mjoekingz28

Hey. I like this forum the best so I posted this general question here..


I understand having mudboggers, clodhoppers, aka mudtires on a pickup truck that can get stuck in mud.

But

On a Trek 820 or just a simple 'ride-around-town' cruiser, why not have slicks? Do knobby tires protect the rim when off the pavement?

I ask, because, I have this mountain bike yet there are no mountains pretty much in my whole state... I do possibly take slight curbs, ride through grass, some mud and dirt, cut-up in some gravel, etc, etc, but IMO nothing to justify a mud tire that will probably degrade most of my riding which is on pavement.

I have a road bike with near slick tires, so I am not thinking full slicks for a mountain bike, but possibly just a few grooves-not thornbird type knobs.......



I really doubt I can generate enough torque to spin the rear in mud or ride at the edge to tuck the front end around some sand in a curve......




I am referring to what I think are the stock Bontrager 26X2.00 LT3 tires.




Or is there even a benefit to be had by having road centric tires versus what appears to be a 50/50 blend? I typically ride under five miles at a time with this bike, so distance should not be a factor IMO......

chasm54

The amount of tread you need is dictated by the surfaces you intend to ride on. On the road, slick or very lightly treaded tyres put more rubber to the road and are faster as well. On loose surfaces you're going to need something that digs in and generates a bit of traction. Only you can judge whether the surfaces you ride on are navigable on slicks. There are plenty of touring tyres like marathon supremes that can handle some unpaved surfaces but roll well on the road, have a look at them.

saddlesores

just get yourself some basic all-around tires, like these here kenda k935's in 26*1.5.

https://g01.s.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1IQnIJ...-bike-tyre.jpg

smooth raised center tread for fast rolling, and a row of not-so-aggressive knobblies
on the shoulders for a little more traction in dirt and sand.

mstateglfr 

What you describe in terms of riding really doesn’t need an aggressive tread.In fact, you will have a smoother and faster(easier) ride on slicks.


There are a ton of options out there in quality, cost, and width.

Ill just toss 2 options your way.

• https://www.nashbar.com/bikes/Product_10053_10052_576495_-1___ GEAX Evolution City II I have a set of these on a rigid frame mtb and love them. They are 1.9” / 48mm wide and roll really well on pavement, dirt, and gravel. They arent incredibly light, but it’s an almost 2” wide tire, I wasn’t looking for lightweight. $30 total for 2 tires and free shipping if you spend $50. There is some tread too, which helps the bike still look the part. The tread doesn’t seem to (negatively)come into play much on pavement.
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Kenda-K-193-Kwest-Commuter-Wire/dp/B00DU4TTE6 Kenda K193 I have used these on a bunch of different bikes. They come in 1.25” or 1.5” width for 26” mtb wheels. The Amazon option linked is really expensive, its linked just to get an idea of the tire. mtb slicks with this tread pattern are made by a few different companies, I believe. Basically, it’s a $12-20 tire that’s slick and rolls fine. It is fine on pavement, hardpack dirt, gravel, etc. It’s a commuter/around town tire.

Bretonbikes

You don't need any tread unless you are on a surface that only offers grip when you cut into it - dense (not deep) mud and wet grass being typical - otherwise almost all surfaces, tarmac, gravel, cinder paths, smooth rock are best using a slicks whether wet or dry - faster (often very much faster) and longer lasting for a given weight. Tread was introduced on road tyres 100 years ago to distinguish between makes and models of tyre and it's a bad habit that's continued - imagine going into a bike shop and seeing 50 different tyres all hanging up - all of them slicks - a marketing man's nightmare. Avocet did some work on this years ago and brought out some gorgeous slicks with different 'tread' thicknesses for touring, tandems etc - wish you could still get them but even something cheap like Schwalbe Spicers will convince you.

cyccommute 

First, I wouldn't call the Bontrager LT3 a "knobby" tire. It's not that different from the Geax and two Kendas suggested above. It falls more on the road side of what are referred to in mountain biking as a "hardpack" tire. The side knobs are low and it would be a sketchy tire to ride fast on gravel or hard surfaces with bit of gravel on it. it would tend to wash out on fast, loose corners which can be very scary when you are going fast off-road. They would be much better than the other tires suggested above but not by much.

A tire on the more mountain bike end of the hardpack spectrum is something like the Dartmoor from Performance. It's got a more aggressive side knob which grabs the surface better in corners and doesn't wash out as easily.

That said, I would say that your tires are completely adequate for the type of riding that you describe. The would be far more adequate than the Kenda Kwest or Geax tires and lighter than the Kenda K-193. The problem with those tires is that while they work well for road riding...they roll fast and stick to pavement well...when the road or trail gets slick or is covered in gravel that resembles marbles, they don't have even the minimal side grip that the Bontragers do.

