The First Upgrade You Should Make to Your Bike
It might not be the flashiest part to swap out, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better bang for your buck.
There are nearly endless ways to upgrade and customise a bike. Flashy parts like carbon wheels, ceramic bearings, and oversized pulley wheels are out there competing for your money. But assuming you’ve got your fit dialed in and are happily racking up miles on your new road or mountain bike, what should be your first performance upgrade?
The clearest way tyres can boost performance is simply by being lighter. For example, Trek equips its R40,000 Emonda ALR road bike with an R1 wire bead tyre that weighs 360 grams. Trek’s Aeolus RSL top-of-the-line road tyre weighs 285g. Upgrading to a pair of these tyres will cost R1,80o and save you 150g. That might not feel significant on its face, but remember that you are dropping a 150g of rotating weight, which you will feel much more than if you bought a crankset that was 150g lighter. Not to mention that lightweight cranksets would be a much costlier upgrade.
Photo: Trevor Raab
The slightly more complex way that better tyres improve performance is through lower rolling resistance, which comes from internal friction or energy loss due to hysteresis. High-end tyres use better rubber compounds and more flexible tyre casings to reduce these energy losses, which means that given a constant rider effort, a bike with better tyres will roll faster. The actual improvement will vary depending on what tyres you’re upgrading from and what tyres you’re upgrading to. But the difference can be anywhere from five to ten watts per tyre.
The same mechanisms that improve a tyre’s rolling resistance also enhance rider comfort. Fast-rolling tyres use a more flexible casing that allows the tyre to deform and better absorb slight road imperfections. This reduces energy loss due to hysteresis and also results in a smoother, more comfortable ride.
Finally, nicer tyres tend to have better grip performance due to more advanced rubber compounds. Grip can be somewhat complicated to quantify, and the best independent data set comes from Bicycle Rolling Resistance, which tests tyres for rolling resistance, puncture resistance, and grip. While some grippy tyres don’t fall into the high-end tyre category, there is a correlation between price and how grippy a tyre is. This means that for most riders, upgrading their stock tyres can also boost grip and enhance safety.
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All three of these performance improvements also apply to mountain bikes. Take a look at the Trek Marlin. It’s perhaps one of the most popular Trek bikes and a great entry point into off-road riding for many cyclists. The Marlin 7 Gen 3 is the top-spec version of the Marlin, priced at R25,000. It comes equipped with a pretty good set of Maxxis Ardent tyres in a 2.4 size, weighing 964g per tyre.
Swapping to something like a pair of Bontrager Sainte-Anne RSL tyres (R1,000 per tyre), which weigh 770g per tyre, can save you a whopping 388g of rotating weight.
Photo: Trevor Raab
But unlike on the road, a tyre upgrade on a mountain bike also makes the bike better suited to the trails and conditions you ride. When big brands decide what tyre to sell with a bike, they can’t possibly account for every kind of terrain, trail, or rider style. So, while you can shave weight and improve on paper performance for a mountain bike with a new set of tyres, the more significant performance gain from upgrading your mountain bikes tyres comes from having a tyre that better suits your specific terrain and riding preferences.
In the past, upgrading to lighter, more supple tyres has come at the expense of tyre durability. Generally, high-end tyres are more puncture-resistant now than in the past, especially when set up tubeless. But this is still true of the most high-end time trial-specific tyres on the road. So, avoid tyres with the time trial (or TT) designation in their product description for general riding. Similarly, with mountain biking, if your trails are full of large, jagged rocks, then a semi-slick cross-country tyre (while light) might not be the best option.
While it might not be the flashiest upgrade, a better set of tyres can significantly improve your riding experience, whether on the road or on the trail. It’s also one of the best bang-for-your-buck upgrades available.
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