Damn you, Carver! Damn you to Hell!

mike25 · Jul 10, 2007

How much less does your bike weigh with the helium in the tires?

odot · Jul 10, 2007

Yeah.....seems like it would worsen the "top heavyness" of the scoot.

rangerray · Jul 10, 2007

Last Chance said:
The front still had a lot of tread left, but was developing "weird" wear patterns (Kind of like "troughs" on either side of the center strip and some cupping.

Not really weird at all. Just imagine each individual tread block wearing independently of the one directly before and after and so on and you will know why you get cupping. As a test, take a pencil eraser, while holding it vertically, and drag it across a surface only in one direction while holding it free from rotation and then observe the wear. You should be able to see that it has worn more on the forward edge because the front edge has more limited freedom from movement via elasticity. The same thing happens with each individual tread block on your tire. Hard braking with the front wheel will exagerate this wear pattern.

You will have some amount of cupping with just about every make of tire. The tread pattern of your particular tire and your braking style will dictate the degree to which cupping occurs.

Scott Harrison

Senatobia, MS

Toecutter · Jul 10, 2007

rangerray said:
Not really weird at all...The tread pattern of your particular tire and your braking style will dictate the degree to which cupping occurs.

Jestal? It's not nice to join up under an alias.

rangerray · Jul 11, 2007

toecutter said:
rangerray said:

Not really weird at all...The tread pattern of your particular tire and your braking style will dictate the degree to which cupping occurs.

Click to expand...

Jestal? It's not nice to join up under an alias.

No, not Jestal, but pardon me for using someone else's example of a pencil eraser. I kinda thought I'd read it somewhere before and it seemed like such a good example to me that I guess it just stuck. You get your education from all over, you know? I'll give credit where credit is due, though. If I could only remember where I learn stuff!

I did discover cupping is worse under hard braking on my own, though; I just never knew why it happened until I was forced to ponder it. And, I probably realized that from something I read on one of the forums. That's about the extent of my web surfing these days.