Road tires for use on a trainer
 

Any problem using road tires, like "Continental Supersport Plus", on a trainer?

Not really. You wear them out a bit faster but unless you are riding on the trainer a LOT it really isn't a concern. I use to swap out my good tire for an old 23mm I don't care about but it really isn't worth the hassle of swapping back and forth.

Road tire works fine, however with my trainer at least, the disintegrating tires got spread around my basement. Lots of small black particles everywhere, got sick of cleaning that up, so bought a dedicated trainer tire, problem solved.
Tim

Get some trainer tires if you are going to be indoors for a while with your bike. You won't have those little pieces of tire spread all over as tkamd73 mentions. ZAFFIRO PRO HOME TRAINER work well.

other than offending those that are OCD over it, there's no alarming problem from my experiences. Little more area clean-up & a short tire life, etc isn't alarming.

Aim a small fan at the tire-trainer wheel contact point. That area gets surprisingly hot and I am sure quickens the demise of a non-trainer tire like my Gatorskins.

Besides the clean up after you wreck a few tires, the bigger reason for me to buy a dedicated trainer tire was cost, about half of what my road tires go for.
Tim

I have been using the same 28mm GP5000 for over a year (2000 miles on my wheel-on Kickr Snap) and haven't noticed any sort of accelerated wear or unusual amounts of rubber/dust coming off. The tire still looks to be in great condition.

Every time this topic comes up on this board I walk away super confused... maybe y'all are laying down considerably more watts than me?

increase the wheel's roller preset resistance.

Maybe the roller has a more suitable tire interface then what a lot of us have. Curiosity, what brand and model trainer do you have?

Tim

i have been using a GP 4000 that came off my road bike. Over 1000 miles on this one and still working without any tire pieces on the floor. I’m using a Kurt Kinetic trainer.

My Cycleops trainer wore through a couple Gatorskins in my early days using it; I didn’t keep an exact track, but I seemed to be getting less time/mileage out of a tire when using it on the trainer AND the road. More recently I keep a spare rear wheel with an old Schwalbe tire that came with my bike. The Schwalbe is going several years now, which is fine because I hated it as a road tire, but it’s done a great job on the trainer.

I’ve got a Blackburn trainer that automatically increases resistance with rpm, destroys a Gatorskin in 400 miles, starting 3rd year on dedicated trainer tire, not as red as used to be, but not really any obvious wear.
Tim

I have a trainer tire if you want it. I no longer need it and it is looking for a new home. Just ping me your address and I can send it out to you.

It’s fine. I just use an old tire that’s too worn for the road, but still has rubber.

I have no idea why I’d do that. It works fine as is.

I have it set up per the manual, which is 2 full turns after contact plus an additional 1/4 turn. Tires (28mm) are at 80 psi. I don’t get any slipping. Trainer is a Kickr Snap.

Tire wear is a non-issue with my setup. Maybe I’m just lucky? I have ridden this same tire both inside and outside.

I have an old cyclops fluid trainer as well. I never noticed any unusual tire wear on that either, but I also didn’t ride it all that often.

agreed.

I use Conti Ultra Sport II on my Cycleops trainer, so I don't need to switch wheelsets to ride outdoors. Works fine, no problems after many trainer hours/"miles," no unusual wear. Good (but not great) outdoor tires too, probably the best value road tires around at only $15-$20 each, sometimes less for the wire bead version (which I also use on the trainer).

Since I ride my outdoor bike's tires till the chords show through and usually till something punctures them, it wouldn't make since for me to try and get any more life out of them on a trainer. I certainly don't want to be changing trainer tires more often than I do for outdoors.

For those that use their outdoor bike on their indoor trainer, I can see where there is some pro's or con's that they have to consider. But for those of us with a bike that stays almost exclusively on the trainer, it just seems like a trainer tire is the way to go.

And how does not wanting rubber dust scattered on my floor make me OCD? Does that mean anyone that cleans their home is OCD?

Agreed, I built a copy of one of my favorite road bikes, and it stays on the trainer, so trainer tire it is. Previously, I found that if I didn’t clean up the rubber bits on a regular basis, they end up all over the house, kind of like cat hair.
Tim

Agree. If someone is exclusively using a bike on a trainer and is prepared to buy a new tire, then a trainer tire makes sense.

The topic of this thread is "is it OK to use a regular road tire on a trainer" and in my experience it's totally fine to do this. The stories of road tires disintegrating after just a few hundred miles are the opposite of my reality. My road tires have been just fine on my trainer, have not shown any signs of accelerated wear and even though I rarely ride that bike outside, I see no reason why I'd buy a trainer tire until I've at least completely worn out all of the old road tires I have laying around. At my current pace, that'll take at least a few more years.

Also my trainer bike has carbon wheels on it. It has been fine. Of course it doesn't make sense to buy carbon wheels for a trainer bike, but I already had the wheels and they're currently the only set I own that fits that particular bike. I know I could buy a cheap "trainer wheel" which many seem to think is also necessary, but I've not noticed any problems so far.

It all makes sense now. It wasn't originally apparent that you weren't going out and buying new GP5k tires to use on your trainer. Perfectly fine to use leftover, mostly worn stuff.

Thanks so much for the offer! I had some trainer tires that have been put away in the attic, so I put one on an old heavy wheel and will swap when I want to hit the road. The comment about "small black particles" was the clincher for me.

surprised you dont fold sooner & swap it out now.

I just use old tires that I don't care to use on the road any more. Like if they're worn enough to be iffy, or if they have a little cut that may or may not be safe to use on the road. I have several of these kind of tires.