These trails have a little bit of everything, and I thought they'd be a perfect place to put the Snowshoe XL's through their paces. Tire pressures were lowered to 7.5 front/8.0 rear for this ride. At these pressures I didn't feel any noticeable difference in the way the tires handled on pavement or on the trail (meaning no more or less self steer), and they didn't seem to have any more rolling resistance than at the slightly higher pressures I tested yesterday. They were also a bit more comfortable riding through rooty sections of trail that would cause the bike to chatter. Still a long way from resembling any kind of suspension though.
A couple things I did notice...
There are sections of trail at Yellow Creek that are very tight and twisty that have you whipping the bike left, then right, then left again as you slalom downhill between trees. In these sections the Snowshoe's seemed sluggish and couldn't "keep up" with the rhythm of the trail. To be fair, some sections of the trails are so twisty that I've struggled to muscle my way through on the 29er before too though.
What was more disconcerting was when I tried to turn the bike in a fast corner and instead of diving inside it wanted to keep wandering to the edges of the trail (and sometimes beyond).
Basically, these tires track straight and true, and they prefer to stay that way. They can corner, quite well in fact, but a quick succession of turns is probably more from a physics standpoint than should be asked of any 4.8" bike tire.
Another thing I noticed is that the tires would slip sideways when crossing logs/branches at anything other than a 90 degree angle. Was somewhat surprised by this because everything I had read said that the silica compound was great for wet/mud/slippery grip. This could be more a fault of my riding techniques on the fattie though. Still don't think I'm running the tire pressures low enough. When I was running the H-billies I was running pressures low enough that I could "pre-load" the tires to get the wheels up and over obstacles. The pressures I ran on the Snowshoes haven't had any "give" to them to allow them to be compressed.
Today I rode through some wet/muddy sections and was pleasantly surprised that the textured surface didn't gum up with dirt. I'm sure it depends on soil type too though. Clay based dirts are pretty much going to stick to anything while loamy dirts are so crumbly that they don't hold on to anything.
So to sum it up...the jumbo tires can be a handful in the tight and twisty. They also have great grip, but that doesn't mean they'll never slip.
I probably need to spend some time tooling around the backyard playing with tire pressures to see what works best. With the H-billies I started at 10 psi, rode a couple laps around the backyard to get a good feel for how the tires were reacting, then lowered in increments of 0.5 psi and rode additional laps until the tires got too soft and bouncy for riding on solid ground (around 6 psi) for my weight. I think something similar with the Snowshoe's will be beneficial for me.
How much "wrinkle" do the tires have at the lower psi??
ReplyDeleteThe biggest and best thing you can do is experiment with psi as you plan to do.
A few pounds either way will give you a whole new ride for various terrain. If you know you're not low enough, stop and drop psi.... you'll know instantly if you need to go lower.
Experiment Experiment.....
Peace