I've been mounting 28-30mm decent quality tires on my bikes for years, as I've found them to be a good compromise between look and feel on the kind of bikes I ride and for my rather leisurely riding style on anything from smooth tarmac to the strade bianche.

However, when I decided to give 650B wheels a try, one thing led to another and I ended up with a gaspipe frame on cheap nylon 650 x 40B "demi-ballons" made in Vietnam. And I love how the whole thing feels.



At around the same time I had a pair of lovely smooth 30mm Honjo fenders and some nice but narrow Vittoria tires (no width specified, but I measure 24mm) and I decided to combine those with one of my favorite framesets. Added some nice parts and ended up with another bike that I love to ride. Where the bike above is more akin to a well-sorted SUV, this is a sharp-handling sports car.



So now neither of my two current favorite bikes rides on what I would have called my favorite tire width.

Yes I oversimplified. Large supple low pressure gets faster the rougher the surface is. If the road is glass-smooth, then probably the skinniest hardest possible tire wins. I expect there is a best solution for each pavement type, airspeed, rider weight and probably some more factors. Especially if your defnition of "speed" includes human fators like fatigue and recovery — speed the NEXT day is very important to a stage racer, or to a weekend warrior. That's is a complicated landscape to navigate exactly, by theory or empirically, so we muddle along and feel our way to the best solution for each of our situations.

The pros are mostly more scientific about it these days, but in the past (talking decades back) they were often held back by hidebound stubborn old hands who replied on lore they picked up when they were young, from other unscientific types. The occasional show of testing with instrumentation was usually at least in part a marketing effort, and it always just confirmed what they were already doing was right. Hapyy to hear of counter-examples, I'm sure there must be some where the testing actually taught them something.

I don't know how much science went into the pros deciding more recently to use wider tires and how much is the bike industry needing some way to make last years models obsolete. The fact that their move to wider tires seems to validate what I and others were saying, long before the pros got on board, could just be luck or random variation for product differentitation. I'm well aware that my wish that it be true causes confirmation bias, so I'm not going to claim any kind of proof. But it's my gut feeling, that on most real roads, wider tires prevent fatigue that makes you slower later in the ride and tomorrow, and that is speed. Plus even a small reduction in the jostling of your guts, muscles and connective tissue, which are lossy, could theoretically make you actually faster, even without the fatigue reduction and recovery factors.

But none of this is proved, fer sure.

Seems that much of this comes down to what type of riding you are doing. Most of the bikes pictured in this thread are set up for long haul trucking with bags the size of a Winnebago. As misguided as it may be, some of us old C&Vers still like to tap into our inner-hammerhead and hook up with a lively paceline in the area. 28s or under for me in that setting. 32+ for a day of exploration enroute to the trattoria.

Did you consider that is the case because Challenge tires suck?

I saw some Strada Bianchis at a swap. They felt like a garden hose. Just because it is big, it doesn't mean it's good.

In my little world of one there are two basic types of rides: Go Fast or Go Far/Fun

Go Fast = 28 to 30 tires on a lightweight bike. With my Trek 2300 I’m pretty sure I’m stuck with 25s but can live with them. 30s are a great match for the Synapse alloy.

Go Far/Fun = my default bike choice with 38s. Comfortable and forgiving around town and great for the crushed limestone I encounter. Bikes included Trek Multitracks and Cannondale Quick 1. I’m leaning towards the 38s for the Jamis Renegade S1 in the works. I’m hoping it will be the one bike to rule them all.

Agreed! I run 23s, but if I could find decent 20s I'd run those (slicks would be a bonus). I'd rather drive a Ferrari than a Lincoln Town Car.

You're correct, and bulgie is mistaken when he says "fat/supple tires are actually faster not slower."

"[N]arrow tires are not slower than wide tires – they just aren’t faster, either."

--Jan Heine

There is no speed benefit to wider tires. But if you prefer the feeling of riding on a sofa vs. the road feel of a true racing bike, then you would benefit from them.

There are different versions of that tire. The Strada Bianca COMP is a rather cheap and stiff wired-on tire, the PRO is the much more expensive folding variant. I have the latter on several bikes, and really like how they ride. The only thing I don't like about them are the loud graphics on the sidewall.

The fact that our Village roads are absolute crap, and destined to stay that way, due to the quality of our local elected officials, is what prompted my switch to wider, lower pressure tires. I certainly never expected them to be faster, and they are not, but the ride is now less jarring, and a bit more comfortable. I don’t mind the look either.
Tim

I've seen that for the speeds that ameteur road cyclists ride at 40mm is the best tire size for speed in the real world, crazy, right? rough roads make for rider fatigue which offsets the aero penalty. But I think that also assumes that we have a wide enough rim for a 40mm tire, for ideal aerodynamics the rim should be 105% of the measured width of the tire as this avoids/reduces turbulence at the tire/rim junction.

