Importance of LRR tires

[Daox]

There has been a fair amount of tire threads recently, and I myself have been looking at them as well. I see tirerack has a nice article (I don't know how long its been up) on rolling resistance, and I particularly found this part interesting:

The tread area represents a new tire’s single largest and heaviest region and is the greatest contributor to tire rolling resistance. The tread and its underlying plies typically account for about 2/3 of a new tire’s rolling resistance, while the sidewall and bead area represent the remaining 1/3.

So, by airing up our tires to max sidewall, we are helping reduce sidewall flexing. However, that only accounts for 1/3 of the rolling resistance of a tire. The tread makes up a much larger percentage of rolling resistance. This really reinforces the importance of buying LRR tires IMO.

[C3H8]

it would be interesting to see some tests on LRR vs standard at varying pressures.

example:
standard tyre at 44psi versus LRR at oem psi or 32psi
standard tyre at 44psi vs LRR at 44psi
standard tyre at 32psi vs LRR at 44psi

i saw a commercial the other day for LRR tyres. the tyre maker said they provide UP TO a 1% increase in mpg's.

seems to me that the little metro guy who started this website did a tyre pressure-economy test and got a larger then 1% increase in fuel economy simply by upping the pressure of his non LRR tyres. maybe i got his figures wrong, though.

[gone-ot]

...the best endorsement I've seen for LLR tires are all the Prius owners' complaints about loss of economy whenever they switched to ANY other tire than the original OEM tires.

[C3H8]

that is a good point, however...

one thing to consider is that new tyres have larger tread blocks, simply because they are new and not worn out. LRR or not, all new tyres have larger tread blocks. this increases tread squirm. and i have read that tread squirm hurts fuel economy yet it reduces as the tyre wears down and the blocks get smaller, they squirm less.

so i wonder if the hybrid owners complaint might be partly due to having worn out LRR tyres with minimal tread squirm, and replacing them with standars tyres which have lots of tread squirm simply because they are new.

id love to see back to back testing of new LRR vs new non LRR in the various psi's i already mentioned. would be quite an interesting comparison.

[gone-ot]

...one of the european tire companies did un-powered "coast-down" tests using new tires and their LRR (winter) tire showed a definite advantage over their other "regular" tires.

...assuming (I know, I know) that both sets of tires were brand-new, their side-by-side "results" still showed the LRR-tires to have a significantly longer coasting distance (thus, less rolling resistance) than the other tires.

[RobertSmalls]

New LRR tires carry a performance penalty versus worn LRR's, and it can take a few thousand miles to break in a set of Potenzas. However, the new tire penalty is much smaller than the non-LRR tire penalty, according to folks at InsightCentral.

[Piwoslaw]

Tuning in...
I'm looking for a LRR tire which is skinnier and taller than what I'm riding on now, but can't find one locally. Got me wondering which would be better: normal RR Tall&Skinny or normal size LRR? Now I'm guessing the latter.

[CapriRacer]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

Tuning in...
I'm looking for a LRR tire which is skinnier and taller than what I'm riding on now, but can't find one locally. Got me wondering which would be better: normal RR Tall&Skinny or normal size LRR? Now I'm guessing the latter.

Barry's Tire Tech

Based on that, the RR of a given size varies much more than the differences in size.

[PaleMelanesian]

When I replaced my Odyssey's worn out tires (Michelin Symmetry - decent RRC) with new Goodyear Fuel Max LRR's, the mileage went UP. That means they were very much better, for the new ones to be better than the old worn tires.