djb

your comment made me realize that my crooked valve comment most likely comes from having fixed other peoples bikes with really askew valves, maybe I once misplaced a tube in a tire and it wasnt straight, but I certainly have seen other peoples wheels with really askew valves really forcing the whole valve/tube area. These may have been situations where the tubes were too big for the tire and had been fudged in , folded over or whatever, who knows.

its funny, like fb said, there are many ways to skin a cat and I just have the habit of starting to work the bead in from the valve area and work away from there, finishing up wherever I finish, and don't really think about it.
Its such a mundane action that in the end, if whatever technique one uses works all the time, with direction, with levers etc then great.

its all a ritual aint it, I put baby powder on my tubes before putting them in, or when I put them in a plastic bag with my fixit stuff--does it really help a tube not stick to a tire over time, I dunno, but it does smell nice and now its part of my ritual, hail mary, something of grace....

LeeG

Ditto, by the time a sidewall is that worn out it's obvious it needs replacing. Only time I had a catastrophic tire failure was a huge nail going through tire and rim and the other time I launched into a curb because a shirt bundled under my seat locked the rear wheel and I was skiing through the tire into the curb and down a cliff.

pdlamb

I'd expect 26" Marathons to last the entire trip, front and rear. If two (or more) of you are on this tour, I'd suggest you take one lightweight folding spare tire as an emergency backup. If you do wear through the tread, put that emergency spare on and have a new tire shipped 3-4 days ahead of you.

As for the worn tire blowout fears, just check the tread when you're airing up the tires. If you see threads, or a different color rubber in the center of the tire, it's time to change that tire. (Of course, that usually happens underneath the fender on the rear tire!)

Tourist in MSN

Interesting. I have done the exact opposite on some of my gravel tours. I used a Schwalbe Marathon Dureme (now discontineud) on the front and Schwalbe Marathon Extreme (also discontined) on the rear. I wanted more traction on the rear for hills in wet weather. When touring, I take corners pretty slow, especially in bad conditions. So lack of tread up front is not too big of an issue for me.

The Dureme was a good mixed surface kind of tread, the Extreme has a deeper tread for better off road grip, but it also has siping in the knobs for better wet grip on pavement.

Cougrrcj

Never felt the need to 'rotate' tires. I generally get 2500-3000 miles service for rear tire, and twice that for the front. Replace rear twice as often as the front. So I buy my tires in multiples of three.

That rough guide has worked for me for the past 40 years. Tires may have improved in treadlife wear, but now I'm putting 50% more weight on them than I did back then so the end result is about the same.

(sigh!)

DropBarFan

Today I was tuning up a friend's MTB bike incl replacing tires/tubes & tried Working Toward Valve. The new tires were easy to mount w/o levers so Towards Valve didn't make much difference & actually on one tire that took an extra 2 minutes because the valve seemed like it was hindering beads next to it from seating easily. Perhaps on tight road tires technique becomes more crucial.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/talcum.html

Jobst Brandt says talc is added by tube makers to keep tubes from getting stuck together from heat of manufacturing & gives no benefit otherwise incl when mounting:



Once had an on-road flat w/tight Specialized sport-touring tire & I couldn't remove it w/o levers for the life 'o me. Mechanic at the nearby LBS removed it w/o levers fairly quickly; he quickly showed me the technique but I didn't quite grasp the details. & it's similar with internet videos about working tires w/o levers--they're usually easier (ie MTB) tires and/or they gloss over exact steps.

Dahon.Steve

The only problem with putting the old tire in back is the following. The back tire tends to get flats more often than the front.. Therefore, since you're always using an old tire in the rear, you'll continue to get a high number of flats.

FBinNY 

In a way that's exactly the point. Put the lousier tire where you won't be living with it as long. So if/when the rear tire get's so thin that it seems to be flatting more often replace it. Ar that time, you might put the front to the back and the new tire up front, but I don't bother. I simply replace the worn tire and move on.

Actually It's been my lifelong goal to actually wear out a front tire before age, a road hazard or wall fraying killed it off. I almost got there on my commuter after 4 seasons, but close only counts in horseshoes.

hogger453

Never rotate your tires. The new/newest tire always goes on the front. If you blow a tire you want the chances % to be on the rear.

Rider10660

How often do you have hanger tyres do you know I just bought new bike going put some shwalbe city jets 1.50x26 do they wear out quick

IlCapitan

In the winters of 2013-14 and 2014-15 I did two trips of 4000 km+ in India on the same set of Schwalbe Marathon Mondials. This last winter 2015-16 I cycled again in India and would have used those same tyres once more had it not been that I bought a new bike that takes 28" tyres.
I have seen several reports of people getting both 10 and 20 thousand km out of their Schwalbe Marathons.

