[background music] Jeremy: We know some
of the benefits of riding wider tires on our road bikes. Fewer punctures,
better comfort, lower rolling resistance. The other day, I was riding and I had a
deer run out in front of me and I had to jump on the brakes super fast to make sure that I didn't
hit him. It got me thinking, I was wondering if I was running a 32C tire versus a 28C tire,
versus a 25C tire, what would actually happen? Would I be able to brake faster with road bike
manufacturers going almost exclusively to discs, road bikes can take such big tires. I think that I
know the answer to what's going to be the outcome of this video, but we got to put it to the test.
That's right, folks, it's time for a little bit of GCN science.
For this ultra scientific test that we're about to do, we do have some rules. First of all,
we're going to come ripping down this hill at three different, very seriously calculated speeds.
30 kilometers an hour, 40 kilometers an hour, 50 kilometers an hour, which is about 20,
25 and 30 miles per hour. It's the Global Cycling Network. Bear with me,
we're going to get on the brakes. If I skid, we're tossing the result, and we're going to do three
runs on each tire. We're going to average the distance that we go on each tire, and
then that's how we're going to find the winner, who stopped the shortest, who took the longest.
The only thing I'm not looking forward to is having to climb this thing like 50 times. This is
steep. I'm going to pump these up to about 5 bar or 75 PSI. That's what I normally run my tires at,
and I think that should give us a good idea of how these stop.
We're going to start out with the 32C tires going down this 20 miles per hour.
We'll mark it with the chalk when we get down there, ándale, 20 miles per hour.
First one done.
Wow. That was the exact same spot all 3 times for this at 20 miles per hour. So, let's mark it down.
20, 32, and I guess that's about there. Very scientific, like I said. That is exactly
26 feet, 8 inches. Now we're going to do 30k or 25 miles per hour, and see what we get.
Bringing some new brakes after this.
We'll measure that up, and we'll mark it down. That's 32, 40k per hour. We'll leave that there.
Last one for this one. Now we're going to go 50k per hour, or 30 miles per hour, approximately. One
of the things that we didn't plan for was the fatigue that I was going to be feeling after
having to climb this hill so many times. I think we should have talked to the producers about this.
Let's do some conclusions on this then. What do we got? What do we got?
We got to swap some tires, so going down to 28Cs now.
We just are looking at the first mark that we set for 20 miles an hour with the bigger tire,
with a 32C. That was right here, so I'm about,
I don't know, maybe two, three inches past that with this tire.
We got a little something interesting happening here. We're going to keep going. We've got a
couple more runs on this to see where we're at with 20 miles an hour, or 30 kilometers per hour.
As you can see, I've got my weight over the rear wheel of the bike considerably. As I got going
faster and faster over 50 kilometers an hour, it was taking me almost 20 plus meters to stop fully.
Some good braking advice would be to get your weight back behind the saddle and practice this,
because it looks easier than it is. We're seeing a trend. I don't know how to say this, but
we're just a couple inches past X marks the spot on the test with the 32s. Our
very scientific test may just in fact be really scientific. [laughs] Here we go. This was the 28,
28 at 30 kph. We're going up to do the 40 kilometer test now. See what we end up with.
That was where we had our 32s. This is where our 28s are. At a faster speed, we are seeing
probably about double- at 30 kilometers an hour to 40 kilometers an hour, we're seeing about
double the stopping distance. If it was 8 inches, it's now about 16 inches further.
I'm going to call that right here. We're going to put a line there and we'll get the numbers
figured out after this. 21, 24, 27, 30.
Those are smoking. It's scary. I'm glad that the brakes work. Let's do the second run.
I have to say the 50, 32 tire versus the 50 kilometer 28 tire, it's a little bit- it
takes a little bit longer to stop on a 28C versus a 32C, going 50 kilometers an hour.
Let's do this test. 8, 11, 14, 17, 19, getting it down to 20, 23, 21, 18, 19. There we go.
First test right here. I'm just going to put a mark here. Guess best of three, so two more to go.
We're seeing some pretty consistent test results. This was the 32. This was the 28,
and this is the 30. So, boom, boom, boom. Yes, seeing some pretty consistent results. Let's
see what this next test brings. I have a feeling that it's going to be somewhere in this vicinity.
We've got 3 spots here on this 40-kilometer-an-hour test with the 25s. If we
split the difference on those, again that's going to be about- yes, that's still going to be about
a foot, 1.5 foot past where the 28 was. So, I'll mark this down here. That was our 25, 40.
Last test. 50 kilometers an hour on the 25C tires.
That one landed right on the spot. That's literally-- What is it? Maybe an inch past there.
That's what I think. I'll call that good. All right, team, so
we've got to measure this up, and we've got to get some results.
You guys can see that we've got all of the numbers over here. We use our very serious, scientific
GCN algorithms to come up with all of these very accurate readings, but in all seriousness, I think
that we did get some pretty overwhelming evidence that the 32C tire does stop faster, especially
when we were going at that 50 kilometers an hour, 40, 30. I think it was a very- an honest test. We
gave it a good shot, and I think that we've got some tangible results. The 32s definitely stop
faster than the 25C tires, without a question. Now, I was saying that this came to my mind
because I was braking for a huge deer that had run out in front of me, and I had to jump on
the brakes. Let us know down in the comments if you're buying tires based on their size to
be able to stop faster. I'd be curious to know if anyone is actually doing that. The results aren't
negligible. There is a decent amount of distance that you actually save. Now, I don't know if that
would actually save you from a crash or not, or from hitting something like an animal, but hey,
you never know. Leave us a comment down below. Let us know. Thank you guys so much for watching.
See you next time. [00:10:38] [END OF AUDIO]