Part of my commute to work is along the promenade by the beach, the rest is road. Often theres quite deep sand, soft & dry so road bike skinny slick tyres bury into it and slide sideways. I want some 'road' tyres for the rigid mountain bike instead...
Question is: do I want skinny tyres with grooves (e.g schwalbe city jet) or knobbly bits (schwalbe land cruiser) or do i want fat slicks (conti 'sport contact') which might 'float' on the sand?
endomorphs
get the bus, sand is no fun for riding (of any sort 😳 )
hmmm. not sure my gringo has the clearance to run 3.7s.
No, you want a ****ing life.
Thanks Dr Dolittle for the friendly advice. I'll do my best. You're an inspiration.
I live in the middle east, so the majority of my riding involves sandy trails. Riding on sand is the complete opposite to riding on mud as bigger contact area is much better for sand than a skinny one. When cars are driven on sand, tyre pressures have to be reduced to about 15psi to widen and soften their 'footprint' so that they don't dig in and sink into the sand. You don't want to dig into the sand, you want to kind of float over it. Special sand tyres for cars don't have any real tread on the either. In fact they look like big inner tubes.
The same idea of letting air out of your tyres works a little bit on bikes, but letting your tyres down to about 20psi isn't going to help your whole commute. Also, if you don't keep your power smooth and constant, and your balance perfect you're going to come to a stop pretty quickly.
I'm riding 2.2 Maxxis Ardents at the moment because their tall casing lets my run my pressures at a bit lower (about 33psi). They're a bit better than my 2.2 Mountain Kings were, but not by much.
Sorry doctorhoax, I must have had sand in my minge last night.
How about some of the 26" cross tyres which were mentioned in another thread.
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wtd-26-cyclocross-tyres
“In Holland the Big Apple balloon tire was used for beach racing” reports Bohle advisor, Gerrit Gaastra
The biggest tyre you can fit in your frame, I've tried 2.25" RRs on my local beach and even let down to silly low pressures they're not wide enough to support me on the sand, but then I am 12 stone+2 stone of bike.
just go ded fast & lean back when you get to a sandy bit
what could possibly go wrong ?