Adjusting Tire Pressure on a Downhill Mountain Bike

Video Transcript

"MICKEY DENONCOURT: If you're going to be doing any downhill or free ride mountain biking, I'd really recommend getting tires designed for the application. Tires with a thicker sidewall, larger knobs, softer rubber, make a huge world of the difference. You can ride things that you just can't ride otherwise. So first step is making sure you have good tires. The second step is making sure they're at the right pressure. So the tires that I'm running are from a company called Michelin, and these are actually tubeless tires like the tires you'd have on your car. My tire is completely sealed up, rim's completely sealed up. And instead of having an inner tube like you're used to, there's just air inside of these tires. I can also run these with a tube, sometimes I do. But general pressure, if you're running downhill tires, either tubeless or with tubes, is you want to run between 22 and about 25 psi. And you can do it by feel, but the best thing to do is buy a good digital gauge and just start off from there. You can ask people where you're riding, what sort of pressure they're using and go from there, but generally, a harder tire's going to be more resistant to pinch flats, which is when your tire gets pinched between your rim and gets a hole in it. It happens all the time with downhill riding or it maybe going to roll a little bit faster to a certain point. But a softer tire's got to conform to the ground better. It's going to get better traction, all that sort of stuff. So, start high and maybe start bleeding a psi or two until it feels like things are squirming and then go up from there. So, about 22 to 35 psi with downhill tubes is perfect."