Losing the front wheel

jds_1981

frogonabike wrote:

As others have said mountain biking (or CX) will help sharpen you up (or loosen you up?) when it comes to losing the front wheel and generally improving bike handling as the fatter tyres and slacker geometry give you much more time to play with. It also makes you feel much faster when you get back on the roady

A low side on a road bike always has the potential to put you on the deck before you know it's happening though - especially on ice!

Agree, road bike you'll normally be on the floor before you know what happened, if you're very lucky the tyre will regain grip by itself and you'll think to yourself 'oh poop'.
Big fat tyres are more forgiving, something with tread can start to get a bit 'vague' as you approach the limits as I guess the tread starts flexing under loading. Some MTB tyres also have softer tread off centre.
Offroad the rules are totally different.

Anyone able to dig out video of people saving sliding road bike front wheels on youtube?

N0bodyOfTheGoat

blackstar500 wrote:

Will bigger tires make any difference .. Currently using 38mm

I'd expect wider tyres with a soft rubber compound will help in the wet, but the ultimate help on frost/snow/ice is studs.

It all comes as a trade-off against the extra weight uphill, the extra rolling resistance of studs and the increased aero drag as you try to pedal at ~15mph+.

rick_chasey

blackstar500 wrote:

Will bigger tires make any difference .. Currently using 38mm

Depends how hard you pump em up.

graeme_s-2

I think wider, grippier tyres do help a little in icy conditions. If you're on sheet ice then they'll be no better, and you need studs. If you hit a patch of ice, then the wider the tyre the more likely there is some of it might still be in contact with tarmac, and the more chance you've got of righting things once you're off the ice and back in contact with tarmac.

If I knew it was going to be icy when I went out I'd ride with studded tyres. If I'm on gritted roads and it probably won't be icy, I'd rather be on wider tyres than narrower ones if I caught a patch of ice.

rick_chasey

I have found big tyres pumped up to road levels (6-7 bar) to be a lot less useful than narrow road tyres at the same pressure. It’s almost like the bigger circumference makes it harder to whip the bike from one angle to the other.

Lower pressure will obviously help you eek up to the point of loss of friction, but big tyres per se aren’t a panacea at all.

graeme_s-2

Big tyres at high pressure seem a bit pointless to me. The whole point of running wide tyres is being able to run them at lower pressures than skinny tyres. Fair point though - if you stick 28C tyres on and pump them up to 100psi, you're probably not going to find much more grip.

roger_merriman

Graeme_S wrote:

Big tyres at high pressure seem a bit pointless to me. The whole point of running wide tyres is being able to run them at lower pressures than skinny tyres. Fair point though - if you stick 28C tyres on and pump them up to 100psi, you're probably not going to find much more grip.

To be honest 23 to 25 or 25 to 28 I didn’t notice much difference, I do notice the grip even from the Marathon Plus touring it is less than the Nobbly Nics but at 50mm even with rock hard endurance rubber compound, and high relative to its size pressures 40psi/3bar it lacks that skittishness over metal work, and what not, that all road race tyres 20-25 I’ve ever used exhibited to lesser or greater extent.

The CX tyres which have terrifying levels of wear, are equally sure footed, the MTB with tyres intended to grip on off camber muddy wet slate is unsurprisingly not bothered remotely by metalwork however wet!

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Following my Valentine's Day 2017 wipeout on a mini roundabout on the Voodoo and then a scary but lucky understeer-at-speed wipeout on the sweeping downhill right-hander near The Sustainability Centre around August on the Cube, I now typically use the following pressures (front/rear PSI)...
25mm (really ~27mm): ~75/95
28mm (really ~31mm): ~60/80
32mm: ~55/75
38mm: ~50/70
38mm Gravdal: ~42/72 (still experimenting with rear, tried 60 the other day and riding was like in treacle!)
60mm: ~35/45
100mm: ~25/27 (rarely used these days, but for mostly tarmac rides, to reduce wear rate and reduce rolling resistance)

... For me weighing ~76Kg, Cube/Voodoo ~9/11Kg respectively (depending upon wheel/tyre combo). then approx. 3-5Kg of MAMIL/work clothing plus water plus emergency kit.

On the smaller tyres, I've reduced pressures by ~20-40% at the front and unsurprisingly, there is so much more grip in the corners now when I lean forward and bend the elbows to get more weight over the front wheel.

jds_1981

Graeme_S wrote:

I think wider, grippier tyres do help a little in icy conditions. If you're on sheet ice then they'll be no better, and you need studs. If you hit a patch of ice, then the wider the tyre the more likely there is some of it might still be in contact with tarmac, and the more chance you've got of righting things once you're off the ice and back in contact with tarmac.

If I knew it was going to be icy when I went out I'd ride with studded tyres. If I'm on gritted roads and it probably won't be icy, I'd rather be on wider tyres than narrower ones if I caught a patch of ice.

I run quite big tyres on my CX bike. The front takes a slightly bigger one than the rear do I can run an ice spiker there. I've had the bike turn pretty much 90 degrees to the direction of travel but kept tracking forwards due to the front tyre.

rick_chasey

Yeah, it really is much more about pressures than diameter of tyre.

Obviously at certain pressures you need certain tyre widths, but broadly speaking.

TBH, I think tyre pressures is one of the few technical aspects I actually think is under-discussed; usually because it's so personal, depending on their weight & t distribution of said weight between tyres.

roger_merriman

Rick Chasey wrote:

Yeah, it really is much more about pressures than diameter of tyre.

Obviously at certain pressures you need certain tyre widths, but broadly speaking.

TBH, I think tyre pressures is one of the few technical aspects I actually think is under-discussed; usually because it's so personal, depending on their weight & t distribution of said weight between tyres.

My experience has be the reverse in that one of the bikes had marathon plus 25mm which I ran the front @40psi it had better grip than @60psi but no where near the marathon plus touring which has the same rubber compound and sidewalls etc, @40psi but a increase to 50mm quite a dramatic improvement in grip, in theory it should be less since it has a more heavy treaded design.

On the whole I think the issue is people try to over simply things, how supple the tyre is, tread if any, how soft the rubber is, what pressures its run at, how wide the tyre is etc. in many ways the type of tyre is a better indication of likely grip levels.

Moonbiker

Cheap heavy wired tyres with hard rubber compound & low tpi gerneally have alot worse grip than expensive folding higher tpi tyres.

Im to poor to afford but I reckon best grip tyre for tarmac would be something like:

https://www.velovitality.co.uk/products ... 0c-x-38-mm

Wide good rubber compound & high tpi.