Rolling Resistance - Tyre Type and Pressure

[Colin Morgan]

Not all questions have a simple answer - or even any answer in some cases - and tyre performance appears to be one of them.

Tyre engineering isn't the only area to suffer from complications that go beyond the understanding of ordinary mortals that don't have the benefit of forty years experience. Richard Feynman was famously asked on a radio programme to explain how a permanent magnet works - he refused point blank. The more you know, the more you know you don't?

Meanwhile, I will be keeping the Longstone tyres on my Ruby pumped up to the recommended 26 psi - and enjoying the extra mph or two this might give me.

[Tony Press]

One of the problems of being a tyre engineer is that everyone and his dog knows more about them than you because they have got four of them. So will someone explain why the last reply is correct because I can’t. Yet it’s from a teacher so it must be correct mustn’t it?

If this answer is so wrong maybe some expert should correct it- because I know very little, I sometimes resort to Mrs Google (unfortunately being American it could be suspect I know) . There does not appear to be any refutation of the poor teacher so far.