Incipient Tire Failure

I bought more tires at some point than I needed and switched mostly to 25 mm wide tires, so I ended up having this 23 mm tire probably longer after it was manufactured than I realized. Then I wasn't able to ride much of the winter and the tire developed these odd red . . . things. What are they? But they didn't seem to weaken the tire. I rode it a few times, then noticed the grey stripe material was giving way. Yikes!

In 2007 when I purchased a carbon fiber road bike in a fit of self-indulgence, I assumed I would ride it with 700x23 tires forevermore. But then I got a steel frame road bike and it came with 700x25. This of course was hardly a fat tire, but it was more forgiving in certain ways than the narrow tires, and eventually I became convinced it had little influence on how fast I could ride (which was hardly a huge concern anyway).

Unfortunately right before I became convinced of the superiority of the slightly wider tires, I purchased several Michelin tires that were on sale. Eventually I decided I would use up these on the front tire of my carbon figure bike. What we see above is the last one. I realize I have no idea how many years old it is . . . as it happens, I had some surgery so I was not riding this bike for something like six months. I was surprised to see that over the winter, these crazy red dots had appeared, but the tire seemed sound. I rode it a few times, then Sunday looked at it again and discovered it was coming apart at an accelerated rate, to say the least.

This is a Michelin Krylion Carbon Road Bicycle Tire (700 x 23) - Black/Grey. Michelin no longer makes this tire, which was somehow related to the ProRace tire Michelin was selling at the time. Typically described as a "training tire" rather than a "racing clincher." This particular one came with a grey sidewall stripe, which is not something I was looking for it often seemed like tires on sale had some odd color (and I'm cheap, I guess).

It is somewhat dramatic to me how the tire rubber is giving way now - you can clearly see the casing under the rubber. So bike tires do age, if you don't wear them out otherwise, it appears. Yikes!

Smooth 26 Inch Tires for Zippy Ride

1995 Trek Singletrack bike with 26 inch 1.4 inch wide Michelin Run'r tires installed


Close-up view

When I bought this bike, it had some Kenda knobby tires that are 1.95 inches wide (according to the sidewall) installed. Ths rims of this bike are a little narrower than the wheels on newer mountain bikes I have and the 1.95 tires looked a little odd on the more narrow rims. Also, they are noisy when riding, even when pumped up, and likely do little to make the bike zippy.

I found these Michelin Runn'r tires at Bike Tires Direct. There are supposedly made of the same rubber compound as road bike tires (although lots more of it) and yet only cost around 16 dollars each. The sidewall says that the max inflation is 87 psi, but at 75 they seemed plenty hard enough. Bike rides great with these.

Presta Valve Follies

A few days ago while putting air in a road bike tire before taking off to work, I managed to remove the pump head such that it snapped the front tire's Presta valve stem off. This is the second or third time I have had this happen - admittedly over something like 15 years, so not exactly an everyday thing. Still, it is annoying since I typically put air in the tires right before taking off. In this case, since the broken valve didn't let any air out but simply meant I could no longer put air in, I decided to ride to work and back before dealing with it - that is, replacing the tube with a new one with a working valve. So I wasn't slowed down on departure much.


The Presta valve - the part that should insert into the pump and open the tube to receive air snapped off

This situation was preceded by bending the stem at some point, which apparently creates a weak point. Then I suppose when I loosen and tighten the lock nut every time I put air in the tire, it puts some stress on the bend, or something like that. Then at some point as I pull the pump head off, it is at such an angle that the stem snaps.


Inner tubes with working Presta valves

The replacement tube I will use is at left - I an using the tube that was in my bicycle tool bag, which was in a bag with talcum powder so it will move around easily in the tire and not get trapped between the rim and the tire during installation. I will coat the newer tube at right in talcum and put it in the bike tool bag.


Schrader valve patent from 1892

Apparently the Presta valve is more suitable for high pressure situations than the older Schrader valve - or at least I think the Schrader valve design is older. In Google's patent database the Schrader valve carries the Schrader name from its being patented in the U.S. in 1892. The Presta valve is a little more mysterious.


Is this the earliest Presta valve-like patent? from 1897

According the Wikipedia article on Presta valves some Presta valves now have removable cores which is not something I had realized was even possible. It says, "removable core Presta valves have become more common" - perhaps, but not on the low cost (i.e., cheap) tubes I buy. (Schrader valves all have removable core valves - a slow leak with a tire with a Schrader valve can simply be that the valve is not tightly installed. A very useful thing is a Schrader valve cap made of metal that has a built-in valve core remover/tightener.)

