Tires

[jyngles]

Not sure how long a tire should last, but I have about 60 hours on this new tire that came with my unicycle and the tread is almost gone. I have rotated the tire to wear in different spots, but I am starting to see threads of the tire in one spot. Is this normal wear or did my unicycle come with a cheap tire on it?
If this is not normal can anyone suggest a brand of tire that will last longer?

[muni123]

what kind of a tire was it and what kind of unicycle is it?

[jtrops]

in addition to what muni123 asked:

How long have you been riding?

Do you make quick twisting corrections? Are your turns more of a hip twist, or a fluid arch that you pedal through?

[jyngles]

I am not sure the what type of tire, but I have a 20" Sun Uniclassic with what appears to be a basic street tread. I do quite often make sharp turns and quick twisting corrections. I have been working on the fluid arch turns, but quite often they are turns that are more in the hip throughout the fluid arch. I have been riding since February of this year. Like I said I have about 60 hours of riding on it.

[saskatchewanian]

That does seem pretty quick for a tire to wear but not completely unreasonable depending on circumstances.

Ironically cheep tires tend to last much longer than more expensive tires. The wear rate tends to correlate with the grippyness of the rubber used.

The smaller the tire the faster the wear is going to be due to less surface area and more rotations per mile etc.

Turning wears a tire *much* quicker than going strait.

Riding with lowish pressure will make the tire "scrub" both going strait and in turns wearing the tread faster.

Riding on high-grip surfaces will increase tire wear (like pavement and concrete) wile loose surfaces will severely decrease wear.

Riding on very hot or very cold days can affect the rubber making it wear faster.


If you are turning (or even wobbling) a lot on high-grip surfaces with a small wheel on hot summer days 60 hours seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Go out and buy new $15 tire. CST and Kenda make good long lasting tires for not much money.

At $15/60hrs this hobby is costing you 25¢/hr. That is really not bad, I can think of much more expensive ways to spend your time.

[jyngles]

You pretty much just described 90 percent of my riding conditions, so I will chalk it up to normal wear for my conditions. Thank you for the feed back and helping me along with my learning knowledge of unicycles.

[jyngles]

can you put any tire on a unicycle or are there special tires?

[saskatchewanian]

Most unicycles use standard tires. there are some really old ones that use odd-ball sizes and trials unis use the '19"' size

A standard 20" tire should work fine for your unicycle. If you really want to check you can look at the ISO number on the sidewall it should read 406 x ## on the sidewall, the ## would be the tire width in mm.

[jyngles]

Finally received my new tire yesterday, put it on today and practice some. What a difference the tread makes. It felt different and it actually took some getting used to. Maybe it is because I am a newbie, don't know.