Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark McM
My observations have led to a different conclusion. Decades ago, most people rode wider tires than often seen today - 1" (25mm) tires were uncommonly narrow, and most people rode tires between 1 1/8" (28mm) and 1 3/8" (35mm) wide (these were the days before Kevlar bead tires and hooked rims). Pressures were typically in the 70 - 90 psi range.
Then, starting in the early '80s, people started believing that narrow, high pressure tires must be faster, and tires and rims capable of handling high pressures started being made. During the time that frame tubes started growing in size/diameter, typical tire widths started shrinking and tire pressures increasing - 23mm tires became common, and many were even riding 20mm tires, at pressures up to 120 psi or more.
The move toward wider tires today isn't to mitigate the extra stiffness of modern frames (even the old frames from yesteryear had too much vertical stiffness to provide much shock absorption) - its to mitigate the ridiculously high pressures that people been using during the last few decades.
|
This was the trend. Tubulars can't be removed from the equation, though. until the late 70's there was no performance tire alternative to tubulars. At that time, racing tires had narrowed slightly, but the top racing tires from Wolber, Clement, d'Allesandro, etc. were in the 23-25 mm range. There was a desire to make the clinchers *look* like the tubulars and to approach their performance as much as possible. A big problem was getting the tire to stay on the rim at the pressures that would be required for a narrow tire. Michelin was the major player and worked (primarily) with rim makers Mavic, Super Champion, Rigida, etc to develop hook beaded rims. Michelin heavily marketed their "Elan" model which looked incredibly narrow at the time. When the "aero" craze hit in the early 80's it was game over for wider tires.