Americans & Narrow Tires in the 1890s

It is not so easy to come up with certain kinds of historical information about cycling, but mass digitization of many out-of-copyright books has certainly offered up material to plow through looking.


The basic (really basic) view of the single-tube tire, popular in America

In reading Peddling Bicycles to America recently I came to understand that most Americans in the 1890s and into the 20th century used "single tube tires" but I really didn't understand much about them - But I then found Pneumatic tires, automobile, truck, airplane, motorcycle, bicycle: an encyclopedia of tire manufacture, history, processes, machinery, modern repair and rebuilding, patents, etc., etc. ... in Google books, by Henry Clemens Pearson, published by the India Rubber Publishing Co. in 1922. While it talks a great deal about car, truck, and other tires, it also has a section about bicycle tires.

It starts with this introduction:

History Of The Bicycle Tire

The history of bicycle tires has not been studied as carefully as it deserves, because the majority is not so much interested in historical development as in actual results. Inventors and a few who are students by nature may be interested, but they generally prefer to read their history at first hand, which is in the patent office reports.

Ah yes, actual results. After some discussion of this and that, it continues:

The Single-tube Tire In America

. . . Nevertheless, it was not the Morgan & Wright tire, built by tire specialists, but the Hartford tire [a single-tube tire], built by a bicycle manufacturing company, that ultimately triumphed in America. The reason for this lies partly in the love of Americans for fast riding and partly in their mechanical aptitude and ability to handle tools. While the Europeans were riding 2-inch double tubes, held on by wires in France, and by beaded edges in Germany, and by both methods in England, the tendency in the United States was wholly toward single tubes of even smaller diameters, it having been found that a small single tube, pumped hard, is the fastest of all for road use. The Tillinghast Tire Association, which controlled the manufacture of all single tubes, finally produced an article which represented the high-water mark in bicycle tire making, in resilience, cheapness, beauty and speed. For anybody with deft fingers, it was also the easiest of all to repair, and this fact appealed strongly to the American.

So, the theory that thinner tires inflated to a higher pressure will encourage going faster - lower rolling resistance - than fatter tires inflated less goes all the way back to the 1890s. (Of course this says nothing about the accuracy of the theory, just that it is of long standing.)


Above, a single-tube tire, mounted on a rim - no clinching!

Then there are more somewhat complex ruminations about the European use of something other than single-tube tires . . . mostly included here for the slightly amusing categorization of the mechanical aptitude of various nationalities.

Though American single tubes invaded Europe and found hosts of friends, on account of their many virtues, the question of their repair could never be mastered by either the British or the Continentals. Could the Tillinghast Association have set up repair shops at convenient places throughout Europe, single tubes might have swept the world as they did America. Even despite hostile tariffs, they were sold in Europe cheaper than the home made kind. There were only 200 single-tube tires made in United States in 1891, while 1,250,000 were sold in 1896. In England the single tube was cultivated during the early years, the Avon Rubber Company being most successful; then, too, the W. &. A. Bates Company was using plugs for its tires in 1892; so that the repair of single tubes by the regulation method has been known in England as long as in America. The British are tolerably quick with tools, and the reason that the double-tube tire survived in the United Kingdom is probably to be found in the prevalence of hedge thorns on the English roads. These hedge thorn pricks are easily stopped with the thick repair fluids which were later developed here in America; and had the English known of this method early in the day, the single tube might have had a different history there. There are no hedges in France, and the avowed reason of the failure of the single tube there was the inability of the French to repair it. Another reason was probably due to the great influence of the Dunlop company there, no less than to the great growth of the Michelins. Even to this day, the wired-on tire is the dominant type in France.

A British "clincher"

The book then includes, apparently for amusement, a photograph of the largest tricycle in the world (and its tires) described in an earlier post - this photo is different than the one I used that came from a magazine of 1897.


Poor quality due to low quality original and Google book digitization processes - the immense Vim tire sales aid, a nine-man tricycle

It is of course difficult for the non-specialist (that is, me) to be sure I am understanding what is suggested by all this, but it is still entertaining on some level. The more things stay the same, the more things . . . stay the same. Or so it seems reading this.

