Originally Posted by
79pmooney
Narrower tires require less material, so they are lighter. Same with narrower rims. Narrower also decreases frontal area, reducing wind resistance so when narrower time/'rim aero combinations are made, they will be faster than wide ones.
Originally Posted by
asgelle
Hand waving is nice, but I'll stick with the data. (and unless you're addressing impedance and pinch flats/rim damage, you're missing the point.)
Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
Can you point us to the data to which you refer? I've seen some questionable data on this subject.
Narrower being lighter and narrower being less frontal area is handwaving? OK, I guess the world isn't what it seems and that what I learned engineering school is BS. (We learned that wind resistance equaled frontal area (for a rim/tire ~= height times width) times coefficient of drag and velocity squared. So a narrower rim/tire of the same coefficient of drag would yield a lower wind resistance. Guess I have to go back to school to learn what is really happening.