Maybe. One tire came to me on a bike. I got a matching one on eBay. Challenge CX tubulars are pretty nice so I thought…

edit: mine are folding pros

The Strada Blanche's I had were quite supple and had a very high thread count. A bugger to mount also. They felt great in use but were very flat prone for me. I moved them amongst several bikes before giving up on them. I can not ever say they felt like a garden hose though. I wonder if there were different versions of these?

I don't think anyone's opinion on what tires I run on which bike matters one bit.
Down at the bike shop, someone will tell you all about the latest bikes with wide tires being the greatest thing ever.
Someone I know will disagree completely, being competitive and racing.
I can be happy with a bunch of different tire types and sizes on completely different types of bikes that I ride on different surfaces.
Finding what works for you isn't cut and dried standard established by someone else.
If your ride isn't making you happy, try something else.

So to summarize, just as fast but more comfortable.

Yeah, why would anyone want that?

I don't think an unresponsive ride is "more comfortable."

Well, I'm no expert and no pro for sure. But my bike logs show me slower when I've tried the 32mm and such on the few bikes they fit. Could be nothing more than the bike feels slower and hence I am slower. IDK nor really care. I truly like how my bikes feel under me with my 25mm tires and just don't see a reason to change. And of course I doubt even 5 or 6 of my 30 bikes would even fit something bigger than 28mm. I do run some fatter tires on some of the bikes because they suit the purpose of those bikes. Off the top of my head of my head both the Poprad and the PT-3500 are running either 35 or 38 GK slicks.

My Avalon is a lot more comfortable than my Miata on the road and is certainly faster in most situations. But if I want fun, I'm taking the Miata. My bikes are no different.

38's seem to be my Goldilock's, just right. Fine for off road even in slicks but still enough speed for this old man on road.

I'm convinced that some people misinterpret the sensation of road feedback -- the frequency and intensity of bumps and jostles from hitting variations in the road surface -- as part of the sensation of speed. If you're not getting as much road feedback, you must not be going as fast, because every time I go faster on this one particular bike, I get more road feedback. Ergo, if I'm not getting as much road feedback on a different bike, I must not be going as fast.

To be fair, if that sensation of speed is part of what you enjoy about riding, great; go for it.

Since we're not racers, we're not really obligated to try to test things to maximize our speed. We should maximize our enjoyment, whether that's a perception of speed or a perception of comfort.

To mix up the discussion even more, I'm convinced that I'm partially faster with wider and more comfortable tires just because I can pedal more consistently. Personally, on a skinnier tire bike, I stop pedaling farther in advance of a hit that I know is coming. The extra element of "suspension" inherent in bigger tires lets me apply power more consistently.

Not sure what one has to do with the other, but if in your mind it is, go do you.

Excellent points.

I was thinking of my first car, a 1964 Ford Galaxy 500. At 70mph it felt like I was really flying. Fast forward to our 2014 Toyota Highlander. On long distance trips I sometimes look down and see I'm pushing 85, slow down to 60, and it doesn't even feel like I'm moving.

Sez you! I'm definitely not a racer at this late stage of the game, but am obligated to test things for maximum speed, never mind trying.
I'll sort and decide my own obligations, thank you very much!

-D.S.

I agree. Although I mentioned before that I run 38mm tires on the Miyata 610 (and I do enjoy the ride), I also have to say that on all my other bikes I run mostly 25mm tires with no problems. On my KHS Aero, the frame would only take 23mm (and barely at that)- I was prepared to hate the ride. But it turns out that the ride really was not bad at all with the Veloflex Corsa. A modern soft casing tire combined with TPU tubes really does work like magic in improving the ride with these narrow tires. It makes a huge difference. I think a lot of people remember riding on some cheapo 23mm commuter tire with heavy butyl tube, and came to the conclusion that 23mm= the Suck. It doesn't have to be that way at all.

Yah.

A good suspension lets you go faster. To extend the analogy, every form of motorsports racing uses some kind of suspension -- from motorcycles on smooth paved circuits all the way up to the super-modified trucks racing the Baja 1000.

Now, I still prefer my bicycles to be relatively simple and elegant. Personally, I'm not into dual-suspension mountain bikes and the like. But I don't think that the small element of "suspension" that bigger tires provide is by itself a net detriment to speed, or much or a net detriment. (Again, not that speed needs to be the factor that we're all trying to optimize.)

I do think that bigger tires in the same wheel size can feel less responsive. You're adding mass at the outside of a wheel and rotational inertia is close to I=mr^2 for a spoked wheel. Ideally, I think that you want to drop down in wheel size as you go up in tire size so that you can accelerate at similar rates. Also, if you want to talk about a bike/tire/wheel being "responsive", you might want to decrease the trail and/or try to keep the wheelbase relatively constant. So: bigger tires, 650b to keep the overall radius similar and keep the wheelbase similar, a little bit more fork rake.

...does that sound familiar?

Or, on a more extreme scale, you might even want to drop down to 26" wheels if you want to go up to 48mm tires or bigger.

You're not obligated to. You're certainly welcome to. Go for it!