Spring Tire Change - Front & Rear Wear

Before the winter was "scheduled" to start (which never appeared here in Arlington VA) I switched my tires on my "bad weather" bike. Because of the mild not-very-winterish weather and because of some trouble with my steel road bike, I ended up riding my carbon fiber Scattante commuting more than I would have expected. I did spend a lot of time cringing, because there seemed to be considerable amounts of broken glass lately on the trails, but I think I only had one flat on this bike - actually, I don't think I had any on this bike at all, but that can't be possible, can it?

As spring has sprung, I was eyeballing the Scattante's tires after another week riding it every day and observed that the front tire, while having plenty of rubber, looked like a grit magnet - see below. Small bits of stuff that have stuck to the tire over time have opened up small holes but perhaps more worrisome, the tire surface has a grainy aspect (not so visible in the photo) that doesn't look the way one would want a bike tire to look.


Michelin Pro-Race 3 23 x 700 road tire, mounted on front

Anyway - this is the front tire. When I last switched tires on this bike, I decided to have one manufacturer's tire on the front and a completely different tire on the back. Michelin road tires, when new, are very rounded, so that without a rider, the bike sits up on a very narrow strip of tire. Of course, with a rider, this flattens out - still, in my mind this seems good for lowering so-called "rolling resistance." However these Michelin tires, when mounted on the rear, wear out that raised area at a terrific rate, so that rotating front-to-back (and back-to-front) just means that much of the time you have at least one tire if not two with significant center-line wear.

So I was at Performance Bike and I saw these Vredestein Fortezza SE tires for thirty dollars. As a road tire, these were a but odd looking compared to the Michelins I have used - a very flat surface meets road, even new, even without a rider. In my idiosyncratic thinking, it seems reasonable for the rear tire to be flat(er) since it is providing the traction to push the bike (and rider) down the road. And after a not while, based on my experience, it will be flat anyway, so why not just start that way? So I bought a couple of these tires and put one on the back the same time as a new Michelin Pro-Race 3 on the front.


Vredestein Fortezza SE after a couple of thousand miles on rear

I guess Vredestein makes serious road tires, but this "Fortezza SE" model is something that is peculiar to Performance, near as I can tell. That isn't necessarily bad - and after all, my Scattante is a Performance Bike house brand bike, although none (zero) of the group are Performance house brand stuff, just the frame. But I thought I might get only so-so results. In fact, I figured I would end up replacing the Fortezza on the rear relatively quickly, but instead I have decided to replace both the front and the back tires at the same time. Mostly the Fortezza looks better than the Michelin on the front - it certainly doesn't have all those holes. Whatever it is made of sheds grit more consistently. But there is this one spot (visible in photo), and another smaller one (not in photo), where the rubber has worn through so you can see the material below. Uh-oh! And checking with a caliper, about 1/3 or more of the material in the center area of the tire is worn off generally. So it's time to change this tire, but I have gotten pretty good results from it, I think.


The new Vredestein Fortezza SE mounted on the rear

The Vredestein, for whatever reason, has a somewhat pebbly pattern when new down the middle and some fine angled tread-like lines in the blue area just next to the rubber in the center - this helps give some sense of tire wear but contributes nothing to traction (I assume) but isn't enough to slow things down, either.

1890s bike tires were mostly smooth, and in those days the early tires with any tread used that as a marketing feature.


Part of a VIM tire ad from 1897, praising the "pebbled tread"

Of course, the VIM tire people were very big on clever marketing - they were the ones who built the giant tricycle that required nine "riders" to operate it as a way to push their product.

Flat Tire Blues?

Really, though, it wasn't so bad . . . or anyway it could have been worse.

Lately I have been commuting every day on my 30 year old Bridgestone. Two weeks ago, I got ready to go and when I put air in the rear tire, it started coming out faster than I could put it in! The edge of the hole in the wheel that the stem passes through had a rough edge that had made a hole in the rubber of the tire that extends a small way up the stem creating a leak. This was not a "puncture" flat of the usual sort but still, flat tires tend to come in "threes" so I guess I wasn't surprised when yesterday I had a flat tire on the way to work.


My nice 1982 Bridgestone Sirius, with air in the tires

Before 7 am these days, it is dark out. Plus the weather yesterday was strange - the temperature this early was close to 60 degrees - but rain was threatening so I was pretty sure that stopping to fix a tire was going to increase my chances of getting wet. As it turned out, I was just at where the Four Mile Run trail passes under Route 1 and the GW Parkway near the south end of the airport, so I pulled over between two lights and at least could see what I was doing.

