Originally Posted by
ironwood
One thing I've often wndered about is why the same tires are used for both the front and rear. When I look at my tires the rear always wears more than the front. The rear tire also drives the bicycle; while the front tire simply rolls. It seems to me that the forces on the the tires are quite different.
Some roll down tests have shown that tires with flexible sidewalls are faster than those with stiffer sidewalls, but does that mean that they are better at driving the bike; that is transmitting power? I wonder whether it might be better to put a tire with a flexible tire on the front wheel,and one with a stiffer sidewall on the rear.
The friction between the contact patch of the tire and the road is what drives the bike. A stiffer sidewall will just resist the deformation that is going to happen anyway, so I don't think it would do much but waste rider energy.
There are plenty of things you could do to make the front tire wear out at a faster rate to match the rear (like using a smaller cross-section or wheel diameter), but there isn't much point or interest in doing that on diamond-frame bikes, and having mismatched wheels would add some complication to the system.
I just content myself with running the front tire at a slightly lower pressure for comfort, and doing the front-to-rear/new-tire-on-front rotation to get the most possible life out of each tire. (That also frees me from having to think of tires as just "front" or "rear".)
