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Top10 Tire Tips | Top10 MTB Tips | Top10 Trail Gripes
Top10 Tire Tips
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Top 10 Tips on Tires
1. Storage - Take new tires out of their packages and store them on rims. There's no need to install tubes. Never leave tires folded in their retail packaging. Store tires away from sources of ozone, such as electric welders, refrigerators and freezers, and air compressors. Ozone will crack the rubber.
The BRAT spare tire stash.
2. Talc - Dump talc inside the tire and rotate the tire to distribute the powder. Carry spare tubes in a zipper-lock sandwich bag with a teaspoon of talc in it. Tire-specific talc is available, but baby powder works fine. Talc allows the tube to move independently of the tire, reducing wear and improving ride quality.
Baby powder makes a great tire talc.
3. Label - Position it by the valve stem. If/when you flat, you can orient the puncture in the tube to a tire position. This is especially helpful when you're looking for a small intruder, such as a thorn or cinder, in the tire. Air up the injured tube enough to find the puncture and then find the place on the tire that corresponds to that spot.
Center the label on the valve stem to make it easier to find the source of the puncture in the tire.
4. Direction of Rotation - Some road tires and most MTB tires are direction-specific. The direction may be different depending on whether the tire is mounted on the front or the rear.
Continental Speed Kings have front- and rear-specific direction of rotation. (Read our review on these excellent tires here.)
5. Inspection - Check your tires before each ride. Look for thorns, glass, cuts, bulges, frayed threads, and other damage. Thorns, cinders, and small bits of glass can usually be removed without significant tire damage. Tires with bulges, cuts, frayed cords, and similar flaws should not be ridden as failure may be imminent. Dental picks and similar tools are useful for inspection and for removing embedded debris. Also, make sure the indicator line is equidistant from the edge of the rim any time you install a tire.
This cut is deep enough to have cut some of the tire's threads. This tire is junk now.
A sidewall cut such as this one can easily lead to tire failure.
Dental picks and angled awls make great tools for inspecting tires and removing debris. But use caution - it's easy to go too deep and damage the tire.
Make sure the indicator line (yellow arrows) is the same distance from the edge of the rim all the way around, unless you like a bike that bucks.
6. Kevlar Belt - Kevlar, or a similar product, is often laid under the tread to improve puncture resistance. Two points: First, a Kevlar belt is not the same thing as a Kevlar bead, which folding tires use to make them foldable. Second, the width of the belt varies. Some manufacturers run the belt from bead-to-bead, while others lay a narrow strip - perhaps as narrow as 10 mm - under the center of the tread. More Kevlar means more protection against flats.
Kevlar beads (yellow arrows) allow folding tires to fold, but they offer no protection against flats.
7. Buy 3 - Road tires wear out at roughly two rears for every front, so buy three road tires at a time.
8. Inflation - The numbers on the sidewall are derived from formulas and provide only a rough guide to inflation. Generally, lower inflation is better. If you get pinch flats, the pressure was too low. Here's what we recommend for starting values; play with them to find what feels right to you. For road tires (700 x 23), run 90 psi front and 105 rear. For MTB tires, run 45 psi in 2.0 tires front and rear and add or subtract 5 psi for every 0.10” narrower or wider; e.g. 50 psi for a 1.9 and 30 psi for a 2.3. (See our review of the Topeak digital tire pressure gauge here.)
A digital gauge provides excellent accuracy, but any gauge is better than the traditional thumb-check of tire pressure. (See our review of this gauge.)
9. TPI - In theory, threads-per-inch (TPI) has a profound effect on ride quality. A higher thread count indicates thinner threads and a more supple ride. In practice the correlation between thread count and ride quality isn't that pronounced. Thread content - nylon, rayon, Dacron, silk - is similarly less important than old-schoolers would have you believe. Select tires by other criteria (cost, weight, suitability of tread pattern for your kind of riding) and if you need a final factor in choosing between two models, TPI can play a role.
Retail packaging, Web sites, and online vendors provide lots of information about tire construction and features, including TPI. These labels are from a Hutchinson Top Speed road tire and a Continental Flow ProTection MTB tire.
10. Tread - Some tires have front- or rear-specific tread patterns. Sometimes the same tire can be used in either position but must have its direction of rotation reversed to optimize braking (front use) or drive traction (rear use). Road tire performance is less dependent on tread than MTB tires, even in wet conditions. Slick tires squeegee water out of the way and provide traction comparable to tires with sipes (rain grooves) on pavement. MTB tires are designed for specific conditions. A tire that hooks up well in Moab may be dangerously loose in Brown County, and a tire that works well in winter duff may prove ponderous over summer hardpack on the same trail. For MTB use, ask local shops and riders what works well. It doesn't hurt to have multiple sets of tires for different conditions and different seasons.
Rich Ries uses Panaracer Cinders (left) for winter rides and Continental Speed Kings for summer rides. The Cinders' aggressive knob pattern provides superior traction in soft conditions and the Speed Kings run fast on hardpack.
Bonus Tip - Most tires are good-to-great. Define your criteria (width, tread pattern, budget, etc.) and then find the best deal on tires that match those criteria. Tires in the $50 to $60 range offer great performance for most recreational riders and are often on sale for up to 50 percent off.