Exploring Bicycle Wheel Sizes and Tires

[Over50]

...honestly I'm not sure why you'd want slick tires on a pedelec

I wouldn't call the Super Moto-X a slick (they have a road tread). I had Schwalbe Kojaks on a Tern and those were slicks. I'm commuting on my pedelec on pavement in dry weather. They seem like a good choice for that use.

 

[Motodaddy]

I will relay my brief experience with a couple of e-bike tires to give the newbie perspective. My bike came with 42-622 Smart Sam tires and my impressions was that they felt pretty unstable and my bike was basically torture at high speed. I added a body float suspension post and that was a huge improvement but although I was maintaining the connection, the bike was still rattling. I then went overboard and bought some used rims and 60-584 super moto x tires. Ride quality was much better and extremely quiet and cornering felt stable and safe. My feeling though is that there is a lot of weight drag and eco/tour modes feel like riding through molasses. I then put on 50-622 big bens on the original rims and I feel that this is then “goldilocks” for my particular bike (cube cross pro). Not to hard, not to soft, super fast and really stable. Pressure is about 3bar. There is some rattles at the front going over potholes and such which I think I will try to deal with through suspension. Anyways I’m no expert but I think I’ve hit the tire sweet spot. The super Motos will come out once the weather gets crappy again.

 

[Dmitri]

Couple of things.

First when I said 4.5" wasn't a thing, I mean that fatbike owners typically go after two sizes: 4" and 4.8" and while other tire sizes exist, they aren't as popular. Also, a huge dissapointment is when you actually measure them. We make fatbikes, so we out a BFL on a 80mm rim, measure it... it's 4.3" then we put a Jumbo Jim 4.8" tire on the same rim, measure it... it's 4.3 ugh.

Second, in my book, Super Moto X and its smaller cousin Big Apple are, in fact, slick tires. Yes they do have a tread, but it's minimal. So I call them slick. Semi-slick is something that has blocky texture in the middle and large tread on the side, like Schwalbe Rock Razor or many, many of Maxxis tires (they seem to go for semi-slick a lot).

BTW I just bought the Haibike fatbike (4" JJ) so will be able to comment more about how 4" handles when it arrives. But I think the story is the same: on low pressures, fat tires go where no ordinary tires can go (at the expense of pedal power), whereas when fully inflated, they are every bit as good as 27.5/29" tires with minimal influence of air resistance... especially on alu/carbon frames (steel is a bit more difficult).