Your tires are your only connection to the road, but they’re often neglected until it’s too late. A little regular care can prevent flats, improve handling, and extend the life of your rubber. Here’s how to show your tires some love:
Start with a pre-ride inspection. Run your fingers along the tread, feeling for any embedded glass, thorns, or wire. Remove these before they work deeper and cause a flat. While you’re at it, check for cuts or excessive wear. If you spot the casing through the tread, it’s time for new rubber.
Pay attention to pressure. Underinflated tires are slow, prone to pinch flats, and wear quickly. Overinflated tires give a harsh ride and less traction. Check your pressure before every ride, even if you rode yesterday. Tires can lose 5-10 psi overnight, especially if you’re riding tubeless or using latex tubes.
Don’t forget your valve stems, if you have removable cores. A loose valve core can cause slow leaks. Tighten them gently with a valve core tool if needed.
After wet rides, wipe your tires down. Road grit sticks to wet tires and can work its way through the tread. A quick wipe with a rag removes this grit before it causes damage.
Give these tips a try, and you’ll likely find yourself enjoying more trouble-free miles. Remember, a little prevention goes a long way in keeping the air where it belongs – in your tires!
Where I live in the Arizona desert, we have a lot of thorns on the roads. Several are small (especially from tumbleweeds). When they are embedded in the tires, it is nearly impossible to get a tweezers or pliers on them to pull them out. What I do is take a 4-6 inch piece of a spoke, file one end to a sharp point and use it to “pick” out the thorn. Doing this after every ride or two can prevent the thorns from working their way through the tire into the tube.
Walt’s excellent tip on checking tires applies in the Midwest too.
If I run over potentially damaging stuff riding I try to stop (at soonest safe spot) to check my tires.
Good to get bits of metal or glass out of the tread BEFORE they work through to cause a flat.
The reamer part of many Swiss Army knives do just as well and, if you bring one with you on your rides, a lot more.
Not sure about the “low pressure causes faster tire wear” statement. Of course front tires don’t really wear out (lose rubber) but rear tires wear due to the power transfer scrubbing rubber off the tread. Higher pressure reduces the contact patch so that the power is transferred through a smaller contact patch, increasing wear. Maybe tires that are seriously underinflated wear faster due to excessive casing flex, but the range of normal pressures means that lower pressures mean faster wear. I use Michelin A1 inner tubes, and my tires lose about 1 psi per day.
If you have a floor pump at the ready, deflating your tires allows you to give then a good squeeze, which makes easier to spot embedded things.