A little guidance please

DaveInDenver

Middle Income Semi-Redneck
The research on rolling resistance has changed out views that wider tires have to be slow.
Dylan Johnson did a great video on this. It's hard to really believe how back in the day we were running slammed mile long negative rise stems and rock hard skinny tires and all that. We thought we were fast but really smooth is fast.

 

rruff

Explorer
Dylan Johnson did a great video on this. It's hard to really believe how back in the day we were running slammed mile long negative rise stems and rock hard skinny tires and all that.
Ha! I actually was one of the pioneers of the effect of vibration on rolling resistance, and measuring Crr on smooth surfaces with rollers.

I'm 64, and currently have a slammed (and horizontal) 140mm stem on the road bike that is "too small" for me and 23mm front, 25mm rear (GP5000) tires and latex tubes @85 psi. On the TT bike I run 23mm Veloflex Record clinchers with latex tubes and 28mm wide rims, 90 psi usually. When I last raced the road bike, I put 23mm Veloflex Records on it, too.

The tire size thing is going into silly territory with road bikes. The fact is that if you have good pavement, there is little Crr advantage to large tires, and the aero drag will be higher. For rough surfaces (most gravel and pretty much all MTB), a large tire and low psi is usually fastest. When gravel bikes came out, I knew they'd eventually use big tires. One aspect that is getting ignored is that when climbing, the torque will make a low PSI tire flex and distort, causing extra drag. There is less of this on the flat and less steep climbs, but still some.

The most annoying thing to me is the lack of controlled testing in the public data. The "real world" tests are a joke, and the manufacturers love to convince everyone that they need something new.

But hey... if you aren't racing, then who cares about going fast?
 
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