I like to imagine I can fix a flat in ten minutes or less, but it is always more like 15. Off comes the tire and I pull out the tube and mark the tube with my Sharpie as to which side of the tube was which - if I don't do that, then when I find out where the hole is it is just that much more work figuring out if the sharp thing that came through the tire is still there or not. (I never like putting in a fresh tube not knowing what caused a whole in the previous one.) I put some air in the tube and easily found the hole, marked it, then matched it up with the tire and quickly found a very stiff bit of fine wire, say 3/8 inch long, going right through the tire that had punctured the tube. It was nice that there was no damage to the tire at least. Even with Kevlar belts this kind of thing is going to happen, although how this wire had been sitting there on the trail, standing on end waiting for a bike tire to poke into, is hard to imagine. Out comes the wire from the tire, take new tube from tool bag, put wheel back together, fill with air and off I go.


I guess I should have put on some rubber gloves

Nine riders went by while I worked on my tire - none of the fair weather bike commuters out on a day like this! I was a little disappointed that of the nine, five rode by in silence (like I wasn't there) and only four offered to help with the usual "got what you need?" or similar. Of course, to stop on a day like this would be to increase the chances of getting caught in the rain. Not that we are going to melt . . .

Having fixed my flat about three miles into my ten mile ride, I then took off - I found that the wind was from the south (which is unusual at this time of day) and I made good time, although I didn't make up for the 15 minute "break" in my ride! Still, it was exhilarating. As I crossed the 14th St Bridge, I could see rain off to the north, but I got to work without getting caught in the rain. On the way to my office, after parking my bike in the garage, I looked out a window and was surprised to see water sluicing down the windows from a downpour. I don't mind riding in the rain, but not so much downpours, so even with my stop I managed to avoid that. Good!

Almost immediately after broad adoption of pneumatic tires for bicycles in the late 1880s, people began trying to figure out a way to avoid flat tires and yet have the obvious benefits of that kind of tire (as compared to solid rubber or other sold tires).


An example of an 1896 proposed alternative to the pneumatic tire

So far, however, nothing like to replace the pneumatic tire (and inevitable flat tires) has been developed that is widely used.

Why Cyclists May Avoid "Their" Bike Lanes

My dog isn't too interested, but the dedicated bike lane has some issues

A classic example of how the bike lane, created with much (ok, not much) fanfare when this bridge was resurfaced a few years ago, has become the place for little trashy crap kicked up by the passing cars - just the sort of thing to flat a bike tire. Mighty convenient for all of it to be stored right there in a special lane just for the bikes (and their tires)!


Close-up shows how much crap is in the bike lane

Schrader Valve Patent - 1892

A patent for a product used widely to this day

The Schrader valve had a patent application in 1892 and the patent was issued in 1893 - and they are used on bicycle and car tires even now. (Racing bikes usually use Presta valves, however.) Every once in a while, looking at these old patents, one sees something like this.

When to Put on New Tires??

Maxxis Re-Fuse 25 mm tires on Traitor Ruben - not as bad as it looks

These tires came with my "urban/cyclocross/whatever" class Traitor Ruben bike, purchased a little over two years ago. Maxxis puts the Re-Fuse in its "road-training" category with an emphasis on "traction, durability and plenty of road miles in any condition." The main emphasis seems to be on anti-flat protection - a "Kevlar® belt and silkworm cap ply combine to provide a tire that Re-Fuses to puncture." (Maxxis, a company in Taiwan, learned their English from the British.) I think the idea is to compete with better known tires like the Continental Ultra Gatorskin and the like.

I ride this particular bike in crummy wet weather and when it is cold enough that it seems simpler to use a bike with panniers to carry all my stuff than a messenger bag. I have a cyclocomputer on it but I don't know where the instructions are, so other than the current speed display, it doesn't provide useful information (like how many miles traveled). Oops! My impression is that I have riden it somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 miles, which is also how far these tires have gone. (I "rotated" them once, putting the front tire on the back and the back tire on the front, since the rear tire wears faster.)

