Originally Posted by
TiHabanero
Reading another thread about tires and there was talk about rolling resistance. Got me thinking about it and has it been quantified over a real world course in terms of speed on a fixed course, time passed in a fixed distance, or distance traveled in time allotted?
For example if tire A has rolling resistance of 1.2 and tire B has rolling resistance of 1.5 (being of greater resistance) how does that translate to real world use as described above?
Answer to first question is simply Yes, with the proviso that the verb would be "can" rather than "has." See asgelle's post above. Answer to question 2 is more complicated because of the interaction between tire and surface. For each exact surface condition, there will be a fastest tire. Can you figure out which? Yes, given unlimited funds and time. Is it worth the trouble? Well, if you're a pro it might be worth it to pay someone to find the perfect tire/wheel combo for a particular course, but only if you plan on winning enough prize money and have the ability for that to be possible. You hope your team will take care of all that. Talented amateurs will also go to quite a bit of trouble with it. And remember, it's the fastest tire/wheel combo, not only the tire.
If you're an ordinary bloke, you look at power/speed on different surfaces with different tires and pressures. I don't think it's possible to make really fine judgements in ordinary riding, but I think it's pretty easy to tell a high CRR tire from a low one.
I haven't found low CRR tires to necessarily incur more flats. It's more complicated that that, and also more complicated than the BRR puncture coefficient.