Blow-Up Tires - in 2007?

My buddy Justin, whose Lighthouse bicycle, like mine, is old enough to drive, had a pair of never-used sew-up wheels hanging in his Denver basement. I saw them there and figured he'd sell them eventually at a bike swap to someone who wanted the hubs and cassette.

A month or so ago, as I described in an earlier post, I complained about frequent flat tires at Turin Bikes, near Justin's house and our apartment.

The guys raved about Stan's Sealant. As an example of how miraculously it works, they told me they ride TUFOs, a brand of sew-up tires (commonly called tubulars today) injected with Stan's.
We wear out our TUFO tires on the rims, they said, nodding their heads, noting (I'm sure) that I was skeptical. More than skeptical.

Until well into the '70s, we enthusiast cyclists rode sew-ups - on dedicated sew-up rims. In hindsight, those tires were light and supple; our bikes loved them and told us so. As lovely as they were, they were not nearly worth the trouble, but the alternatives were unattractive.

Wired-on (or clincher) tires of the era, unlike today's road tires, were heavy and clunky; the best ones made your sporting lightweight roll like an ore-cart.

Clincher rims were heavy and wide, fine for touring or commuting. Clincher tire flats were cheap and easy to fix. In every other way those tires were inappropriate and unacceptable on a nice bike, like handcuffing a mime.

"Isn't done," I was told by a British racing cyclist. Why put lead shoes on a racehorse?

Ah, but sew-ups...

A few guys claimed that sew-ups were more durable, more flat-resistant than the seemingly sturdier clincher tires of that day. Most of us doubted those claims. We had lots of sew-up flats. If you had two in a day, you hitch-hiked home. Most of us had done that, and not just once.

Maybe some people could ride a pair of sew-ups until the tread wore off. I didn't know anyone like that.

The catalogs of tire companies that made sew-ups were full of tread drawings, weights and widths, casing materials, models and suggestions for use. The cycling press waxed eloquent, page after page - about choosing, aging, preparing, mounting and fixing those accursed devices.

Somehow, wonderful as their devotees swore they were, by 1985 no one rode them. Oh, a few guys, maybe. Same guys that still use Campy sidepulls and can't see any reason to change.

Before you could ride sew-up tires, someone (you, unless you were rich) had to glue the tires to the rims. You couldn't glue them and immediately ride them. They had to set up overnight.

You carried a complete pre-glued and pre-mounted (to stretch it) spare sew-up tire folded just-so under your saddle, wrapped perhaps in an old (pre-Boulder) VeloNews.

Mounting a never-before-stretched sew-up on your rim was a job for Ah-nold. And failing to pre-glue it was an invitation to disaster. A new, never-glued tire would not adhere to the rim after you stretched it on there. It'd come off in some corner; you'd get a lift in a car to an ER.

Even so, guys would appear on training ride mornings with brand-new, still wrapped sew-up tires, folded clumsily and toe-strapped under their Cinelli Unicanitor saddles.

Pity the guy foolish enough to choose one of their wheels to follow; he might wake up in the next ER bed. What could you say to him? That you knew sure as hell that an unglued sew-up might roll off the rim, but you thought you could get away with it just this once?

The process of choosing, aging, preparing and mounting sew-ups was tiresome in the extreme - and I haven't mentioned repairing a flatted one, an ordeal from which most riders averted their eyes. Most of us had a closet floor secretly covered with flatted $35 sew-up tires, never to be resurrected. Embarrassed, we never turned on that closet light.

At $35 and an hour's work every time you flatted, cycling became an expensive way to get red stringy rim cement on your girlfriend's living room carpet. Where it would remain, long after you, you worthless bikebum, were gone.

Today, though... Today certain sew-ups are made in such a way that they are not repairable. They have inner tubes, sure enough, but you can't get the tube out to patch a hole. Not that many people did that when they could.

The tire companies probably came to realize that - and produced these new unfixable tires. They intend you to inject sealant into them; they'll fix themselves, is the idea.

You still have to cement them in several steps to specific sew-up rims. You still have to carry a complete spare tire. You still have to install that spare tire if you flat, then when you get home, remove it, refold it and properly install a new but pre-glued and pre-stretched tire onto the rim.

Justin has just had Turin Bikes glue TUFO tires onto his sew-up rims, and he's had sealant injected into the tires. He intends to ride those tires on the roads and bike paths of this Rocky Mountain community. The old-tech tires that had been stored, properly glued, on his rims will serve as spares, folded tidily under his saddle.

I would have sworn that sew-ups, like nail-on cleats, Wonder Lights and Bell Bikers, were gone and mostly forgotten. Especially sew-ups. Nothing about cycling seemed to me to represent 19th Century practice as faithfully as sew-up tires. Well, maybe nail-on cleats...

I'll keep my eye on Justin and let you know how the 19th Century fares in the 21st.