I chose to photograph (above) a section of the tire that is mostly typically, other than that three-pointed ding that looks like something is stuck in it (but other than grit, there isn't). When that first appeared, I took the tire off to see that it didn't go all the way through and otherwise investigate just how far in it went - I eventually decided it looked worse than it was and to see how things went with it. I have no idea what caused it - if it was something sharp, why didn't it hole the tire? Anyway, I think I rode another 1,000 miles after it appeared.

The generally crappy appearance of the tire surface only got this bad recently. Originally the tire had a nice "bumpy" appearance on the entire riding surface, but that smoothed out on the center portion fairly quickly, but this worn appearance with small open ridges into the rubber took a while to develop - as one can see, this gathers grit into the tire surface, but since it is all pretty small stuff, there doesn't seem to be much point in trying to pick it all out. Still, not a good sign.

Anyway, since it is fall and I am going to be riding this thing more, I decided it was time to change to a new set of tires because it seemed likely I would start having problems with these this winter. I try not to spend too much money on tires, so I wait for sales from online vendors like Bike Tires Direct and at some point long before I needed new tires I was able to buy a pair for $65, which seemed pretty good for a folding road tire. (A folding tire has a Kevlar bead rather than pieces of wire - trying to mount a tire with a wire bead at home is bad enough but if I have a flat on the road it's hopeless, so I only buy folding road tires, but of course they cost more.) If I had waited to buy the tires until I needed them (ie, when they look like they do now) I might have considered switching to some other tire, but given the kind of riding I have done and the cost (and since I already own them!), I guess I'm satisfied with putting on another pair of these.

I believe people like Jan Heine write about waiting until they get several flats that they attribute to tire wear before putting on new tires, but I don't want to manage them that way. Perhaps it is using road bike (23-25 mm wide) tires - often something besides overall wear of the tire surface causes some problem that necessitates changing to a new tire. Looking at this Maxxis tire, which hasn't flatted in some time, I'm not really thinking it is worth seeing how much more wear it can take before I spend large parts of my commute on the side of the trail (in winter . . . ).


New Maxxis Re-Fuse 25 mm replacement tires, mounted on Traitor Ruben

So here are a couple of shots of the same tires when new. The bumpy pattern is a little surprising for a tire classed as a road tire, but there it is. I take the Sheldon Brown point of view on tires that for road use, a smooth tire is ideal and that a tread pattern (particularly one this minimalistic) contributes nothing for traction - on the other hand, it is so minimal that I don't think it slows the ride down, either (and anyway, the bumps wear flat on the center line pretty quickly).


New Maxxis Re-Fuse tire, close-up view

The assumption that some tread pattern was better than smooth for traction was a selling point for one tire in the 1890s - the "VIM" tires. If only the woman in the ad below had her bike fitted with VIM tires with their "pebble" pattern, she would not have crashed.


1896 tire with "pebble" tread - magazine ad pushes advantages

The pattern for the VIM tire is quite like the Maxxis Re-Fuse. Perhaps while riding on dirt roads and the like then (and of course this tire would have been much wider) it was helpful.


Ad shows the tire pattern (rather than no pattern at all)

More Kickstarter Bicycle Improvement Possibilities

Kickstarter is "the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world" (they say) and it turns out, some of these opportunities are for new products to make cycling safer or easier (and hopefully more popular). In a previous post I looked at a couple of modestly scaled money raising endeavors for safety lighting proposals. Thanks to tire that inflates itself as you ride. They only need $250,000 (yes, a quarter of a million dollars) to get this under production!



It's a clever idea - there is a small tube that runs around the entire tire right in the middle of where the tire contacts the ground and as the bike compresses this tube, air if forced through the valve into the tire until some previously set limit is reached, then it stops. If the pressure goes down, it pumps it back up.

Of course there are many clever ideas that are patented that don't enjoy commercial success for one reason or another. What about this idea?

The problem that the inventor is trying to solve is simple enough - bike riders should be able to jump on their bikes and ride off knowing that the tire will soon be inflated to the right pressure if some air has escaped since the last time the bike was used. It is not an anti-flat system that would say pump the tire up fast enough to keep ahead of a lead created by a nail (for example). It also solves the problem of having your tires always at a consistend pressure as you ride since I don't think anyone has ever argued that the small amount that this happens is actually a problem for anyone. Therefore your user is the person who is tired of pumping air in her or his bike tires once in a while before riding.

