Silty/Sandy Muni (formerly Re: Muddy Muni)

General
1

I’ve got the exact opposite problem - an arid climate (SE Arizona) with a fair
bit of silt and sand. They’re not everywhere; they just show up in inconvenient
uphill grades where you find yourself quickly spinning through a revolution or
two, then falling off. Granted, I’m not working with the best skills or
hardware, but I think there must be a solution either within the tire type or my
skill set. Does the fat wheel/tire axiom apply to silt and sand as well as mud?

Thanks for taking this question into consideration.

Carl Trachte Morenci, Arizona

Chris Reeder wrote:
>
> In my experience, a wide tire is much better than a narrow one. If you
> consider mud to be somewhat of a fluid, the more contact area the better
> your traction will be. (The same reason why it’s harder to push a large
> object through water than a to push a small one). But another advantage to
> having a wide tire is so that you can ride more on top of the mud instead of
> sinking in.
>
> BTW, I hope your mud isn’t the kind that keeps sticking to your tire until you
> have a giant chocolate donut of mud… wide tires get very heavy and have a
> tendency to sieze to the frame in that kind of mud (Something about not enough
> tire-frame clearance, go figure )
>
> Chris
>
> nyfpet@bethel.edu wrote:
> >
> > After going for a muni ride the other day I realised that I didn’t have the
> > best tire on my uni for the muddy minnesota summer that we are having. I was
> > wondering if other riders have had experience riding in real muddy
> > conditions.
> >
> > It seems to me that a tire with a few large knobs would work the best but I
> > have heard that on bikes, tires that ride well (or better?) in the mud don’t
> > do so well in drier conditions.
> >
> > Peter

2

RE: Silty/Sandy Muni (formerly Re: Muddy Muni)

> Does the fat wheel/tire axiom apply to silt and sand as well as mud?

Yes. There’s a limit to how much flotation you’re going to get on fine, dry
sand, but a wider tire can only help. Our wide tires were very helpfull
this weekend on the sandy and sometimes muddy surface of the Mr. Toad’s
Wild Ride trail.

When riding through sand or anything loose, try to keep your wheel going as
straight as possible. Resist the unicycle’s inherent tendency to “wobble” side
to side, and you will get much farther than if you let the wheel twist. All
twisting motion tends to dig the tire in.

John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone http://www.unicycling.com

“I like the way you part your hair – in a circle.” - Gary Goodsell, looking at
a photograph of me taken from the side. He gets away with it by sporting the
same hairline.

3

Re: Silty/Sandy Muni (formerly Re: Muddy Muni)

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You probably want lots of knobbies and a fat wheel. Also, I know from regular
mountain biking that there is a technique to negotiating hills with gravel/sand
or anything that is prone to slip out from under your wheel. There is a tendency
to want to lean forward (and to stand up on a 2-wheel) to get the required power
to turn the pedals. However, this shifts your weight forward, and the wheel just
spins. You need to sit back as much as you can to get your body as close to
perpendicular to the trail as you can, and not put so much force into the
pedals. There is a critical point where the force you put in is just higher than
the maximum friction between the wheel and the ground, and putting more force in
will cause the wheel to spin uselessly. You want to get as close to this point
as possible without exceeding it. Takes a little trial and error, but you should
get it. Also, if the wheel does start to slip, let up on the pedaling a little
and it should catch again, after which you can continue up the hill. In my
opinion, the technique here will help a lot more than the tires.

Luke

 I've got the exact opposite problem - an arid climate (SE Arizona) with a
 fair bit of silt and sand. They're not everywhere; they just show up in
 inconvenient uphill grades where you find yourself quickly spinning through
 a revolution or two, then falling off. Granted, I'm not working with the
 best skills or hardware, but I think there must be a solution either within
 the tire type or my skill set. Does the fat wheel/tire axiom apply to silt
 and sand as well as mud?

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<!doctype html public “-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en”> <html> You
probably want lots of knobbies and a fat wheel. Also, I know from regular
mountain biking that there is a technique to negotiating hills with gravel/sand
or anything that is prone to slip out from under your wheel. There is a
tendency to want to lean forward (and to stand up on a 2-wheel) to get the
required power to turn the pedals. However, this shifts your weight
forward, and the wheel just spins. You need to sit back as much as you can
to get your body as close to perpendicular to the trail as you can, and not put
so much force into the pedals. There is a critical point where the force
you put in is just higher than the maximum friction between the wheel and the
ground, and putting more force in will cause the wheel to spin uselessly.
You want to get as close to this point as possible without exceeding it.
Takes a little trial and error, but you should get it. Also, if the wheel
does start to slip, let up on the pedaling a little and it should catch again,
after which you can continue up the hill. In my opinion, the technique
here will help a lot more than the tires.
<p>Luke <br> <blockquote> <br>I’ve got the exact opposite problem -
an arid climate (SE Arizona) with <br>a fair bit of silt and sand.
They’re not everywhere; they just show up <br>in inconvenient uphill grades
where you find yourself quickly spinning <br>through a revolution or two,
then falling off. Granted, I’m not working <br>with the best skills or
hardware, but I think there must be a solution <br>either within the tire
type or my skill set. Does the fat wheel/tire <br>axiom apply to silt
and sand as well as mud?</blockquote> </html>

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