I just read (again) that somebody would not use anything thinner than a 23cm tire. What exactly are the perceived (or real) negatives of 21cm and 19cm tires? Too dangerous? Too slow? Too flattable?
Low air volume means that you need to jack up the pressure to avoid pinch flats. This tends to yield a harsh ride and may have a higher tendency to slide out on hard corners.
With that said, I’ve ridden 20’s on my race wheels all the time. No issues for me.
Thanks for the response. I rode on 19cm conti tubulars for the first time in a tri on Sunday at 140 psi and did not notice the ride being noticably harsher than on my 23cm Bontrager clinchers at 125 psi. I did feel slightly less stable when cornering. Anymore negatives from anyone?
Geez, I hope you guys mean 20mm and 19mm tires. A 20cm tire sounds like something you would put on a Mac truck. When are you yanks ever gonna get a handle on the metric system, eh? (<–Joke, please don’t take offense and bomb Ottawa)
What’s the metric system?
WEll, you dont need to worry about pinch flats on the tubbies…so try lower pressure…try them at the same as you ride your clinchers…then let us know what you think
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I used some Specialized racing tires, soft rubber compound, light weight, so I never had any issues with confidence in corners. Conti’s at 140? I’d be fearing for my life. I rode mine at 120-125.
I do have an OLD Conti 19 clincher that I won in a race… Afraid to use it.
Yeah, I run no more than 125ish on my wheels…so they can hold 190…never tried it.
Actually, I did not want to appear stupid so I pulled my ruler out of my desk drawer when I was writing this post and looked at the part of the ruler we Americans never use. I saw “CM” on the bottom left and let fly with the erroneous 19cm and 21cm. I’ll have to remember from now on to" measure twice, cut once" when dabbling in all things metric.
What’s the metric system?
LOL, good one! at least I hope you were joking…