stillthere

Some new bicycle tires have little rubber 'nibs' sticking out where the rubber was pressed into the mold and they were made from the slightly extra rubber pushing out the air vents. Some don't either due to different molding processes or they were simply trimmed during the making.

I heard sometimes it is called nibs, but what is the correct technical term for it?

I have asked quite a number of people but most of them didn't have a clue at all.

By a google searching for tire nibs, I only found a few hits, so apparently nibs is not an official term for it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22ti...C_enCA224CA245

Thanks in advance.

HillRider

Nope. Siping is the cuts/molded slots that form the tread of a tire.

I've heard the little mold extrusions called "whiskers" but I don't know if that's the "technical" name for them. In fact, I'm not sure their is a technical name.

Whiteknight

You will also see them called sprues. Also sprue nubs.

In auto and truck tire manufacturing them run them through a machine we called the chicken plucker. They may sometimes be buffed off rather than cut off with knife blades in the removal machines.

With bicycle tires some companies remove the sprue nubs while others do not.

When I put new tires on any of our bicycles I use a nail clipper to remove any sprues on the tire. With a lot of sprues on the tire the tire throws a lot more water up into the air.

HillRider

OK, that's a term I've heard too but it's usually applied to plastic molded parts.

I pull or cut them off too because they often hit the brake pads. brake arms or fork blades and the "ticking" noise drives me nuts.

kycycler

They are called flashing.

stillthere

Thanks very much, and after reading your replies, I googled again and found these two:

https://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...Sprue+(molding)

https://www.webbikeworld.com/Motorcyc...-pilot-road-2/

So looks likely that sprue nubs is the technical term.

Thanks again, and enjoy your ride!

stillthere

OK thanks! "Rubber flashing" also seems to apply:

https://www.ehow.com/how_2271289_remo...model-car.html

and

https://oldroads.com/arch/BLL2003_6_94_42_50_AM.html

fearfeasog

in art school, as we learned in our bronze casting classes, the sprue was the channel through which the molten bronze would flow from the funnel to the mold to form the final sculpture. like the bits of extra plastic in plastic model kits, these parts were cut off and the remains filed down and polished. seems with tires they don't take such care! why the feck would they i suppose.?

i always loved seperating all the little plastic parts from their sprue systems when making models as a kid. i'd do that for a living if i could...

jsmithepa

Well I hope you are a better man by knowing this detail.

What yer gonna do with it BTW?

StephenH

Okay, here's what people actually call them- from google-searching for: bicycle tire "still has the"- I get:
the mould "tits" (on the "Swing Bike Registry", no less!)
little rubber knobbies
the little nublies
THE NUBS ON
tire still has all nubs
the little nubs
the little nipples
the rubber "nubbs"
the nibs
the little rubber nubs
the nipples

HillRider

As long as we're doing a bicycle related spelling lesson add:

Road = a path or highway
Rode = past tense of ride, i.e. to transport ones self using an animal or vehicle.
Rhode = first part of the name of the smallest state in the USA

Whiteknight

Flashing is the thin "fin" of rubber that is sometimes seen in the center of the tire tread.
This flashing shows that the tire was molded and cured in a clam shell type mold rather than in a multi-clamp mold.

Whiteknight

A little understanding of how a particular tire was produced will tell you something about the quality of the tire and how it will perform in service.

A few years ago my wife and I were in Maryland on the C&O canal trail. We stopped in a bike shop in Hancock. I purchased two new Kenda tires with a tread pattern suitable for asphalt and stone dust trails. Mounted them on the bike when we returned home. At the time I was putting between 150 and 200 miles a week on the bike. Within a month I had casing fabric sticking out of the tread on one of the tires.

These tires had been molded and cured in a clam shell type tire press. The fabric in the tire case had not been gum dip coated before it had been build into the tire on the tire building machine. The fabric shifted as the tire press bladder forced the un-cured tire out into the mold.

I put 15 years in a tire plant during the conversion from bias ply tires to radial ply tires so I know a little bit on how tires are produced, what goes into them and what to watch out for.

The type of fabric used and the way in which the tire is constructed, molded and cured can have a dramatic effect on the rolling resistance of the finished tire along with its general durability.

shecky

This is interesting. The important question would be how does one determine such a defect before the tire is bought (or at least mounted), not one month after it's been used. At that point, the defect may be obvious to even the untrained eye, but the lost time and money is already accrued. Was there evidence to indicate the Kenda tire was substandard beforehand? If so, what should one look for in a new tire?

Whiteknight

A visual check of the Kenda tire in question showed nothing. Kenda makes a lot of bicycle tires. Some cheap and some fairly good. At that point in time I had not really thought much about bicycle tires. Trusting to the manufacturer. Experience has shown that one simply gets what one pays for.

I have had good service out of Continental Town and Country tires (26 by 1.9) on both of our Trek Navigators. Very good on asphalt or gravel trails. At max pressures they roll very easily. I had been running Continentals on the hybrid bike. After 2 years of use they started to show cracking in the center of the tread with the cracks aligned with the rotation of the tire. Switched to Bontrager Invert Hard Case tires with Kevlar casing and Kevlar belts. Rolling resistance with the hard case tires is a lot greater than with the 700 by 35c Continentals they replaced. The Schuylkill River Trail has become a problem with bits of glass in various areas. Montgomery County is doing almost nothing this year in the way of trail cleaning and tire punctures are no longer rare events.

ericthered

As i rode my new tires I noticed that the "flashings" on the left side wore off faster. I assumed that it was because I was in the US, rode on the right side of the road, and the roads are slanted to the right. I wondered if the right side wore off faster in left side driving societies like the UK?

You know the saying about idle minds and the devil.

Eric

G piny parnas

a nub is a nub

Thumpic

tire tits

tyre teats.....for our British friends..........

FlatFender

nubbins