Should I worry at all about wearing down tread or getting holes in my tire while learning to hop? I have a pretty cheap PoS tire. And a good inner tube. But I don’t want to ruin the inner tube using a PoS tire and hopping.
Wearing down? Who cares. No more than riding around on the sidewalk or street.
What size is that PoS tire? If it’s too narrow, you’re more inclined to get pinch flats and destroy the tube as well.
Will your uni handle hopping? ISIS hub and a decent rim etc…
Hopping does where it down more than riding around the street. My tread is worn down more where I hop, but as long as I rotate the tire every now and then, it wears down evenly and doesn’t matter.
You should be fine, as long as you’re just hopping in place not jumping down stuff bigger than maybe curbs, you shouldn’t break anything. I learned to hop on a crappy Sun unicycle and I’ve done 1-2 foot drops with it and it’s still holding up fine. Just don’t run a ridiculously low pressure.
Don’t worry about the tread, just every couple of weeks rotate your tire. All you have to do is let all of the air out and twist it around the wheel a little so that you’re hopping on a different spot.
What about the valve? The tire always has to be in the same spot on my wheel because there’s only one hole for the valve.
Just rotate the tire, not the tube. Deflate the tire, remove one side of the tire from the rim. Pull out the tube, rotate tire (I go 45 degrees), and then put it all back and pump up the tire. Your done. Once you have done it once you can do it in 5 minutes, 10 if you work at my pace. Unless you are talking a tire with a monster bead… Then you are on your own for how long it will take. My tire comes off with one tire stik. I use one of these: http://www.rei.com/product/546083
and goes back on with just ‘thumbs’
You could probably do it without even removing the wheel from the frame but I always pull the wheel out of the frame and it only adds about 2 minutes of extra work.
(you can make it easier by rotating the cranks rather than the tyre. With square taper cranks you’ll still have to rotate the tyre occasionally otherwise you’ll just end up with four worn spots instead of one, but with a splined hub you don’t need to)
Phil
Oh right. I only recently learned the whole tire + inner tube thing, and my mind still hasn’t completely grasped the concept.