tyred

Geraint Jones said:

Isn't three years of light treatment a bit short? Or is it old age
that makes me remember the longer-lasting tyres of my youth?

In your youth you probably cared less about your tyres.

Three years seems a reasonable life for some tyres - it's not the
miles that kills them in general but they detoriate over time,
especially if stored outsde a lot (exposed to UV)

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune PGP/GPG Key: http://www.clune.org/pubkey.txt
The struggle of people against power is the struggle
of memory against forgetting - Milan Kundera

Geraint Jones <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

How long should my tyres be lasting, I wonder? The posh commuter
is three years old now, and came with some tyres (or rather, in
this case, tires) I'd never heard of Maxxis Overdrives. I estimate
(it's been a hard time, what with having a two-year old in the house
and living too close to work) that I've not done more than five
thousand miles on this bike. (It gives way to the tatty commuter
in bad weather -- floods and the two days of snow, anyway -- or when
carrying spuds from the allotment, and we haven't done any serious
touring for a while.)

But the back tyre has not only split, it's worn down to the whatever
they have instead of canvas these days. (I haven't seen a tyre in
use in that state since I first met the lady with whom I now share a
set of bike tools; before I took her in hand she used to ride a
gas-pipe MTB with treadless tyres, relying on the canvas for traction.)

Quoted message said:

One layer of the side-wall has peeled away in places, leaving a bulge
which makes a distinct wobble at low speeds (no more 30mph descents of
Cumnor Hill on /that/ tyre -- I did wonder why the bike was getting
fidgety), which might be down to some sort of external insult. But
what surprised me is that five thousand miles, almost all on road-quality
surfaces, can have worn the tread away to the point of revealing the
pink threads within.

i guess age will also degrade the tires. but yes better brakes etc would
put a higher load on the tires.

Quoted message said:

Isn't three years of light treatment a bit short? Or is it old age
that makes me remember the longer-lasting tyres of my youth? Is this
what using v-brakes does? Am I inadvertently locking the back wheel
too often (especially on the 30mph descents of Cumnor Hill)?

maybe softer tires now? or maybe a harder ride? i've only very recently
moved to the edge of london, which is very much road biking, i can see
wear marks on the Marathon, which has only been on the old bike for a
few months, maybe change of use?

roger

I had a cheap tyre once that wore through to the yellow
substructure in 1600km; the bike came with a pair of Michelins that
lasted close to 10000km; I've just replaced a Gatorskin after
4500km (a small cut in the sidewall but the tread looks almost
unworn). Moral: tyres vary.

5 kilomiles sounds not bad. I think it's age.

Brendan
--
Brendan Halpin, Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Ireland
Tel: w +353-61-213147 f +353-61-202569 h +353-61-338562; Room F2-025 x 3147
[email hidden] http://www.ul.ie/sociology/brendan.halpin.html

In news:[email hidden],
Geraint Jones <[email hidden]>
tweaked the Babbage-Engine to tell us:

Quoted message said:

Isn't three years of light treatment a bit short?

If I could get the tyres on almost any of the fleet to last even half that
long, I'd be delighted!

--
Dave Larrington
<http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk>
Mr. Charles Kennedy (Krankieburgh): Would the Prime Minister
care to comment on a report in today's Guardian that he: "arrived
late for a meeting with Jacques Chirac, smelling of alcohol, and
with body language suggesting a total disregard for the rights
of ethnic minorities, lone parents and laboratory animals"?

Geraint Jones said:

Isn't three years of light treatment a bit short?

No.

Quoted message said:

Or is it old age
that makes me remember the longer-lasting tyres of my youth?

I wonder if you really did so many miles per year back then.

Quoted message said:

Is this
what using v-brakes does? Am I inadvertently locking the back wheel
too often (especially on the 30mph descents of Cumnor Hill)?

You're lucky to make the tyre last three /weeks/ then, let alone three
years. Perhaps it'll be worth looking up all the advice on how to improve
one's brakes, then do the opposite - for the rear, in order to make it less
grabby.

~PB

in message <[email hidden]>, Geraint

Jones (') said:

How long should my tyres be lasting, I wonder? The posh commuter
is three years old now, and came with some tyres (or rather, in
this case, tires) I'd never heard of Maxxis Overdrives. I estimate
(it's been a hard time, what with having a two-year old in the house
and living too close to work) that I've not done more than five
thousand miles on this bike. (It gives way to the tatty commuter
in bad weather -- floods and the two days of snow, anyway -- or when
carrying spuds from the allotment, and we haven't done any serious
touring for a while.)

I don't reckon to get more than about 3-5,000 miles out of a pair of road
tyres. Heavy touring tyres may do better, but nice grippy rubber is by
definition soft.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

The Conservative Party is now dead. The corpse may still be
twitching, but resurrection is not an option - unless Satan
chucks them out of Hell as too objectionable even for him.

"Dave Larrington" <[email hidden]> wrote:
| In news:[email hidden],
| Geraint Jones <[email hidden]>
| tweaked the Babbage-Engine to tell us:
|
| > Isn't three years of light treatment a bit short?
|
| If I could get the tyres on almost any of the fleet to last even half that
| long, I'd be delighted!

Yes, well, your concept of "light treatment" is probably not the
same as mine.

I changed the offending tyre last night, and I'm seriously
embarrassed. I knew there was a bit of sidewall that had failed
on one side, but there turned out to be about sixty degrees in
total on one side and at least half as much on the other side
where the bead was connected to the tread by just one layer of
cord, and you could see daylight between the cords in places.
The tube, though, is also three years old and (as yet) still
unpatched. It cannot last, now I've said that.

The ride this morning is just so much smoother, it's astonishing.

I've decided that it's not that tyres lasted longer when I was
younger, but that years lasted longer.