills in 5 weeks. The next one is a doozy. My crappy old plastic roadie weighs 7.9 kgs but the lowest gear is a 34-27. My OPEN weighs 8.5 with 35mm runny ass tires on, but I can dial up some much lower gears, 36-40 or 36-42. Will I be faster on my runny ass 35mm or with some 30mm Specialized 2-bliss Roobaix?
I think youâll be faster pushing the 34-27
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Ditto, so long as you can do so without popping.
Maybe for the sake of science I will do two runs. If i can stomach it. My pb is about 13 mins so I should be able to fit a couple of runs in, in a week with recovery.
Whatâs the grade look like and what do you weigh?
Last time I looked I was 72 kgs.
If my powertap is to be believed I averaged 305 watts for 4:43 mins for an 8.3% grade for hill 1. For hill 2 I was 279 watts for 9:31 mins at 4.8%. This next hill is an average of 7.5%, with the starting 500 metres at 11.9% and two more pinches, the final one peaking and finishing at 17.5% . Its was my goto lock-down ride, cos I could get 506 metres vert in 52 mins return lunch hour. Apparently Ive ridden it 46 times. 900 metres from my house. Edit. OPEN now weighs 8.1 and still has the runnies on.
OPEN is .2kg lighter than your roadie? At that point the lower gears might be worth it if you can mentally keep from using them until those steep punches.
Hard to guess what your average power will be, so I picked 260ish thinking you could probably hold that for the duration. With a ~8kg bike at an average grade of 7.5% putting down ~260W thatâs about 14km/h which is somewhere between 80 and 90 RPM at 34x27 on your roadie. When you hit the 17.5% section, youâll be going 6-7km/h at 260W or around 40RPM. How long is that section and can you grind it out?
With the OPEN and 36x40 itâs only slightly better at 50-60RPM.
You might futz around with these:
Iâm thinking the plastic roadie is going to be faster by a little.
Looking at the âwhat did you do to your bike todayâ thread has me surprised at the reluctance to build the plastic bike into a hill climb special. Crank swap to a 1x crank with smaller cog would do it, no?
About all I could do would be to take the outer chain ring off. Most of my parts bin is square taper. That bike is mostly sram Red shifters and crank with average wheels. I guess I could swap out the rival dangler to an MTB dangler for a better range at the cost of a bit more weight in cassette and dangler. I have the OPEN down to 8.1 kgs now so my real question is, are the 35 mm runny ass tires gonna be slower than the 25 mm ones on the plastic roadie? (They feel slower). Running out of puff on the final pinch is my fear while labouring a taller gear. Regardless, its blowing a gale all week with the other choice being whether I do it in a northerly or a southerly! The Prius got blown across the road today when I drove to work.
could you put 32s or 28s on the open? or 35s with less rolling resistance for your conditions?
I put one of the 30s on the OPEN last night. (30/32 2-bliss Roubaix) one of my tire levers pinged off into the bush, never to be seen again⌠they look turdly and are maybe 2 mm more narrow on the rims. 15 grams each heavier than the runnies.
Have you considered an E-bike?
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40 kmh wind gusting to 110 kmh. Not my best time. Will do again on the roadie as a comparison. A Roubaix on the front and a Bon Jovi on the back. Didnt seem to use all my gears which is good as my 1x chain line was ass.
Well that sucked. For my hill-climb.14:49 on the OPEN at 8.2 kgs in a gale. 15:14 on the plastic roadie at 7.62 kgs with inappropriate gears, and much skinnier tires in good conditions.
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Iâm guessing this has to do with Conti switching US distribution and probably trying to clean up sales channels.
Our predicted ETA is late December