Tyre wear, should it be equal on both tyres?

The back tyre will always wear more, it's carrying more weight plus all the drive goes though the back tyre. The rear tyres will wear flat too. Periodically swap your tyres around.

yogi wrote:

Periodically swap your tyres around.

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.

Smokin Joe wrote:

yogi wrote:

The back tyre will always wear more, it's carrying more weight plus all the drive goes though the back tyre. The rear tyres will wear flat too. Periodically swap your tyres around.

Waste of time, you won't get any more life out of the pair.

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

balthazar wrote:

@Edindeveon

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

You don't get flat spots from using the rear brake, unless you're skidding a lot, and even then it'll be fairly even unless you just do one massive skid once.

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

careful wrote:

Yogi wrote

Periodically swap your tyres around

I definately would avoid putting an ex rear tyre onto the front. The flat centre section that develops on the rear gives a very unsteady and low grip transition when cornering. I did this recently and am convinced that it was the cause of a nasty crash on a hairpin bend a few days ago. There could have been other factors of course, but the squared profile really messed up the handling for sure.

+1.

A rear tyre will square off to a much greater extent than a front and swapping it over is a potentially dangerous practice.

If braking hard you should apply the rear brake a fraction of a second before the front otherwise you risk going over the bars as all your weight is pushed forward or probably worse losing the front wheel if the road surface is slippery or you are turning otherwise you risk collecting some road rash. It is a whole let easier to control the rear end than the front. A front brake should always be used in conjunction with the rear if travelling at any significant speed.

Surely when braking hard - really hard - it would make sense to move your weight backwards a little ti decrease the risk of going over you bars.

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.

Braking is a skill as well, keep your arms strong so your knees don't hit the bars and you can pull some pretty impressive rolling endos (as i found when a driver decided to turn without indicating)

dilemna wrote:

If braking hard you should apply the rear brake a fraction of a second before the front otherwise you risk going over the bars as all your weight is pushed forward .

For any given retardation the weight transfer is the same regardless of which brake you are using. The difference is that you are transfering weight to the front wheel where it will help stopping and away from the rear one thus decreasing its stopping power.
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.

dilemna wrote:

....or probably worse losing the front wheel if the road surface is slippery or you are turning otherwise you risk collecting some road rash.

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.

Further note on braking with the front:

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.

balthazar wrote:

Escargot wrote:

dilemna wrote:

....or probably worse losing the front wheel if the road surface is slippery or you are turning otherwise you risk collecting some road rash.

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.

I don't know how much emphasis you are putting on braking hard, but I brake fairly heavily right into the apex of corners, contrary to the swathe of advice from nearly everybody who sees motorsport racers as their model for fast progress on a bicycle.

: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.

balthazar, I think you're missing that I said 'hard' braking i.e. wiping off a lot of speed mid bend.

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

balthazar wrote:

Escargot wrote:

balthazar, I think you're missing that I said 'hard' braking i.e. wiping off a lot of speed mid bend.

Well, my first comment was to wonder just how much stress you were putting on that. If our dispute is over moderate or hard braking, then there is nothing to resolve as I think we're in agreement. I had the impression that you were taking the standard line of forbidding any braking at all during cornering, and it is that, commonly stated (often aggressively – as if to disobey it would result in disaster) position that I think is wrong.

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: