Originally Posted by
HawkOwl
These flat threads always make me wonder why, when motor vehicles can go thousands of miles, maybe the entire life of the tires, with no flats why bicycles have so many. To my mind it says that modern technology hasn't been applied to bike tires. Maybe it is time to insist that manufacturers give cyclists as good tires and on motor vehicles. Oh, they will weigh a bit more you say? Eat a little less, carry one less candy bar. For most take a bit off the gut or but, or both. Seems to me the trade off is well worth it for all but the topmost competition rider, and maybe even there.
Or, maybe, the people posting here have most of the flats, leaving the rest of the cycling population in peace?
The guys at my LBS have generally discouraged me from getting tires with flat protection (Bontrager calls them "hardcase"). I can't say that there is any one particular reason, just things like "Their harder to change" and other sort of nebulous type negativity towards them.
But most of them are serious performance cyclsts... The manager only uses one type of tire on his mountain bike because he knows what it will do in mud and leaves and such...
So, I guess, some people will sacrifice the performance to avoid flats. Others won't.
For myself, I'm just a masher. I would probably like a lighter more performance oriented tire. But I really don't want to have to worry about flats -- and I probably don't lose much (if any) performance by running the hardcase tires (or tire liners) since I'm just mashing along anyway. So I tend to go with flat protection.
But, if I was trying to keep up with the pack, I would probably go with the performance tires.
I think we have a lot of performance oriented riders on this forum. I ain't one 'em. Maybe someday, but not yet.
ps My main ride is equipeed with fenders and a kick stand. Does that tell you something about how highly I value performance?