There are endless ways to upgrade and customize a bike. Cool features like carbon fiber wheels, ceramic bearings, and oversized pulley wheels all cost a fortune.
Assuming you’ve already adjusted your bike to your body size and are happily racking up the miles on your new road or mountain bike, what should be your first upgrade in pursuit of performance?
The simple and correct answer is: tires
Tires are often overlooked and underestimated as an upgrade component. However, tires are the only part of a bike that comes in contact with the ground you ride on. They have a greater impact on the ride quality and performance of a bike than any other component.
This means that upgrading your bike’s original tires can significantly improve its performance, comfort, and safety. The reason for this is that most brands will skimp on tires in order to lower the pricing goals of their models, unless you buy the top-of-the-line bikes.
The good news is that the cheaper your bike is, the greater the potential benefit you’ll get from a tire upgrade.
The most obvious way tires can improve performance is by making them lighter
For example
Trek equips its $2,300 Emonda ALR road bike with an R1 wire-rim tire that weighs 360 grams.
Trek's top-of-the-line Aeolus RSL road tire weighs 285 grams. Upgrading to a pair of these tires will cost $180 and save you 150 grams (about a third of a pound).
This may not seem significant at first glance, but remember that you are reducing rotational weight by a third of a pound, which will feel much more noticeable than if you bought a 150-gram lighter crankset. Not to mention that lightweight crankset upgrades cost much more.
A little more complicated is that better tires improve performance through lower rolling resistance, which comes from internal friction or energy lost due to hysteresis.
High-end tires use better rubber compounds and more flexible tire casings to reduce these energy losses, which means that a bike with better tires will ride faster if the rider exerts the same amount of effort.
The actual improvement will vary depending on which tire you upgrade from. But the difference can be between 5 and 10 watts per tire.
Finally, better tires tend to have better grip performance due to more advanced rubber compounds. Grip is somewhat difficult to quantify, and the best independent data set comes from Bike Rolling Resistance, which tests tires for rolling resistance, puncture resistance, and grip.
While some grippy tires don't fall into the high-end tire category, there is a correlation between price and how grippy a tire is.
This means that for most riders, upgrading their stock tires can also improve grip and enhance safety.
