keeping bikes off the ground?

Whether you use your bikes every day, or store them for the winter,
what are the advantages to keeping your bike off the ground (besides
the obvious of saving room)?

Does it allow your tires to last longer, or perhaps not lose air
pressure over time?

On Thu, 12 Jun 2008 23:04:30 -0700 (PDT), Ablang
wrote:

Whether you use your bikes every day, or store them for the winter,
what are the advantages to keeping your bike off the ground (besides
the obvious of saving room)?

Does it allow your tires to last longer, or perhaps not lose air
pressure over time?

Dear Ab,

Nope.

The air pressure rises too little to measure with conventional gauges
when each tire supports a load of about ten pounds.

(Look at the normally inflated tires of a bike as they rest on the
ground--not much flattening, is there?)

The gradual loss of air pressure is a matter of the solubility of air
(80% N2, 20% O2) in the butyl or latex rubber. The gases are much more
soluble in natural latex, so tires with those tubes lose air faster.

(CO2 is _much_ more soluble than N2 or O2, which is why flat tires
pumped up with cartridges lose "air" in a few days.)

Tires that have lost pressure and sat for a very long time can be
damaged, but obviously their owners didn't care about them.

Tire deterioration is a common problem in highwheeler restoration.
After more than a century, natural rubber solid tires are not a pretty
sight:

http://www.hochrad.info/hochradseite...e%20reifen.htm

But they'd be just as ugly even if they'd hung from the ceiling.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

"Ablang" wrote in message
...
Whether you use your bikes every day, or store them for the winter,
what are the advantages to keeping your bike off the ground (besides
the obvious of saving room)?

Does it allow your tires to last longer, or perhaps not lose air
pressure over time?

Makes it harder for the mice to crawl onto the bike and chew off the bar
tape where you left sticky-sugary gu on it. This actually happened to me
during a single night of storage in a garage infested with mice in the
mountains.

BobT

In article
,
Ablang wrote:

Whether you use your bikes every day, or store them for the winter,
what are the advantages to keeping your bike off the ground (besides
the obvious of saving room)?

None.

Does it allow your tires to last longer, or perhaps not lose air
pressure over time?

No.

Prevents low spots from developing on the tyres.
Lee

"Ablang" wrote in message
...
Whether you use your bikes every day, or store them for the winter,
what are the advantages to keeping your bike off the ground (besides
the obvious of saving room)?

Does it allow your tires to last longer, or perhaps not lose air
pressure over time?