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   Chris Siebenmann (cks@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 00:34:55 JST Chris Siebenmann

   in reply to

   • Dan Luu
   • Janne Moren
   • xmlns="Dan"

   @divclassbutton @jannem @danluu It's funny to me that pro bicycle road racers have on the one hand not generally adopted something that could be a serious race advantage, but on the other hand do use lower-pressure tires (and maybe wider ones) on their bikes when they're doing 'classics' races over cobblestones. They've at least noticed that they race better some of the time.

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     xmlns="Dan" (divclassbutton@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 00:34:56 JST xmlns="Dan"

     in reply to

     • Dan Luu
     • Janne Moren

     @jannem @danluu Yes! Bikes for enthusiasts are all narrow sleek racing things, but every deliveroo rider near me has these fat tyres that look like they could run over landmines and not feel it.

     Big change in how we look at bikes, definitely I'll be going for big tyres on my next one.

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     Dan Luu (danluu@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 00:34:57 JST Dan Luu

     in reply to

     Something I find funny about this is that this stuff has been advice for decades and even though the reasoning for the advice never made any sense, people just went along with it and no one ever tested it.

     See also https://danluu.com/keyboard-v-mouse/, https://danluu.com/bad-decisions/, etc., as well as most conventional wisdom in tech. There's tons of stuff that people do for reasons that are fairly obviously wrong and almost no one questions the reasoning or runs the tests to see if what everyone is doing is wrong.

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     Janne Moren (jannem@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 00:34:57 JST Janne Moren

     in reply to

     • Dan Luu

     @danluu
     The conventional wisdom for a long time was that bicycle racing tyres should be very narrow and pumped very high. This was borne out by tests.

     But the test was resistance rolling against a smooth steel cylinder. Once testing began with softer, bumpier materials that mimic real-world road conditions we learned that wider is not worse (to some point), and pressure should be much lower. The tire absorbs small bumps instead of moving over them.

     The exact conditions really do matter.

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     Dan Luu (danluu@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 00:34:58 JST Dan Luu

     in reply to

     Unsurprisingly, the tests bear out the idea that the conventional wisdom here is bogus.

     In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf_mIlU82Ac, Tyre Reviews tests the conventional wisdom that you should run a super narrow winter tire.

     I've never done this either since the reasoning for running a narrow tire seems quite bogus (narrow tire cuts into snow better) and I actually run a somewhat wide winter (255 width on a car with 235/245 OEM).

     These tests also show that conventional wisdom is wrong. Wide tires are fine.

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     Dan Luu (danluu@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Nov-2023 00:34:59 JST Dan Luu

     It's nice to see youtubers testing automotive conventional wisdom.

     In https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=T-yt5a1cWd4, Project Farm tests the standard advice that you need to change your oil annually regardless of mileage.

     The reasoning people used to justify this (oil oxidizes, blah blah blah) never made sense to me since the time-based wear interacts with mileage-based wear, so if the oil is good at 1y & 10k mi, it must have margin left at 1y with, e.g., 4k mi, so I've always stretched out my oil changes.