What happens if i over inflate my bike tires

Like I mentioned earlier, there are a few telltale signs that you have low tire pressure. Not having enough air in your bike tire can be frustrating. If you can feel the rim hitting obstacles. Rims are not meant to handle the blows and strikes that a bike tire does. In fact, you can easily damage your rims, making it impossible to properly seal.

If tires feel wobbly or unsteady while turning. Like I mentioned before, the rear bike tire will handle most of your bodyweight. This is especially true when you are turning at a fast rate of speed.

If your bike handles and feel spongy or lagging in response. This will make it harder for you to get your bike moving, making pedaling more laborious. On top of that, you lose the bounce and responsiveness that comes with properly inflated tires.

It will take more of your energy to turn the bike and maneuver it how you need to. Ways to Check Air in the Bike Tires. Luckily, the ways to check your bike tires are relatively inexpensive and easy. If you are without a tire pressure gauge, you may have to get a little creative. With a Tire Pressure Gauge. Like I said, checking tire pressure with a gauge is really easy and therefore, I recommend it. Without a Tire Pressure Gauge. Although bike tires and tubes have come a long way, they still experience the occasional leak.

In fact, a standard bike tire will lose a few PSI per week. Again, this is something that affects safety and performance. Where over inflated tires lose their performance, under-inflated tires can fail altogether.

United States. Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. Are Wider Tires Always Faster? Joe Lindsey Joe Lindsey is a longtime freelance journalist who writes about sports and outdoors, health and fitness, and science and tech, especially where the three elements in that Venn diagram overlap. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses.

You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. In addition to weather, sustained deceleration using rim brakes generates friction that can increase temperatures inside the tube significantly.

Fortunately, they also cool off relatively quickly, but it's something to keep an eye on during long descents. It may also be worth mentioning to your burgeoning roadster as he or she is learning the basics of hand braking. In short, don't do either.

If you overinflate, you run the risk of blowing the tube either while pumping or while riding due to sudden or constant impact. If underinflated, the low pressure could cause pinch flats.

This occurs when the tube becomes squeezed between the rim and tire casing by hitting a bump with an underinflated wheel. Not only does this damage the tire, it can also hurt the rim.

Plus, flat tires slow you down and make you pedal harder, which is just no fun. The answer depends on how often and how hard you ride. Some people break out the pump every few days, others once a week, and still others even less regularly than that. Even if you or your kids have left your wheels in the garage for months, air tends to seep out slowly, anyway. Therefore, as a bike-safety best practice , just like a car it's certainly never a bad idea to check your tires before each ride.

Especially if it's been a while. The pro's choice, floor pumps do a great job. They are easier to pump and attach, and will pump your tires up much quicker than a hand pump will. Some come with gauges, which eliminate 1 the need to switch back and forth between a pump and standalone gauge, or 2 if you're really lazy, outright guesswork.

He also said that he had put the inflated tires in his garage to see if they would seal overnight and when he came back one had blown off the rim. He had pumped them to 60psi. I inflated it to 60 and let it sit and it was fine. No air loss and no signs of the tire creeping off the rim. The tire had a maximum pressure of 75psi printed right on it. I know riders experiment with tire pressure and that pumps can be wildly inaccurate.

So, I decided that I should test the tire at 90psi. People came running to check on me. And I felt a bit woozy and out of it all day after the blow out. When that gravel tire exploded, I experienced a whole new type of tire explosion — and it was dangerous and scary.

It made me realize something besides pressure is at play. It never occurred to me that 90 psi could make a potentially concussion-inducing sonic boom. One of the engineers at work explained the key factor I was missing.

The more volume there is, the more force the tire exerts on the rim. Since a 40mm wide tire holds so much more volume than a 25mm tire, if it blows off, the explosion is much, much worse. Now I know. And remember that the wider the tire, the worse the blowout. Remember that for most riders and uses, as tires get wider, the recommended pressures are lower because the additional volume of air allows the tires to perform just fine that way.

So there should be less chance of a blowout — a very good thing. Next — Shoe Wedges or Q-Factor? After your experience, you can just imagine the force involved when a truck tire blows off the rim.