tony77

So i've been commuting on light road bikes for far too long and i baby them and their 800g carbon rims at all times. I like the feel and speed but i'm thinking i'd like to go a little wider and fatter with the intention of hitting kerbs and the odd bunny hop off any lips i can find.. I'm 100kg so no light weight.

I'm picking up a pretty solid looking carbon bike soon for this purpose and wonder how thick is reasonable to avoid damage from impacts. 28mm and mavic cxp 22's? Or would i need to consider something chunkier like 35mm tires?

Indecently i spotted a chap around town recently who seemed to be riding something like 40mm slicks on an otherwise ordinary looking road bike. He caught a decent bit of air intentionally off the lip of a kerb and didn't slow down one bit.

Wilfred Laurier

Generally speaking, we don't go looking for curbs ( or kerbs) to hit while on a road bike. And riding off a lip or ledge is possible, but generally after slowing down to limit the force and drop one wheel off at a time. If you want to do wheelie drops and jumps you really should be on a bike designed for it.

Also, many road bikes will not accept 35mm tires. They will mount on the rims, but the tire will hit the frame or fork when you try to install the wheels. The chap you saw with 40mm wide tires was likely on a gravel bike or something similar.

Steve B.

You don't state what tires and what tire pressures you run currently.

Tire size that fits is completely dependent on the frame design and the rim width. Some of the more recent road frame designs can handle at least a 28mm tire, some up to a 32mm. On my "fast" commuter, which was a Soma Smoothie, I like 28mm Conti GrandProx 4 Seasons. Reasonable width for speed vs. durability on NYC and suburban streets. Interestingly enough, when mounted on a 19-20 mm wide road rim, these tires measure 27mm. When on a WTB ST i23 gravel rim (28mm width) the tire measures 32mm at 90 psi.

Complicating this is what brakes ?. If rim brakes, maybe hard to get the tire to squeeze past the brakes when fully opened. If the bike is disc, no issues excepting clearance at the fork, chain stay and F derailer.

As well, is commuting the only riding you do ?, or do you use the bike with the light wheels for fun rides on weekends ?. A less expensive solution might be get a set of hand built 32 spoke wheels and put on durable 28mm tires, see of that fits the current bike.

loheiman

Wider tires at lower pressures will certainly act as suspension and reduce the severity of the impact on wheels etc. I use 35mm gravel king slicks at 40psi for commuting and it's great. Super comfy and fast rolling.

63rickert

Road bikes will survive that sort of treatment longer than most would imagine. And then they break. If you want this to work for a long time without excitement you will need skill and finesse each time you jump or hit. And 40mm tires. And to lose 30kg.

28mm tires are a minimum for JRA with someone weighing 100kg Not nearly enough for stunts. CXP22 is an excellent rim but not intended for stunt riding at all. Your rims do not weigh 800grams. More like 800 for the pair. Stunt rims start at 800grams and go up from there. I've picked up stunt rims that weighed 4kg.

When watching Danny McCaskill or Road Bike Party bear in mind those guys break many bikes and many bones. An occasional curb is within what normal people do on normal bikes. Doing it routinely means you are exploring where the failure point is.

CliffordK

I don't like to do it, but I've come off a curb on occasion. I don't like to hop up, but a good bunny hop should do the trick. Even for MTBs, apparently one doesn't hit curbs like a sack of potatoes, but lifts the front wheel over.

If you can get serious air with bunny hops, and can always use the legs as springs, then perhaps go with a sturdy built road bike.

If not quite at the "Road Bike Party" level, perhaps consider a well built cyclocross bike with lots of spokes. 35mm tires? Rene Herse/Compass tires?

Ironfish653

+1. This is known among old-school MTBer's as "Riding Light" To ride fast, you have to ride smooth, and on a rigid bike, you have to be the one making it smooth. It's a bit of a lost art in the current era of +plus tires and dual-suspension everything, but it translates over just fine on a road bike. I'd much rather land a light bunny-hop than tag a raised bridge joint on a 30+-mph downhill, esp. on 28mm road tires.
'Urban' riding, dealing with mixed surfaces, transitions, and manuvering around / over obstacles can be a lot like trail riding, and the skills transfer over. The physics/techniques are the same, the bikes just look different.
Agree with CliffordK suggestion of a bike that can take a 32-25mm tire. It can still be decently fast, but the extra air volume is good for shrugging off bumps and small hits.

I'm going to throw a wild hare out here; depending on how 'technical' your commute is. An old XC race bike, on slicks or semi-slick tires can be a suprisingly fast and capable commuter.
I know you're thinking: a 26" bike? WTF? Those long & low NORBA-era bikes actually have geometry that's pretty close to what you see on modern endurance road bikes like the Synapse.
I have a ~12 mile commute that has a mix of street surface, MUP and 'super-sidewalks' There are a lot of surface transitions that i have to ride. My bike of choice is my old Cannondale F-1000, a retired '90s XC race bike, on 26x2.0 Kenda Kiniption 'slicks' Over the same route, it gives up a lot of top-end speed to my road bikes,(spins out at ~19mph) but all my rides go down in a 48-54 minute window (traffic lights) and it's within 0.5mph of the moving average of the road bikes, because I don't have to slow down for the bumps/jumps and transitions.

greatscott

what? someone responds that they use 35mm Gravel King tires and somehow that's helpful info for a light road bike that is lucky if it will fit 28mm tires and no one said anything?

We don't know your bike, but most road bikes will take a max of 25mm and some will go as far as 28 and some won't go past 23; those mavic cxp 22 rims will accept a 28mm tire, BUT will your bike accept those? The only way you can tell is either provide us with the year make and model of your bike and we can try to look it up for you and see if the bike was designed for that wide of a tire, or you can take it to a bike shop and see if they can tell, or you can put a 28mm tire on the front, see if it clears the brakes and the underside of the fork, if it does take the tire off and put it on the rear and see if it will fit in the back.

But there is another small problem, what if the 28mm tire you buy is actually a 27mm and you put it on and it fits, yippee you shout! then those tires wear out and you get a different brand and it's actually a 28 or maybe a 29 and suddenly they don't fit? So if you can get a 28 on you need to look very carefully at the clearance, if it's extremely tight clearances you probably shouldn't use a 28.

At your weight a 25 is fine, and 23 is not, but I wouldn't be hopping curbs with it either, nor would I with 28's, it's not a stunt bike, it's a road bike regardless what your friends are doing with them, don't follow pigs over a cliff eventually something will happen; if you want to hop curbs go buy a mountain bike or a gravel bike and hop away.

taco2ewsday

Continental Grand Prix 4 seasons, allegedly almost as resilient as the GatorSkins with slightly lower rolling resistance and can be had in a 32 mm

rollagain

Road bikes are tougher than they look. I crashed a Raleigh Technium tourer into the side of a car once, sent me clear over the car onto my back in the street. The only thing that happened to the bike was that the stem quill was out of line--about 90 degrees. I properly repositioned that and rode on home. Tires were maybe 28mm, 32 at the most, IIRC. Oh, and the driver fled the scene. All I got out of it was a little soreness in my tailbone.

That said, I would never have attempted to hop a curb with that bike, as I was perfectly comfortable doing with my MTB, or earlier, a Schwinn crossbike I'd had. Not the tool for the job, is all, not that it wouldn't take the punishment.