Side grip is more important for off-road tires on bicycles than the center knob. The center knobs do provide a bit of traction but with the limited power we little monkeys can put out, they don't provide as much traction as you can get with a more powerful engine like an internal combustion one. The real reason to use a knobbed tire with a tall side knob is for cornering grip...especially on the front. You really don't want the front wheel to slip or slide sideways while riding. With a small contact patch and only two wheels, even a slight slide sideways on the front can end up with you on the ground. You want a tire that is going to hold onto the ground until you get around the corner.

On pavement, this isn't a problem because pavement is a fairly consistent surface. A slick tire can depend on the inherent stickiness of the rubber to grip and pull you around a corner. But when the surface is soft or inconsistent, a side knob digs down into that surface and pulls the bike (and rider) around the corner rather than just skip over the surface. Sand, mud and softer trail surfaces can utilize a taller, more aggressive knob better while you can get away with a smaller less aggressive knob on hard pack surfaces. In mountain biking, the problem is that you should plan for the surface you are likely to encounter and most people will probably go for a taller knob to cover more surfaces. They lose a bit of speed but falling over has a huge impact on your overall speed as well

I would say just keep the tires you have and find places to ride that push their limits. You don't need mountains to ride a mountain bike. Flat, fast, twisty single track on flat ground can be as much fun and as challenging as steep drops and huge climbs...sometimes more so.


Slicks on pavement or smooth trails like rail-trails are fine but I wouldn't say that they are "best" for almost all surfaces. Outside of those two surfaces, the limitations of a slick tire are quickly...and often painfully...found by the rider. In my experience, the world has more surfaces where a knob is a benefit rather than a detriment...unless you stick strictly to pavement.

MichaelW

Trek 820 was a decent off roader. Even if you lack mountains, you can often find unpaved tracks and trails.
As a multi-use doitall bike, you can fit other tyres.

Tourist in MSN

It sounds like you already understand the role of tread on a tire. When looking at a tire in the store say to yourself, would this tire have adequate tread to give me the grip I need in wet grass if I don't do something stupid?

mjoekingz28

Thanks folks. I have a road bike for paved surfaces nly when I want to travel far or go fast. This MB is kind of just for toolin' around town, exploring, and building strength.




I know on my road bike, that, even hard ground or grasses is a nono, so I do not want to handicap the MB by bending rims, popping spokes, or pinching tubes. As said, there are pretty much no uphill nor downhills on my rides. I dont want to have to walk it everytime the pavement ends as I should do with a road bike with 700X23-25c tires......I just want it to.....heh, I guess there is nothing wrong as it sits, just thought street tires would be more enjoyable, ride smoother, less strain/drag on the motor, etc......

mjoekingz28

Thanks again for the information. I guess they dont seem all that bad now. Maybe tire makers are at odds'ends making dual tires......seems they have done great work letting us have the best of both worlds by having a tire that works great either as an onroad tire or an offroad tire, and then, simply not being crippled when asked to roll on the other surface.

It seems when I do ride this bike I like destruction. Running over trash in the road, limbs and stuff. It is rather nice not having to dodge obstacles as you do with road bikes. But, most of the ride is paved, but also, as was pointed out, its nice not having to think about it when going thru offroad terrain.....just like putting H rated tires on a Zrated car and relying on your memory to say hey, you are over the limit and maybe one day forgetting you cheaped out on tires and make a high speed run, then become a test pilot.... Instead of having that buffer of having a tire that is designed to work past the speed the car can go.....


Most of my bicycling is on a 700c road bike. I like an around town cruiser without having to have a place to lean the bike ( since there is a kickstand), getting into an aero tuck just to ride short distances, has utility, and can pretty much ride any surface.. Not a MB but an explorer, utilitarian, Jeep sort of ride. Then have the road bike in the stable when you want to travel far or ride fast.


which forum should I be reading?

Car free
roadie
???

Wilfred Laurier

Except for when riding on loose surfaces, the tire width is more important than tread pattern. If you want to hop curbs and snap fallen branches (and who doesn't?) then get some wider road tires (like 26X2.0 or so) which will also give a smoother ride over potholes and increase traction. If you can contain your enthusiasm for jumping off stuff, then a little narrower like 26X1.5 or so may be better. Knobby tires have no benefit - and in fact have less traction on pavement - compared to slicks or minimally treaded tires.

Buffalo Buff

I hop curbs and bunnyhop off those wide speed bunps every day on my commute. I also go off roading through grass, mud and gravel. I do all of this rain or shine.

I'm running 25mm gatorskins on 24 spoke wheels and weigh 205lb

plodderslusk

Seldom seen it summed up so wisely !

Happy Feet

While I like slicks for going fast I temper my enthusiasm by having at least some minimal tread for cornering in the wetter/colder months. I have leaned into a corner more than once and had the tire slide out from under me; once famously as a courier in Calgary traffic where I pancaked across the intersection in front of the cars that were (thankfully) stopped there.

During the summer I was running these Cuidad's 26x1.50. Very minimal tread (almost a slick) and fast, but not too robust for sustained gravel I felt.



For winter I swapped them out for these all rounder's 26x1.75. Good tread for cornering and a bit larger to absorb road shock but still amazingly fast because they mainly run on the solid center bead for road use. I keep my tires highly inflated so they do this. You see these all the time on older commeter type mtb's but they are usually 26x2.00 and larger. Too big for my taste in touring but the 1.75 is a good compromise between speed and robustness IMO. If I were looking for one mixed terrain tire I would probably go with this design.



Another tire I use for touring is a "marathon" type tread, these being 26x1.75. Beefy enough to absorb road shock but still pretty darn fast when highly inflated. Again, they mostly run on the center but have some tread for cornering.

mjoekingz28

U R A funny guy Wilfred Laurier


Buffalo Buff- that's the idea. I like destroying the destroyed, I guess that is how you word such a thought! Trash in the street, why not kick it around. I would like being able to pickup 'some' litter and debris, hence the milkcrate thread......also, that is part of the beauty of biking. You can pretty much tear it up and not only do no damage, you may actually improve conditions... Unlike some stuff, aka hopping a curb in a car and causing thousands in damage and possible medical conditions among other stuff...


Happy Feet that Ciudad Juarez tire looks like a car tire. Is it just the angle of the camera or something or is it not round at all?

MassiveD

I'm not convinced that going down in a corner on the pavement is something knobs or even cuts are going to stop. You don't get the chance to run it both ways. Basically they would be worse unless your tire cut through whatever was there and got a bite on pavement. If it was ice or oil that isn't going to happen, nor can you get a grip on fine sands and silts that accumulate at corners by running knobs. Anyway, most cyclist in the road, or on tour are not laying her over on the edge of the tire, and there are not many situations where doing that in circumstances were deep treads were the answer would see you sticking on the road. You would either need serious camber, or a material just soft enough for the tread to grip, but not so soft it tears out.

cyccommute 

First you have to realize that bicycling is amazingly efficient. Sometimes too efficient. A human on a bicycle is the most efficient mode of transportation on the planet. It takes less energy to move a bicycle at 15 mph than it does to walk at 4 mph. If you want to build strength on a bicycle, one of the best ways to do it is to cut into that inefficiency by making the pedaling harder. A more aggressive hard pack knob at around 45psi will increase the rolling resistance...and decrease energy efficiency...by about 2 times over a slick road tire. Your tire isn't all that aggressive but the rolling resistance will be higher than a slick as well. If you really want to build strength, go to a very aggressive knob. They are much, much harder to push.

Thick, agressive knobs aren't there to protect the wheels. An aggressive knob is there for traction. What protects your rims is the volume of the tire. It acts as a cushion for impacts, especially at the lower pressures that mountain bike tires use. You want to run enough air to keep the tire from bottoming out and allowing the rim to hit the object that the tire is rolling over. The problem, however, is balancing the pressure. If the pressure is too high, the tire doesn't roll over objects but bounces off them. You start to lose control. On a road bike you would never hit as large an object as you do regularly on a mountain bike because the tire deflects off the object and throws you off line. Off-road, high pressures result in the bike bouncing all over the place in an unpredictable manner.

If the pressure is too low, the tire will bottom out and result in a pinch flat. Tubeless tires solve the pinch flat problem...no tube to pinch...but many people forget about the other part of the equation which is the tire bottoming out and bending the rim.

Spokes aren't protected by the tires at all. Nor are they protected by the rim. Because of the way that a bicycle wheel is put together, the spokes are working independently from the rim and tire. The spoke can...and does...slide up and down on the rim as the wheel rotates. At the bottom of the wheel, the rim deflects upward slightly and loosens tension on the spoke. The other spokes of the wheel pick up that lowered tension and spread it around so that the whole unit stays balance but there is a decrease in tension at the bottom of the wheel. Impacts can decrease the tension even more which means that the other spokes have to pick up the slack, literally. The spokes are protected from breakage by the strength of the spoke and the tension of the spoke on the rim but the tire has little or nothing to do with protecting the spokes.

