View Single Post
Old 10-23-20, 10:30 AM
  #4  
gsa103
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2013
Location: SF Bay Area
Posts: 4,400

Bikes: Bianchi Infinito (Celeste, of course)

Mentioned: 19 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 754 Post(s)
Liked 104 Times in 77 Posts
Originally Posted by stubert58
  1. I've read in a few places that the front tire should be ~10 PSI less than back, what is the reasoning for that, and do you recommend doing it?
The reasoning is that majority of your weight is on the rear tire during most riding. The rear tire has something like 60% of the load, so having the front tire lower means that tire is more compliant and doesn't beat you up as much. In principle, you would want the front at about 2/3rd the pressure of the rear (for static riding).
During aggressive braking, your weight shifts significantly forward, so if the front tire pressure is too low, it will wallow and handling suffers. So there's a trade-off between static riding comfort and aggressive handling.
Personally, I run my front about 15% lower than the rear, but I tend to ride fairly aggressively on most bikes. You can experiment by lowering the front pressure in 5 psi increments.
gsa103 is offline  
Likes For gsa103: