Flooded road.......

[martinn]

Hi all
Hypothetically, if the road you were riding on was flooded, and it was dark, very dark, would you stop, or continue through the flood?
If you continued through, and found that the water was over your bottom bracket, and you made it to the otherside, what maintenance should you have given the bottom bracket? Say if that bottom bracket was a campagnolo Athena external bracket, all hypothetical you understand, as you would never take your best bike swimming

Martin

[rmurphy195]

I would hypothetically stop if I could not see the road, because if even if the road was one I knew well and used regularly the hypothetical road surface may have been washed away leaving a hypohetical hole to fall into!

[keepontriking]

Cycling through flooded roads is foolhardy. Floods and the increased water pressures can easily lift drain covers, not to mention covering potholes.
So unless you want your front wheel to come to an abrupt halt and fancy a wet and painful face plant...

[De Sisti]

Cycling through flooded roads is foolhardy.

Some people do it as a badge of honour.

[Mick F]

It depends ..................

There's a road near here that floods regularly. There are no manholes and no hazards. The water gets maybe a foot deep, but if you stay in the crown of the road, it's maybe only 6" deep. Take it slow, get in a lowish gear, and ride through along the crown. Be prepared for wet feet.

However, if it's a road you don't know and there are no tell-tale signs like other vehicles coming through, turn round and find another route!

Water in the BB?
Horrible, so asap take it out and sort it.

Pedals going into the water as you pedal?
Mine are fine. I reckon they would be fine on a underwater bike, but some are not so take them off asap and sort them too.

[123malford]

I was wondering what ingress of water there might be through the rim eyelets ? -- Thinking about the staining you used to see on rim tape before it became plastic.

[beardy]

My rims fill with water fairly often, I dont think that it requires water so deep that you call it flooding.

[keepontriking]

Well if King Kelly can ride the floods – who is going to argue

the-adventures-of-king-kelly-and-the-carrick-gang

[Des49]

Well if King Kelly can ride the floods – who is going to argue

the-adventures-of-king-kelly-and-the-carrick-gang

Wow! That's some flood! And not a mudguard to be seen.

I have cleaned and dried my bike after a really gruesome ride this morning, may strip the bearings tomorrow just in case, and my water didn't reach up to pedal level at any point. I guess the riders in Carrick should completely strip and rebuild their bikes, or it may just be normal conditions for them.

[willcee]

Hard man Kelly and his cohorts will have a few euros to spend without doubt after that immersion.. I've never willingly gone that deep however about this time last year my cycling bud and I were returning from our Sunday run, bright early afternoon, on a normally deserted road which we thought we knew intimately.. we rounded a corner at around 18 mph to be confronted by water from side to side on a what you guys would call a '' white road'' approx 14' wide. cycling side by side on the left, i shot into the centre and over to the right where i thought it was more passable, Davy on my wheel, it got deeper and deeper and the speed vanished, i started to get wet feet and half cranked my way through for about 80 yards at spoke counting space..on the other side all i heard was expletives, grumbles and then shouts.. we've some cleaning to do tonight i says.. we had another 4/5 miles to cycle and did with various sloshing sounds.. Next day i stripped my winter machine took the Hollowtec bracket out and could find no issues, no water had gotten inside the frameset and a year later the bracket is tight and sweet, the Mavic Aksiums were stripped and approx half a glass of water emerged over an hour from each wheel, i had the tapes off and blew them dry with an airline..it didn't reach the hubs but they were checked also as were my pedals, old school campag rattraps and all have been fine since.. Last week we took the same road only to find an ASDA delivery van up to its door jams in exactly the same spot, with the engine well and truly hydraulic ..ed.. we retreated to dry ground ....its wet again today.. happy 2016 guys .. will

[andrew_s]

Hypothetically, if the road you were riding on was flooded, and it was dark, very dark, would you stop, or continue through the flood?

like this, you mean?


Hypothetically, I carried on along the closed road, then didn't do anything about the BB, since there was a fairy sizeable cutout in the BB shell to let the water out of the frame, and you can't do anything with a Shimano UN72 BB anyway. In retrospect, it was a mistake, as the alloy lockring seized on to the steel BB cartridge, with the result that when the bearings started to die a couple of years later, I had to jump up and down on the end of a 32mm ring spanner to unscrew the lockring (which had good anti-seize on the threads).
Old and replacement BBs - spot the difference (not the model number)

A couple of days later, in daylight, and 4 or 5 inches less deep