| Re: Narrow Tyres
"Arthur Harris" wrote
> "mark" wrote:
>
> > IME keeping the tires
> > fully inflated helps them maintain traction.
>
> How do you reckon that?
>
> Art
My experience is that fully inflated tires on a car or bicycle will grip
better on pavement. As another poster pointed out, decreasing tire pressure
will aid traction on soft/loose surfaces by increasing the contact patch of
the tire, albeit at some increased risk of pinch flats.
My guess is that a softer tire will deform and slide around irregularities
on hard pavement, causing it to lose traction more quickly on pavement.
On/in dirt or sand, the tire will sink in and mold the surface that it is
on, so the softer tire with a larger contact patch will grip better.
My experience with cars and bicycles in snow is that a narrower tire with a
knobby tread works best, and metal studs are excellent for hardpacked snow
and ice. I haven't looked for or found any correlation between tire pressure
and traction on snow and ice.
I'm not an engineer, the aforementioned is just a guess based on my own
observations.
--
mark
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