Are their many such people, really? One wonders. For one thing, while it is not a good thing, many people who ride even relatively frequently (for Americans) are rather lax about their tire pressure, based on conversations I have had. Those people who do care about it, it seems to me, are not likely to feel a desire to turn this activity over to an automatic system to do it for them.

Efforts to keep air in the tires or avoid having flats have been proposed (and patented) since the development of the safety bike in the 1880s, so attempts to simplify cycling by reducing interactions with tires are not new. For example, below is an 1896 patent for a "self sealing" bike tire.


Patent 551,408, the self sealing tire

Why didn't the self sealing tire succeed? Well, because it was a layer of complexity and cost on top of what is the best thing about bicycles - that they are pretty simple devices. And also that they introduced a new failure "opportunity" rather than just getting rid of the old one. And of course you have to pay more for it.

This particular idea is quite elegant (in a way) but the Kickstarter proposal fails to suggest what the price point is that they have in mind for these fancy tires that inflate themselves. While in theory anyone would say, "sure I want a tire that keeps itself at the right air pressure" I suspect when they see the relative cost they will wonder if operating the pump occasionally is really that inconvenient (for that portion of the cycling public who care about their tire inflatiion situation other than when the tire is more or less flat). That, in the end, is the issue - are people (Americans - I assume a Dutchman for example would guffaw if he saw this product) so lazy that they will pay $$$ more for a high priced tire rather than fill it with air occasionally themselves? The product developers don't argue that it is a safety issue, unlike that yellow light in your Ford Explorer so you don't tip the thing over with underinflated tires.

And I'm pretty sure, notwithstanding their remarks in the FAQ, that this approach does introduce new problems to manage. They claim that a "little filter" will keep dust and dirt from interfering with the intake of air to inflate the tire, but given where it is (down practically on the ground) and the small sizes, presumably then the issue is the "little filter" getting a lot clogged. Also, as shown in its development phase, this pressure gauge limiter thing that rides on top of the inner tube valve looks like trouble with a capital "T". They admit in their FAQ that in production this thing would ideally be a lot smaller and perhaps not angled straight out from the rim but rather along the rim somehow, or supported by a spoke. Well - yeah. Because a weak point in every inner tube is at the valve, so putting that big monster thing on top of the valve is begging for trouble. They don't need just their own tire, I think, but their own wheel-tire combo.

Finally, the tube (they call it a "lumen" which apparently is a biology term for a tube-like structure) that is compressed as the wheel turns and does the pumping runs on the outer center of the tire where the greatest wear is on any bike tire. However thick the wall of that lumen (tube) is is how long your tire lasts. If you get a little cut through that lumen - well, so much for the self inflating feature and the tire is ruined (which they admit in their FAQ). So, for a given style of tire, this self inflating tire costs more but lasts a shorter period of time and has a risk factor for the failure of the feature that you paid extra for.

Industry statistics don't say how many bicycle tires are sold, but presumably the best result for the inventors would be to get a nice urban bike equipped with these tires as standard equipment. Perhaps they'll get lucky.

Anything that makes riding a bike easier can be considered, if you are in the cycling camp, to be good for society (more green, more exercise, etc.). This is something that replaces one small inoffensive task (that many are a bit inattentive to, but with few serious consequences) with unnecessary complexity and cost, and then claims to be easier. I guess it depends how you define "easier."

That's enough Kickstarter bike projects for today.

More Ice on Bike Trails

Taken this morning, on the way to work - looking south although I was heading north - I just liked the sign (note icicles) and it was a place to prop the bike for the photo. Near Route 1 around the south end of Nation Airport. Entire trail covered in ice.

Trails were covered in bumpy ice with temp hovering around freezing. As far as I am concerned, impossible conditions if you don't have studded tires (which this bike does). However I did ride along briefly with a guy who was managing without studded tires - but I was able to go quite a bit faster so I left him behind.

At the overpasses I simply walked the bike for 100 yards or so - the ice was too much on the downhill sides even with the studs.

The trick (with the studded tires) is to ride at a measured pace - no sudden braking, no quick acceleration. Gentle . . . . . easy does it. Where there is trail with grass on both sides, one can get up to 10-12 mph and ride off onto the grass if problems arise. Some of the way I simply road on the icy grass, since then falling is no longer an issue - but it is more exertion but requires less focused attention.

Wouldn't want to ride like this all the time!!

