Pressure. No, not this pressure… air pressure! Air pressure can make a HUGE difference in how a bike rides, how a tire feels, and – recently for me – in how a bike test rides.
Where the rubber hits the trail
I used to run my tires more toward the max rating on the tires – around 60 PSI. Yeah, kinda crazy… especially on a full rigid bike!… but I didn’t know any better. Gradually I wised up and realized that a less-inflated tire grips better and provides a little more cushion on a hardtail or rigid bike. Now I tend to ride with my tires somewhere around 30-32 PSI – low enough to give me those advantages in spades but not so low I run a huge risk of pinch flatting or rolling the bead off the rim.
So now the story: I went out to a shop about 30 miles from me to test ride a Salsa El Mariachi 2 a couple weekends ago. Once I got out there it turned out they didn’t have the 2… but they did have the titanium-framed version! I said yes to a test ride (but “no” to buying it, the price jump was a little much for my wallet!).
On the ride, I felt the tires were over-inflated – so I let some air out. Then I let some more air out. I still felt like the bike wasn’t absorbing much of anything, so said something about it when I got back to the shop. They put a gauge on it – and it was still at 45 PSI! The guy who’d inflated the tires had apparently filled them up to 50 PSI or more.
Shiny!
Once we let air out down to around 32 PSI, I took it out again and got a ride a lot more like what I’d expected. But if I hadn’t realized that, I would’ve come away thinking the frame was very stiff and dead-feeling.
Lessons learned: experiment with air pressure, and make sure the pressure is the same on any test bikes you ride as it usually is on your personal bike. Oh… and don’t test ride bikes out of your price range, it just makes you sad…
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