That excess rubber on new tires
08-16-09, 02:51 PM
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the rear should wear off fairly fast so that shouldn't matter..
as for the front, i try to make it a goal to wear off the extra rubber within so many miles... my gp4000s still has a little bit left and has over 2500 miles on it...
as for the front, i try to make it a goal to wear off the extra rubber within so many miles... my gp4000s still has a little bit left and has over 2500 miles on it...
08-16-09, 05:07 PM
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I always thought those little "hairs" were annoying and probably caused some drag. One of these days I'll have my kids pick them off my new tires - I certainly don't have the patience....
08-16-09, 05:11 PM
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I don't care about those hairs. The one that bugs me is when theres like a really skinny "flap" of it sticking up the middle of the tire. I pull that off when putting them on customer's bikes. I think they mainly show up on cheapo tires though.
08-16-09, 05:31 PM
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Unless your taking very technical decents, don't bother. Even then it's probably not necessary.
08-16-09, 05:39 PM
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I think they mainly show up on cheapo tires though.
The flap and vertical "hairs" are a product of the molding process. What you're seeing is rubber extruding into the parting line of the mold, and the hairs are the injection spurs, where the rubber is injected into the mold.
These features probably add rolling resistance (more rubber deformation = more resistance), but it would be below a fraction of a gram, if that.
Leave it alone unless you're obsessive-compulsive; the road will take care of it for you in a couple hundred miles.
08-16-09, 10:15 PM
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You are only partially correct regarding the excess rubber seen on tires. The "flap" as you call it is rubber "flash" that is produced as the rubber is forced between the two halves of the tire mold during the vulcanization process. You got this part right.
But the "hairs" are not remnants from "injection spurs" where rubber is injected into the mold. They are actually remnants from the air venting process. Tire molds have many small holes that serve to allow air to vent out rather than form trapped air pockets that will keep the rubber from filling all the details of the mold. Without vent holes (or if the vent holes become plugged), a tire will have many defects where the trapped air prevented the rubber from filling the corners of the mold design.
The term for those annoying "hairs" that protrude from the surface is actually "tits". I was in the tire manufacturing (truck, not bicycle tires) business for many years and we had tools called hot knives (or hot combs) to skive off those pesky "tits" after the tire came out of the mold.
