OTR

Front view of my funny-looking skinny tires (no, nothing's wrong with the fork - it's a Cannondale Lefty)

.

I wasn’t looking forward to cranking ~2,300 miles on my fat knobby tires, particularly when virtually all of those OTR miles will be on pavement. So today I  swapped my 2.1″ off-roads with 1.5″ Panaracer T-Serv road tires. I have to admit, it looks really weird now. I’m not used to seeing such skinny tires on my mountain bike – it’s kind of like looking at a low-rider car with tires that are three sizes too small. I’ll get used to it eventually. But the really great advantage is the drastically reduced rolling resistance of the skinny tires. In addition to being narrower than my off-road tires, they’re pumped up to 65 psi instead of 40 psi, and weigh 1 pound 2 ounces less. All this makes a big difference in pedaling effort – and the road tread is super quiet compared to the knobbys. I expect these quicker tires will cut at least an hour off my daily rides, leaving more time to sample some of the fine German beer that’s sure to cross my path.

.

A soft ride - full suspension plus a Thudbuster!

This entry was posted on April 26, 2010 at 10:02 am and is filed under Bike & Gear, Preparations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.