Dual purpose tires are like hybrid bikes...they are asked to do two different jobs neither of which they do all that well. Your current tires are okay for what you are using them for but you'd quickly find their limitations in situations where a more aggressive tread is needed, just as you'd also find their limitations in terms of speed on the road. In mud, for example, the tire would very quickly become a slick and would act like a slick where you don't really want that. You'd likely end up face down in the mud at the first turn. You'd probably find them to be mostly useless in sand as well. They would just cut through the sand and leave you walking. Same goes for loose rocky climbs.

I'm sure that they will do what you want them to do currently but be aware that they have severe limitations if you want to do something more adventurous.

Happy Feet

It's more like a fat horizontal D. It's quite nice for what it does but the tread is pretty minimal and I think it is wearing too fast under load for the price. On a road tour they work fine but I think extended gravel would play havoc with them. For comparison it was $30CAD compared to a Marathon that was $50CAD.

I dunno? All I know is I ride and commute in the rain a lot and found slicks and 700c skinnies to be sketchy on the corners. I started using slight treads running up the sidewall a bit and feel more secure. My take is that it prevents initial hydroplaning that skips the tire out which creates further instability. I don't like knobbies for anything road or gravel though. I also see some hybrid tires that have knobs on the side and a wider minor tread in the middle but I think those create too much forward friction and the sidewall is too aggressive. For non summer use I like a strong center bead with a mild sidewall tread which doesn't affect forward momentum. Just my opinion/experience YMMV.

cyccommute 

You've missed the point of knobbed tires. A light knob like those on mjoekinz28's Bontragers aren't there to help with on pavement performance. They are there to help with off-road traction on looser surfaces but they are limited because of their size. A taller, heavier knob does a much better job on a wider variety of loose surfaces but they suffer somewhat on harder surfaces. Some people think that they are dangerous on pavement but in 30+ years of using them on pavement, I've never found them to be so.

As to ice, snow, sand and gravel or even oil on pavement, a slick tire is going to be even more limited than a slight knob. It doesn't take much lean angle to have a slick tire slide out in a corner on slick surfaces.

Are you certain of that? I go around corners aggressively no matter what bike I'm riding and most people I see on the road ride similarly. Bicycles don't...and can't...lean over like a motorcycle can because our center of gravity is too high but even a moderate lean into a corner will result in moving off the center of the tire and significantly onto the edge.

cyccommute 

I too have found slicks to be sketchy on slick surfaces. Painted surfaces are the worst. However, that said bicycles don't experience "hydroplaning" like a car. Our tires are too narrow to develop a layer of water under the tires like a car does. That doesn't mean that our cornering traction is better, however. While it's not "hydroplaning", we are still on a slick surface with a slick material which means that the tires can slide. In a straight line, this is more controllable but when you add in a lean, a smaller contact patch due, an inherently less stable vehicle, and the force vectors, sliding out on a corner is almost inevitable.

There is also the surface you are riding on to consider. This article from BikeRadarUSA talks about tests performed at Wheel Energy that kind of pops the bubble on slicks for bicycles:

I wouldn't say that bikes should run knobbies on pavement but from my experience, a little bit of tread does help when the road is wet.

mantelclock

Very true, even for us non-aggressive types. I bought a set of Continental Nordic Spikes last year for winter riding. They come with either 2 or 4 rows of spikes (120 or 240 spikes) I opted for the 120 spike tires, with no spikes down the center line. When riding on smooth pavement, on a gentle turn I can hear the side spikes hit the pavement.

mjoekingz28

Happy Feet, I believe you are correct about having tread for wet roads.

Look at AMA road racing. They use gumball slicks on dry days and many, many cuts in the tread in rain. I think this is a true statement as I have seen photo(s) of a rain tire. And also, on motorcycles, it seems the sport touring tires have better wet grip than other tires.

fietsbob

Hitting Motorcycle Race speed, siped tires may matter... at bicycle speeds there is No Hydroplaning .. contact patch is small also..

The slick surface of freshly painted stripes Steel plates over excavations Does need to be treated with Caution

On Pavement the Knobs reduce surface of tire contact with the road ..

This is a touring tire mixing Both to be usable riding past the ends of the paved routes,

and continuing your adventure https://www.continental-tires.com/bic...travel-contact

mstateglfr 

38mm Kenda Kwest tires somehow managed to get me thru 10mi of hardpack/soft dirt/gravel/loose gravel roads on Saturday. I didnt go fast around corners though, since I was on gravel roads and that just doesnt seem safe no matter what tire I have.
Just thought a ride report about how the 'hardpack' tire can more than manage multiple surfaces with aplomb would be helpful since the tire was dismissed as not being capable.

09box

I ride on some hybrid type tires with no knobs but with tread. Pump them up and they roll fine on the road and i've had them on some pretty hairy trails in the woods. Granted traction is a little limited in heavy mud but i've managed.