Well I back to experimenting with my three inch Gazz on my MUni…some of you may be thinking back… “I thought she had that tire for sale”… well that is another story…
Anyways, I was pretty inspired when I rode with the Seattle boys this weekend and as soon as I got home I tossed aside my 2.5 Stout and put on my Gazz and complimented it with my 158 Monty’s as opposed to the 150 BE’s that I had been using for a while. Then it was off to the most gnarly rock garden and root infested bit of trail I could find nearby. I am in search of a MUni ‘training grounds’… must get better at MUni to keep up with the boys next time we meet…
and…
I had a blast!
I worked over the tough sections of trail until I could ride them clean. Hopping still needs some practice and I need to build up smoother technique on the up hills but overall my training is going to pay off!
Ah, not to forget the subject line of the thread though, I started out with the Gazz at 19 psi… but it still felt a little firm and given that I weigh 125 lbs, I felt I could afford to bring the pressure down a tad more… so, pfffffffffft… and off I rode. The tire seemed to perform really well, better than it had in the past at 19 psi… so when I got home I checked the pressure with a guage and it was at 11 psi! Crazy but true.
I know, I know, that sounds unrealistically low but that’s what I had run it at for the training ride and it just rolled over stuff great and didn’t appear to show any sign of bottoming out. I did some really cool hops off of drops on the trail and hopped over some not-overly-large logs and all seemed well with the big boy tire.
11 psi sounds kinda low even to me but it worked so well that I am going to leave it there for the next few rides and see how it goes.
Cool! It sounds like the Gazz is now working for you. I’m with when it comes to tire pressure- lower is better. There was a thread dedicated to tire pressure and riding control sometime ago and more people seemd to think that higher pressure in a 24x3 tire gives better control. I thought I would try it (again) so I increased the pressure in my Gazz and rode for about week with it. Well guess what pfffffffffft…, like you I lowered the pressure. I don’t have a proper guage so I can’t measure the tire pressure but it’s pretty low for my weight (165 lbs).
Even King Muni-Man rides with low pressure. He can now do great rolling hops and even does a nice tire compression before the hop. So hey! You can’t go wrong when you follow King Muni-Man!
Hey, girl. You were already tough with the rig you had. You never mentioned that we tied an unconscious goat to your seat post when you rode here which probably slowed you down a tad.
I question the accuracy of tire gauges at that low pressure, especially bicycle tire gauges made to measure 110 psig (7.5 Bar, 0.755MPa, 6500 Torr) or more. At that pressure I can’t ride the Gazz without it squirreling all over the place. Check it against a gauge made to measure lower pressures. You are a delicate, little thing and maybe you could ride the Gazz sans air!
Given your light weight, I could see how the Gazz may work well for you at only 11 psi. I weigh in @ 185 and find that the Gazz works best at 16 psi for my weight,
Upon studying the difference in our body weights and tire pressures, I may have stumbled across a formula for getting the Gazz “in the ballpark” Perhaps using 1 psi in the Gazz for each 11 pounds of body weight?
Experiment and find what tire pressure works well for you and your riding style. As long as you’re not bottoming out when you roll over roots or up curbs, and as long as the tire doesn’t fold over too much when you side hop up a hill, you’re good.
Crazy but true.
