Putting the wheel in backwards will mean the pedals will come loose despite regular tightening and will try to fall out at the worst moment also riding with the pedals the slightest bit loose totally kills cranks and rips out the thread.
If you want to put the wheel in backwards you will have to pull off the cranks and swap them round, which is probably more work than just pulling the tire off
jim
I’d disagree with what you’re saying here completely, faster riders do ride fast enough for the mud shedding properties of the tyre to be useful. They also lean over to rail corners on downhills in a similar way to bike riders. If you’re just doing trials, then maybe not, but muni riding certainly uses the tyres in a much more similar way to a bike than you’re suggesting.
Also, different tyres have very different tread designs, so you can’t make sweeping generalisations about running them backwards. For example some tyres (IRC make some like this) are designed to be run one direction on the front for braking, and one direction on the back for acceleration. With tyres with a single direction on them, what you get or lose by running them backwards basically depends on what they’re designed for primarily.
It’s also pretty obvious that if running the tyre backwards affects the way in which the tyre rides, it must be affecting the way in which it contacts the ground, making it grip more in some situations and less in others. Depending on your riding style this will clearly make a difference to the wear rate, although it might not be significant.
To be honest though, all this stuff about more traction, or more protection against slipping backwards by running the tyre the wrong way is all the sort of stuff that only people who’d be better off just practicing more care about. I’ve ridden a brand new gazz with it on backwards until it wore out, and several the right way round and it made no difference to the ride.
Joe
Can you swap the cranks around?
That’s good, cause I was gonna take them off anyway to grease them. Maybe I should do that. I have splined hub. That seems to solve both my problems. Are you sure I can do that?
yeah sure, go for it. cause you’ve got splined you can take them off and put them back on whenever you want because you won’t wear them down like standard taper.
just make sure you take them off properly, dont whack them with anything!
instead of taking my tyre off and turning it the right way i just took the cranks off and switched the wheel around. (i was changing crank sizes anyway).
Do I need a bearing puller for that or will the allen keys do?
what brand of hub do you have?
i think with the koxx splined you need a crank puller.
with the KH i think it’s got a self extracting bit but i’m not sure, neither am i with profiles.
(you might be able to just pull them off with your hands)
if you’ve got a DX if you undo the pinch bolt on the crank and the bolt holding it in to the hub, you should be able to pull it off i think.
(don’t take my word for any of this, i think that’s how it is but i’m not too sure)
I have QU-AX.
Come to think of it, my whole wheel could already be on the wrong way round. When I was assembling neither the cranks nor the pedals had any markings on them as to whether they are left or right. I just guessed by the thread pattern, but I could have messed it up. How do you tell if the wheel is on the right way?
By the way, your link sends to your previous message.
The pedal axle stub should have an R or an L stamped on it and the cranks should also have an R or an L stamped on them too.
If you can’t fin the R or L, another way to tell is that the righthand pedal tightens clockwise and the Lefthand pedal tightens counter-clockwise
jim
Checked. It is on the right way. And the pedal did have an R stamped on the axle. Well, I can swear it wasn’t there before.
I guess this means I’ll have to swap the cranks around.
I find it seriously hard to believe that a tyre will wear faster by putting it on backwards. The tyre is static in the road/tyre reference frame, and nothing changes that, so only minimal wear is being done on normal riding. Unless you can tell me WHY it wears faster, I’m going with onetrack. And please refrain from yelling at me, saying you saw it with your own eyes. I’m inclined to say that you did something different to your tyre, like lots of gaps.
one person’s experience with one tire isn’t enough evidence to predict the outcome of 100 other riders with 100 other tires. read up on some statistics before you spout off more nonsense…
We all know that different treads wear down at different rates?
For example a knobbly tyre ridden on the road will wear down much faster than a slick tyre.
This is at least partly because of the contact patch being smaller or differently shaped right?
When you ride the tyre in the opposite direction, there’s a difference in how it feels, so presumably the contact patch is differently shaped, otherwise it wouldn’t feel any different? It doesn’t seem to hard to believe that this could have different wear characteristics.
Similarly under braking or acceleration, the characteristics of a sawtooth shape which is basically what a lot of directional tyres are is clearly different depending on which direction you’re going in. In one direction it’ll have a tendency to dig in, in the other direction the smooth shape of the sawtooth will allow it to slide more easily.
Joe
i’m just trying to say that my tyre did wear down faster backwards.
i know it didnt wear down because i was doing gaps, mainly because i can’t do gaps. lol.
when my tyres ridden forward it goes nicely, but backwards the grip tends to be more bumpy and gives a rougher ride.
Ill just put in my $0.02. I run my Muni tire back wards and i like it. It gives me some more traction and i feel that it gives me a bit more of an edge when climbing and descending. Running your tire backward wont hurt it from my experiences. I think its more of a personal thing. Some like to run it backward, some like it foreward…its probably more of a preference thing then anything else…If you like it backward then run it back ward, if it feels wierd then switch it back.
On a side note, i highly doubt that you could dent a rim from removing tires…Its happened once to me but the rim was like 3 years old and had sat out side the whole timeo it was significantly weaker that any new rim.
-Phil
just a tip if you’re removint tyres and whats not, i was putting a tyre back on with a screwdriver cause i couldn’t find the levers, and when i finally got it on i realised i punctured the tube with the screwdriver, i wasn’t very happy.
i’ve scratched my rim getting tyres off and on, which sucks because it’s annodized, so i highly recomend plastic levers
i run both the tyres on my unis forwards. i find thatone of them doesnt really make a difference which way it is and the other one just gives more grip goign forwards. on my BC wheel how ever i tend to ride with the wheel backwards most of the time. it doesnt wear down the grip faster or anything but i jsut like it that way.
Sorry to say it but i still agree with the other guy. seriously, i dont think that one persons experience can definitavly proove anything. this argument is pointless and pretty much sums up my rsu experience… spam and unfounded arguments with a bit of flaming to go along with it. tho i cant complain because where else would i be able to talk to so many unicyclists? 
It was just a suggestion.
it’s just as relevent to the topic as “i build bikes and unicycles as a hobby”. i was just pointing that out to prove that I most likely have better mechanical problem solving skills than someone who “builds unicycles and bikes as a hobby”
not like a dh bike, trust me.
I’m just saying that you obviously overlooked a factor, and are giving bad advice, and spreading misinformation based on that oversight.
the natural flex of the tire under load knocks most of the mud off anyway. I’m saying you won’t notice a difference in mud sheding abilites on a uni no matter which way you run the tire, unlike you would on a bike (which is who the arrow is for). And no, unicycles do not go fast enough to lean as far, and put as much latteral stress on the tire as a bike would. you’d pedal stike before you could lean that far.
this is true, running the tire backwards wears down the opposite corners of the treadblocks, but only to a degree. after that it wears the same as it would if where forewards. Remember, I’m only taking about corners of treadblocks, the overall life of the tread won’t change.
this is true aswell. the amount of grip change with direction is slight, but some of us want to get the most possable out of the ride.