I do however carry a cheapish Chinese foldable tyre as a spare, just in case.

alathIN

I've seen this advice a lot of places, including if I am not mistaken from Sheldon Brown.

The idea is that the front tire does more of the work of braking and steering - safety critical functions - so you don't want to move a worn tire from the back to the front.

Tourist in MSN

It is not so much how much wear there is on the tire. I am more worried about a catastrophic tire failure on the front than on the back, as on the back I have a better chance of avoiding a crash. I have had tires go bad with sidewall failures and a few times with casing tears under the tread, most often on the rear. And for that reason, I really do not want to move a tire that was on the back to up front.

FBinNY 

Having ridden tubulars, which tend to be more prone to sudden catastrophic decompression (blowout), all my life, I've had my share on both wheels. IME - there's little control difference with flats on either wheel. OTOH there's a slightly greater with a front failure because braking weights the wheel more, whereas on the rear you can use the brake to unweight the wheel and protect the rim.

I also ride fat wired-on tires on my commuter and know that they wallow at low (or no) pressure, and I've had the wheel slide out on hard corners. This happens on either wheel, but is slightly worse up front.

So, while there's some slighter greater concern about front vs rear flats, it's not nearly as earth shaking as some believe. If it were, we'd be hearing all sorts of accident/injury reports.

robow

that has been my experience as well, and no, I don't rotate but do keep my best possible tire up front as others have stated

djb

Which is pretty much my take on it, but of course touching on the common sense/being familiar regularly with the condition of your tires, not to mention how you ride (some riders are bad with wheel spacial awareness and ride up against/crookedly against sharp objects, hard on the sidewall)

To me it's about risk assessment. I ride all the time in busy city traffic, assess risks all the time and behave accordingly. I see the same with assessing tire condition, and see no problem in sharing out the wear of tires in very good condition on a 4000km trip.

DropBarFan

That's surprising. I've been lucky enough to never have a blowout (even w/tubulars) though I saw a pro-am criterium race where a rider had a front blowout at high speed (going in a straight line) & immediately crashed. & on icy surfaces it seems as if a front slip is much more likely to cause a spill. However you could still be right on this. At any rate a lot of touring tires aren't esp grippy so it's good to take it easy on the fast sharp turns even with newer tires.

I switched from Schwalbe Marathons to lighter 35 mm Tom Slicks & since I added tire liners have had no flats.

FBinNY 

I see the risk of flats on turns (either wheel) as purely a numbers game. Consider the how small the percentage of your riding time that's involved in cornering. Then figure how rare flats in terms of hours ridden. So combine the two, and you're looking at a relatively rare event, happening in a very narrow time window. Can it happen? Of course it can, but what are the odds?

I've probably had a few hundred flats over the last 50 years, but not one happened at a bad moment. OTOH - I've laid my fat tired commuter bike down twice because of a slow leak which dropped tire pressure to where they wallowed in turns into driveways, one of which was conveniently my own.

djb

Re the wallowing story, a few years ago on a supported trip my wife and I do every summer, I was behind a guy who went down losing the front in a 90 degree corner in the dry, not fast, but knocked the wind out of himself with a good whack. Picking up his bike I saw his front had a flat and he hadn't noticed it as he was talking with his partner. It's easy to discount the feeling of a slow leak in front, I've been lucky the last few times I've had slowish front leaks and recognised that something wasn't right and pulled over right away. I think I have to touch wood on these two situations, but it certainly points out to me anyway the importance of being atune to all mechanical feelings, sounds of your bike, as well as listening to your gut about how your tires feel and reacting right away without hesitation.

Tourist in MSN

My comment above about not worrying to much about tread, that excludes ice. I use studded tires, front and rear in winter. But I have known people that rode with only one studded tire on front.

I had a motorcycle rear tire blow out, managed to keep it under control, but that certainly raised my heart rate quite a bit. I have not had a front blow out, but I don't want to learn what it is like either.

himespau 

Yeah, this would make me definitely not want to rotate, especially on roads I don't know unless I know it's going to be 1000's of km of flat straight roads.

Trevtassie

The luggage makes way more difference than the flat spot on the front tyre. Tyres like the Marathon are tough, I can't imagine how a partly worn rear could be damaged enough not to put on the front.