Tyre wear, should it be equal on both tyres?
Bubbabo
Posts: 26
Howdy roadies. I recently got a road bike 3 months ago, and I haven't been on a bike for many years, so I'm very rusty. I cleaned my bike today and noticed that the back tyre has much more wear than the front, and the front tyre still has the line on the centre. Is this natural? Or am I relying too heavily on my back brake, and not using the front enough? Because I was rusty I have tried to use the front with caution, but maybe I'm using the back a little too eagerly.
Bubba bo
Bubba bo
0
Posts
I'm a big chap, so I guess that explains it :P Lot of weight going on my tyres, so they are taking a heavy ride.
Thanks Joe
So you have a lovely flat centered front tyre :roll:
Run the rear into the ground, replace the front and move the old front (which is still almost new) onto the back. This way you keep the best condition tyre up front for cornering and braking grip.
Carbon 456
456 lefty
Pompino
White Inbred
Think about it.
I don't think it is a waste of time if you want replace both tyres at the same time, thereby delaying further expense for as long as possible.
Say for example we accept your guide that a rear tyre wears three times quicker than a front tyre and we say that a rear tyre will last for 3,000 miles. Obviously with no swapping, the rear will be worn after 3,000 miles and you will have to dip into your pocket to replace it. This applies even if you swap the old front on the rear and put the new tyre on the front as suggested by Ride Whenever. However, if you swapped your tyres over every 1,000 miles, you would still have life in both after 4,000 miles, as they would each have only covered the equivalent of 2,666 miles of rear wear.
Edindevon
By your rationale, a front tyre may last 9000 miles if left where it is. There's no way around it: if you replace tyres when they're worn out, you have wasted nothing. Replacing each tyre independently when it wears out is the sensible way to proceed – swapping the new one to the front even better. Why would you particularly want to replace both tyres together?
I don't think one way is any more sensible than the other. I think it's just a case of each to their own.
The strategy of swapping tyres was dismissed as a waste of time and I offered a reason why it might make sense for some people.
Personally I can't be bothered to swap tyres, so I just replace them as they wear out, but that doesn't mean that people who choose a different way of doing things are wrong.
Edindevon
Flat spots come from fixies where you do skid-stops and always lock up in the same crank position, hence you're skidding on the same areas (dependent on ratios) and make flat spots
Carbon 456
456 lefty
Pompino
White Inbred
A rear tyre will square off to a much greater extent than a front and swapping it over is a potentially dangerous practice.
Now some 30+ years later with machined alloy rims, and powerful dual pivot brakes with great modulation, I am perfecting the art of front-wheel braking
Think how stupid the average person is.......
half of them are even more stupid than you first thought.
Many motorcycle racers don't touch the back brake unless the surface is wet, and that includes braking heavily from 200mph.
Works on MTB, is it the same practise on the road?
I know on my MTB I and many others use the rear brake to trim speed when descending quickly and the front to stop.
Carbon 456
456 lefty
Pompino
White Inbred
Feel free to tell me to censored off back to MTB world if it sounds crazy
In the dry all stopping should come from the front brake and the rear only used to provide what it can without lock up. In the wet you use them much more evenly. It is a matter of getting the best balance and this comes with practice. If you favour the rear all the time you will never learn this.
I think you/anyone would need to retake their cycling proficiency test if they used the front brake hard round a bend
Ranks up there with pedalling round a sharp corner.
People clearly need to get some fixed-wheel action to work out *exactly* how sharp the bend can be before pedal-strike becomes an issue
If you are stopping as hard as you can in the dry, then weight transfer will mean that the weight on the rear tyre is almost zero. As friction is a function of load, that means that the retardation offered by the rear is also almost zero, and applying the rear brake is of no use.
On Strava.{/url}
:shock: wow, you're a brave man.
I think motorsport is used as the physics can be directly translated and is easy for most to understand. Personally (and possibly for your own safety) it might be advisable to either use your back brake (gently) round bends or not to brake at all (I don't mean literally
I still believe in the old 'brake on the straights' philosophy as it's the most effective way of maintaining balance when the weight gets transferred toward the front of the bike.
My fear is that your weight is moving toward the front whilst your front wheel is trying to turn round the corner.
"Braking at maximum lean
For braking in a curve, take the example of a rider cornering with
good traction, leaning at 45 degrees, the equivalent of 1G centrifugal
acceleration. Braking with 1/10g increases the traction demand by one
half percent. The sum of cornering and braking vectors is the square
root of the sum of their squares, SQRT(1^2+0.1^2)=1.005 or an increase
of 0.005. In other words, there is room to brake substantially during
maximum cornering. Because the lean angle changes as the square of
the speed, braking can rapidly reduce the angle and allow even more
braking. For this reason skilled racers nearly always apply both
brakes into the apex of turns."
I can't help but see the admonition, "Never brake in turns!! Ever!!"– which predominates – as one of the more baseless pieces of advice in cycling. It makes people go slower I suppose, yet it creates a boogeyman where none exist – and I like going down hills fast.
The general of this is true as under hard braking your weight wants takes a straight path, due to momentum. If this is done when you're trying to turn then I'm sure you can appreciate that your mass trying to go straight ahead, whilst you are wanting to change direction (possibly at 45 degrees) is not ideal.
Interesting article but I believe he has slightly contradicted himself as a few paragraphs up he says:
When approaching a curve with good
traction, the front brake can be used almost exclusively, because it
is capable of slowing the bicycle so rapidly that nearly all weight
transfers to the front wheel, at which point the rear brake is nearly
useless.
However, he then says further down:
In other words, there is room to brake substantially during
maximum cornering. Because the lean angle changes as the square of
the speed, braking can rapidly reduce the angle and allow even more
braking. For this reason skilled racers nearly always apply both
brakes into the apex of turns.
You can't have it all ways. If you're braking substantially then your weight would transfer to the front. However, if the pros are using both brakes into an apex then it cannot be hard braking as the rear brake would be useless.
At the end of the day most of us don't want to be decending at 100% efficiency so the regular rules of physics still applies. If that makes me average, by Mr. Brandt's standards, then fair enough but I'm going to stick with braking before a bend
I thought that's what you were aiming at
The chap writing the article is generally right (although he does contradict himself a bit) but by 'substantial' braking I think he means light adjustment, which is probably fine.
I suspect we all brake round the bend to some extent, depending on speed, as it doesn't really matter if conditions are good. I just feared from your earlier comment that you were hanging on the brakes mid bend :shock: