Specialized Bikes

Do you like mountain biking? Do you bike regularly? Do you want to improve your bike? If yes, read on this article which will give you a few useful tips about the tires.

After having chosen what they feel is the perfect tire, riders often use the same tire for all conditions. This may not be a bad idea if you are continuously riding on the same terrain. However, once you begin to ride different conditions, you need different tread. The best way to discover what works best for your riding or racing conditions is to actually experience riding with different tires. If you get the chance, ride a section of a trail on one type of tire and then switch tires and ride that same section. Try a different tire on the front than on the rear; it may be your best selection.

In general, muddy conditions require tread that has small lugs, spaced far apart. Wide spacing allows for the mud to clear through the tread without building up, while still getting some traction. (Lugs, for those of you who are not familiar with the jargon, are the knobs on the tires.) Hard-pack conditions, when the dirt is a little wet or tacky, are best for high-speed riding. In these conditions, a semi-slick tire is best. These tires have small lugs on the outer portion with little if any tread on the middle portion, allowing for less rolling resistance and therefore higher speeds. Although the rear tire is best as a semi-slick tire, you may want to put a little beefier tire on the front. The front is the control tire, so you should make sure it has more traction. For example, the racecourse may contain hard-packed climbs that require less pronounced lugs to get good traction. The downhill section may have become loose and dusty from riders braking. A semi-slick front tire will most likely wash out or slide out on the front. Washing out on the front tire has more potential to launch you off your bike than washing out on the rear tire.

Loose-dirt or dusty conditions require both a front and a rear tire with good traction, meaning it’s taller and has a more profuse number of lugs. Also, lowering the air pressure can help with traction. (Lowering the air pressure flattens the tire, giving it more contact with the ground, lessening the chance that it will slide out.) However, any time you deflate your tires, you run the risk of a pinch. A pinch flat occurs when the tire and the tube are compressed in such a way that the tube doubles up on itself and pinches, creating a hole in the tube and consequently a flat tire. This point is where the tubeless tire comes in: A tubeless tire allows you to ride with less air and therefore gives more traction without the worry about getting a flat.

Terrain that involves wet roots is the most challenging to ride on. The best tires to run in this situation have short lugs with little space between them. You can lower the air pressure to allow for better contact with the terrain. You can pinch flat on the roots so don’t take out too much air. So, tubeless tires are always a good alternative. In rocky conditions, such as in an endless field of rocks ranging from fist size to the size of a baby’s head, it is best to pump up the volume. Here again, the best tire is one with small lugs with a moderate amount of space between them. You need more air pressure to eliminate the possibility of a pinch flat when hitting the rocks. The tubeless tire should come in handy in this situation as well, because being able to decrease the air pressure will allow for a smoother ride.

Riding on sand is similar to riding on loose dirt. It requires higher-profile lugs with less space between them. You may have ridden on tires with paddle-shaped lugs that span the entire tire width. This configuration gives you the ability to paddle through the sand as a paddleboat in water. Again, low pressure is best.

Most trails and racecourses have mixed conditions. They can go from loose dirt to rocky and even wet and root covered terrain. The best tire is one that allows for good traction in every condition. When deciding what section of the course to focus on for tire selection, look at the length of each section and determine where you could lose the most time. For example, if the course is a 5-mile loop that has three or four loose, dusty downhill sections ranging from 25 feet to a quarter mile long, with the remainder of the course being hard packed, focus on the hard pack. You probably won’t lose time on the loose sections, but you can definitely make up time on the hard pack.

Once again, try different tires so you can get a feel for what works best in various conditions.