It has certain fun aspects - near Shirlington several people walking their dogs simply gawped - "if I'm falling down with my boots, how can he ride . . . a bike?" is clearly what they are thinking. Well - it's (stud) magic! Ya just gotta be careful not to push the boundaries.

Winter Commuting & Studded Bike Tires (Again)

So, Tuesday night it snowed again, setting up a slick commute (so to speak) for Wednesday morning, and a bit beyond as it turned out. In an earlier post I said I didn't see much point in studded bike tires, but I realize now I was thinking mostly of heavy snow conditions like we had last winter (where the problem was pushing through snow and not ice at all).

Tuesday's freezing rain followed by an inch or so of snow set up conditions where bike tires with studs are pretty good to have - and since I have a set, I used them (although I took the picture above of some other rider during my commute - the pictures below are of me + the bike).



This is an old Giant that belonged to one of my sons - I have an extra set of wheels that I equipped with some not-very-expensive Nashbar-branded Kenda tires that have studs. They work great in icy conditions. In the image below you can see, if you look closely, some of the studs.



It got up to 38 (F - say +2 C) during the day and it was windy, so much of the snow melted by the time I rode home, but there were enough icy patches that I didn't mind having the studs. Really, it is on icy spots (rather than on snow of any depth) that the studs are amazing - it is possible to proceed at a decent stable pace, say 12-14 mph, and not feel any slipping, although one needs to be sensible - the studs aren't so numerous as to be relied on for quick stops, for example. When traveling on dry clear pavement one can hear them clicking away and I assume getting slowly less pointy (flattened out). If you brake hard on dry pavement you can simply pull individual studs out of the tires.

So Thursday, having decided that mostly the trail was clear, I went back to my cyclocross bike (no studs). I reduced the tire pressure to 50 pounds per square inch but that does zero for grip on ice. Using the cross bike meant lots of speeding up, then slowing down when I had to go over icy areas plus making sure I was paying attention 100 percent of the time so as not to end up on ice at the wrong speed. On the way home on a overpass made of concrete (which thaws much more slowly since the jurisdictions where the bike trails are don't do anything to speed that up), I screwed up and fell, dinging my left shoulder pretty good but not breaking anything. My head hit the left concrete sidewall of the overpass but not too hard and anyway that's what helmets are for, to keep one from getting hurt (and it worked). Nonetheless, OW!

So I'm a little embarrassed, frankly. I could have and I guess should have ridden the "ice bike" with studs one more day in order to avoid this. It would have been 9.5 miles of studs and heavy mountain bike on clear pavement and some 100s of yards on snow and a little slippery, dangerous ice. And I'm pretty sure I would not have fallen ~ hmm. Have to think about this . . .



I should have spent one more day on the studded tire bike.

Studded Snow Tires for Bikes

On Thursday (January 6) the weather folks predicted snow possible overnight, continuing into the morning. I decided to wait and see before making a choice of bike to ride - "bad weather" or "good weather" bike.

Friday morning, I looked out - no snow, and I could see stars. Didn't look much like snow. The Washington Post site, however, said "light snow falling in Washington." I decided to ignore and ride in the good bike - the chance of show at that moment was like 20 percent according to weather.com and zero in the afternoon.

On the way in from Arlington to Washington I passed exactly one bike - I guess the weather forcast had put off some people, although Friday's have fewer commuters generally (since a lot of people telework or have compressed work schedules). I could hear the guy's tires as I came up on him from behind - he had studded bike tires! Well, that seemed like overkill to me, since we hadn't even seen a flake.



I have a set of mountain bike studded snow tires but I haven't used them much in recent years - in my view, they aren't terribly useful here. I don't think the studs help one go through snow, they only contribute to staying upright on icy surfaces. There just hasn't been enough ice to get me interested in switching my approach from riding a cyclocross bike with 25 mm tires with the inflation dropped to ~50 pounds (the alternative being an old hardtail mountain bike with the much much wider studded tires).

The studded mountain tires I have are Kendas, by the way, but not the model available now, it seems, the "Klondike." As I recall, I only paid like 25 bucks each for them about five years ago from Nashbar. Thought it was a pretty good purchase at the time. . .

1890s Women Riders Prefer Tires with Tread

Or anyway, a full page ad for VIM bicycle tires in an 1896 issue of Cycling Life suggests that this should be the case.



Cycling Life was a trade magazine and not read by likely purchasers of bicycles (or tires) so further research will be required to determine if this ad would have appeared in a publication read by cyclists (but I would expect it was). The message here is interesting, I think - rather than a concern that the risk of falling would put off potential women riders, the thinking seems to be that women want to ride bikes but they don't want to fall down, so the purchase of these tires can allay that concern. (Other VIM tire ads were directed at men, by the way.)



As tread patterns go, I'm not sure these would be all that much help - but better than nothing.

Steel Bike in Morning

On my commute I sometimes am lucky enough to chat with some interesting riders. Friday I came upon a young fellow riding a 1985 Fuji steel racing bike that he had "restored" and somewhat updated.

This is a similar looking Fuji from that year. (I should keep my camera in a more reachable location when riding, I guess.)

The bike was beautiful - it looked new (well, other than the design) although he had removed all the decals so I had to ask him what it was. Very nice lugged frame and fork. He had reused the original derailleurs, shifters, and even brake levers. The one concession to modern cycling was to replace the so-called 27 inch wheels with 700 size that he hand built and to put on modern Campy dual pivot brakes.

I interested to see he was riding on 32 mm tires rather than 23 or some more racing bike-typical size. Hmmm. And he reported that while he had started putting in 80 PSI he was now closer to 60 and it seemed fine, speedy enough. And he obviously finds people like me, die hards in the "tires can't be too thin and have too much PSI" camp amusing. (23 mm and 120 PSI in rear, 110 in the front is what I have. I am rethinking this.)

Tires for Road Bike -> One on Front, Different on Back

If the weather is good (not wet, not below freezing, generally) I will commute the ten miles each way to Capitol Hill on my carbon fiber road bike rather than my steel road bike that has disk brakes.

One of the main issues I have had is with tire wear. I had Michelin ProRace2 tires and then after they were discontinued, the successor model ProRace3. They are a bit pricey, though, often listing for more than fifty bucks each.

More importantly, I haven't been happy that the ProRace tire on front wears well while the one on back wears quickly. In particular, the center of a new ProRace tire is raised in a pronounced way that I like to imagine reduces the rolling resistence but on the back this wears away in about 500 miles, leaving a flat spot instead. You can switch the tires front to back, but then the one that was in good shape on the front is quickly in same not-so-good state.

Performance has a tire from Vredestein, the
Fortezza SE Road Tire that for a while was often on sale for around 25 bucks (although now they are $34) and customers mostly seemed to have given them good reviews. I thought I would try a set of those and bought a pair - as it happened, I then got a slash ruining a not-very-old ProRace3 so now I have a Fortezza SE on the back and a ProRace3 on the front. This has worked very well - better, I think than having a Fortezza front and back. The Fortezza is a strange clincher that takes up to 160 PSI and says it needs a minimum of 110! (The ProRace3 has a max of 116 PSI.) I tried putting 140 in the back tire but the back end of the bike become too "lively" so I run with about 120 in back, 110 in front and it seems to work fine.

I can't say that I have a lot of confidence in the grippiness of this set up for high speed sharp turns, or even moderate speed ones in rainy weather, but I don't make high speed turns (much) and try not to ride this bike in the rain - problem solved. The road grip of the front tire, the ProRace3 is probably fine, but I'm a little suspicious of the Fortezza in back, but really I am not sure. I'm not testing it.

Michelin has a new tire that takes the same approach - the Michelin Pro Optimum has different characteristics for the front tire version and the back tire version:

Michelin has developed separate front and rear tires to take into account their specific requirements: The front tire carries 30% of the weight load and absorbs 100% of the braking effect. For this reason, Michelin engineers made it a priority to develop a tire with added grip, capable of providing maximum safety to users on cold, wet surfaces. The rear tire carries 70% of the weight load and absorbs 100% of the torque generated by the bike's forward motion, which affects its efficiency and wearlife. In order to achieve consistent performance, the rear tire now has a longer life, meaning that MICHELIN Pro Optimum Front and Rear tires now have comparable lifespans.

(Michelin Pro Optimum Front & Rear)

I suppose comparable tire life spans seems something to suggest as a "feature" since many folks buy the in pairs but as a goal it seems less important than simply having good riding characteristics. And it just seems unlikely - rear tires are going to wear faster, period. I'm figuring I'll go through two Fortezza tires on the rear to one ProRace3 on the front.

Mix and match - a good idea, it seems.