On Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 4:59:25 PM UTC-4, Bicycle Belle Ding Ding! wrote: > > Why does everyone love barely inflated tires? I put the max air in mine > and ride them rock hard! Otherwise they feel flat to me. I fly over bumps > and stay in the saddle and let my bones rattle! I’m doing it wrong, I > know... > > I can give you one good reason (besides comfort) why you might not want to inflate wide tires to max pressure unless you've very heavy. When you pump a wide tire up to high pressure it can become very bouncy with a considerable rebound on hard impacts, a bit like a basketball. That can, in some circumstances, snatch the handlebars right out of your hands. It happened to me, and I crashed as a result, breaking my collar bone. I'm not talking here about the biopace-like surging you might get at very low pressure, where you can feel the bike squishing the tires down on each pedal downstroke, but rather the SPROING bounce you get when you throw a basketball down onto the pavement.
Your "bones rattling" comment reminds me of a time at Bike Virginia, back when they still had dinner put on by a community organization. I was standing in line waiting for them to open, and couldn't help overhearing the guy in front of me discussing tire pressure with his friends. He looked a bit like a football player - large, obviously over 250 lb. He was from Virginia Beach, and was talking about how much he enjoyed going downhill on "the bridge" -- evidently, the only hill in town -- on his 19mm tires inflated to 150 psi. "Rock hard," he said, and at 30 mph the bike vibrated so much he said "it *really* felt fast!" It is true you don't get the same super cushy ride benefit from lower tire pressure with chunky, rigid-sidewall tires as you do with supple tires with flexible sidewalls, but there's still a benefit to having your tires as the proper pressure for your weight. At just under 100kg I'm well over the Clydesdale line and there are very few tires that I need to inflate to the "max pressure". And I'll bet you a chocolate milkshake I weigh a lot more than you do. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/6a2894fa-c2cd-422d-830f-a7e9912b8cef%40googlegroups.com.
