If you ride your road bike far enough or often enough, sooner or later you’re going to have to replace worn tires. Thinking about trying bike commuting? You might want to consider installing wider tires with more tread and a measure of puncture protection. Or, maybe your bike came with relatively wide and heavy tires and you’re looking to lighten things up a bit with a narrower, high-performance variety. Whatever the case, you’ll find a dizzying assortment of choices available when it comes to selecting new road bike tires. Find Road Tires » Determining what size and type of tires are already on your bike is a good starting point for choosing replacements. Relevant information, including the tire’s size and recommended pressure can usually be found printed on its sidewall. Your road bike tire will most likely be a 700x23, 700x25 or 700x28, with 700 being the tire’s diameter and the second number referring to its width in millimeters. Bikes sized specifically for women will sometimes be equipped with 650mm rims, which - no surprise - require 650mm tires.

As long as you replace your existing tires with tires of the same diameter, you can generally choose a wider or narrower width to suit your intended purpose. The exception to this generalization would be instances where a particular frame may be too narrow for extremely wide tires. If in doubt, check the fit of your existing tires to determine how much additional frame clearance you have on either side of the tire. Distinguished by their large diameters and smooth tread patterns, road bike tires come in a variety of widths  including narrow 20mm race models, 28mm varieties suitable for training or commuting, and 35mm tires for commuting and cyclocross. In general, narrower tires roll faster and more easily, but at the expense of comfort. Conversely, wider tires have more rolling resistance, but provide a more comfortable ride. The type of riding you do will determine which width is the best choice for your needs. Bicycle tire casings are made of cloth consisting of non-woven strands of nylon or other material arranged in plies.

The more threads per inch a tire’s casing has, the thinner and more supple its sidewall and the lighter the tire. High Thread Count Tires The bead is the portion of the tire that holds it in place on the rim. A thin cord of woven steel or aramid fiber extending around the inner circumference on both sides of the tire, the bead hooks under the lip of the rim, securing the tire tightly.Hobie Cat 21 For Sale Florida The composition of the tread determines how well a tire grips the road, how easily it rolls and how well it resists wear. Stacking Washer Dryer Vancouver BcThe major component of tread compounds is butyl rubber, with various additives imparting specific performance attributes.Chem Dry Carpet Cleaning St Louis

Silica and Other Synthetic CompoundsTires with supple casings are faster, more comfortable and simply more fun to ride. Most cyclists know this, but how do you measure “suppleness”? A measure that often is used to describe the quality of tires is “threads per inch” (TPI). The idea is that tires with higher thread counts usually have finer weaves that make these tires more supple. The reality is more complex, and TPI is of limited use when comparing tires. 1. How do you measure? Ideally, you look at the TPI of the casing fabric before it is made into the tire. Casing fabrics vary between 15 TPI for coarse utility tires to 120 TPI for very high-end tires. What about the tires with 300 TPI or more? These makers count every layer of the tire. Most tires have three layers of overlapping casing, so by that method of counting, a 100 TPI fabric will make a 300 TPI tire. And if you added a fourth layer for added puncture protection, you’d make the tire slower, but you’d bump up the TPI to a record-setting 400!

So if a tire makers claims a TPI of more than 200, you have to divide the number by 3 to get the TPI of the fabric. 2. What is the diameter of the threads? The reason high-TPI tires usually are more supple is that the threads are thinner. If you keep all things equal, thinner threads will mean more threads per inch. However, if you make your weave denser, you also get more threads per inch, but actually a stiffer casing. Panaracer, who makes our Compass tires, offers a 120 TPI casing. However, they found that if they use the same super-fine threads, but space them out a little further, they get an even more supple, and even faster, tire. So the Compass Extralight tires use that casing, which only has 90 TPI. If you go by TPI alone, the Extralight casing looks inferior, but it’s in fact the more supple, faster casing. 3. How much rubber? Fabrics with very thin threads are fragile. They have to be handled very carefully during production. Some makers of budget tires compensate for this by covering the fabric with more rubber, which protects the threads.

Of course, this makes the casing stiffer, and thus less performing. So one maker’s 120 TPI casing may be a lot less supple than another maker’s 120 TPI casing. 4. What material is used for the threads? With hand-made FMB tubulars, you get a choice of cotton or silk threads. The silk is much more supple than the cotton (which already is more supple than most polyesters). Even among polyesters, there are great differences in the thread materials. It makes no sense to claim that a 90 TPI silk casing is less supple than a 100 TPI cotton casing. These are just a few of the factors that determine the tire’s suppleness. Let’s compare two hypothetical tires: Tire 1 uses a stiff and relatively large-diameter thread. The fabric has a super-dense weave and is slathered with rubber. The maker counts every layer of the casing, and thus arrives at a 300 TPI tire. Tire 2 uses a supple, superfine thread, woven into a relatively loose weave. The manufacturer keeps the rubber coating to a minimum.