How to Adjust Cyclocross Bike Clincher Tire Pressure

Video Transcript

"MICKEY DENONCOURT: The type of tire that you find on most entry-level cross bikes and you find most people spend the most time like training on stuff like that is called a clincher tire. That's like a typical bike tire that you see. So it's an open design instead of being fully round. There's a bead that hooks onto the rim and stuff like that. You need to run more pressure in a clincher tire because if you don't it will--you will get flats because the tire will pinch--the tubings on the tire will pinch against the rim and you will get a flat. But the way clinchers generally work is that it relies on the deformation of the knobs to get the traction. So you need to run them in a little bit higher psi than you do with the tubulars for two reasons. One, so the knobs flex instead of the casing so much and two, to avoid flats. So if you start to run around 40 psi and go up and down from there and experiment with different pressures that's going to be what you want to do. There's all sorts of tire tread patterns available and we'll talk a little bit more a little bit later about why you choose a different tread pattern over the other. But for the most part that your big decision is tubular versus clincher when you're going to choose tires."