some six years ago i put together a bike that was to become my
favorite do-everything workhorse. i outfitted it with conti gatorskins
(28c) and cast off on a lot of miles since then. i admit didnt spend
much time on a bike in the last three years, but now im spending a lot
of time in the saddle again, and a lot of that swimming in city
traffic.
the gatorskin sidewalls are starting to get noticeably old. threads
(which i assume are kevlar, but don't know) are occasionally fraying,
and a few sideswipes to rocks and other obstacles have left some
obvious damage. (decent bit of offroad use). the rubber itself is
checking, but that doesnt bother me. is the sidewall done? how much of
the strength in the tire is supported by those one or two external
plies of well-spaced threading?
my current plan is to retire them to a bike which doesn't see critical
dont-go-under-the-bus use and downgrade to something cheap that i can
afford right now.
but this whole process has me wondering- wasn't i supposed to have
worn through the tread by now? i see folks talk about 1-3k miles per
tire. Surely I put a lot more than that on when I was riding all the
time, everywhere, for training, sport, errands, and to burn off steam.
yet the center tread still has not worn so much that the molded
texture isn't plain and obvious.
did i just ride this bike 800 miles in 3 years of daily use and not
know it? (seems Very dubious, but i do have other bikes). do
light(er)weight riders wear their tires noticeably less? does this
have something to do with that mystical 'light in the saddle' theory?
i have had two flat tires in all those years of biking, and mostly in
city glass-strewn street (mixed with a healthy dose of off-trail fixie
bashing on 700c slicks), and that one bike is the only one with kevlar
anything in the tires.
inquiring minds want to know-