Outstanding article on Tire (Tyre) construction

[wrightme43]

http://www.gwocgb.co.uk/documents/tgw_mc-tyres.pdf

[mglowe]

Great Article! Has all those fancy math symbols and formulas to boot.

Nonetheless, it does amaze me on how many people take for granted or neglect their tires. Manufactures went to great extremes to give us a safe, functional tire yet kick-'em and ride seems to be the norm for many.

[wrightme43]

Rock Hey I am glad somebody took the time to read it. What did you think about the part of riding in the rain with your tire contact patch in thirds. Just how little rubber is in contact with the road.

That and the amount of power, brakeing and turning forces we get from such a tiny amount of rubber. It was a awesome article.

[mglowe]

Talking about the three zones on page 40, I do find it [scary] or difficult to understand how my REAR tire disperses water by the time it gets to zone c. In general I can assume the FRONT tire takes care of most of the water.

For the rear tire with only 5000+ miles on the tire, the contact patch is relatively flat. I don't believe off hand there is much of a groove[s] to effectively remove water. On the other hand, it has more contact surface area, being flatter, than when new. Am I making sense?

I found last year, in heavy rain and in great surprise, our tires of today have great rain qualities. Remembering my first rain ride in '85, on a V45 Sabre, it scared the living daylights out of me. Those tires had more groves to remove water than ours but I didn't at the time feel the water was dispersed by zone c - it was squirrelly.

Maybe I was to fast for the condition...? It does makes sense to simply slow down to allow time for the water to remove before zone c. I just wish it were dry in zone b.

There were many good topics in the article. Tire repair was a good one too.