Do Bike Trainers Wear Out Tires?

Using bike trainers can be fun and exciting. Sadly, the advantages aren’t the only things that come with this equipment. Using roller trainers does hold the potential of ruining your tires. However, whether they will ruin the tires or not depends completely on the equipment and tire you’re using.

We’ve come across a lot of people who feel hesitant to use roller bike trainers for fear of ruining their bike tires.

In this article, we’ll discuss when bike trainers can wear out and ruin the rear tires, and how you can prevent that from happening.

Type of Trainer You’re Using

One of the key aspects that determine whether the tires will get damaged or not is the type of trainer you’re using. There are mainly two types of trainers. There are roller trainers and resistant trainers.

The roller trainers are pieces of equipment that come with three cylinders laid perpendicularly. You need to place the bike tires on these cylinders and ride like you would ride a regular bike. The cylinders rotate to give you a sense of displacement.

On the other hand, there are resistant trainers. These trainers let you connect your bike to a resistance unit that provides an artificial sense of resistance, and the rear tire has to be mounted on a smaller padded surface or cylinder, depending on the trainer you’re using.

Between the two, roller types end up causing more damage to the tires. When you ride on the rollers, you’re subjecting the tires to heavy friction continuously. This causes the tires to wear fast.

On the other hand, the tires don’t experience that much friction when they’re attached to resistant trainers. In such cases, there will be a bit of friction, but it won’t be too much to render the tires useless in a matter of days.

Related reading: How To Deflate A Bike Tire?

The Skewer

Some bike trainers come with skewers that hold the rear wheel upright. Now, skewers won’t cause any damage to the tires if they fit properly. However, often it’s seen that the tires don’t fit properly. In such cases, these can scratch the tires of your bike. While this will cause a problem with the aesthetics only at first, it’ll gradually damage the tires and render them useless.

Pressure in Front Tire

Even if you aren’t riding on roller trainers, there remains a chance of damaging the front tires. If you’re on rollers, you better use training tires. However, if you’re using resistant tires, you should position the front tire rotated by a quarter turn. This will keep you from putting the extra force on the front tire, and thus they won’t erode.

Deflated Tires

The training tires must be inflated regularly because they lose some air with every session. After a certain threshold, the tires start getting affected. This is why you should try to keep the tires inflated all the time. Do a routine checkup, that’d be enough.

Related reading: How To Clean Bike Tires?

Lack of Moisture

Lack of moisture is one of the major factors that end up damaging the bike tires. Bike tires don’t perform especially well in dry areas because the dry air tends to dry up the rubber inside the tire as well. So, you should try to keep the humidity up, at least in the room where you’ll be exercising.

Should You Get A Bike Trainer Tire?

A bike trainer tire is a specially crafted tire that should be used with a bike trainer. You can buy it at a reasonable price, but should you go for it?

Well, training tires are more durable than regular tires. However, you can always do just as well with regular tires if you maintain the bike properly. If you’re willing to save a few bucks, then we highly recommend using the regular bike tires but maintaining them properly. This will definitely give you a quality experience.

Related reading: What Should I Do When Bike Tire Will Not Inflate And Will Not Take Air?

Conclusion

So, do bike trainers ruin tires? Yes, certainly they do. However, the impact of the trainers can be reduced by a great deal only if the rider is cautious enough.

If you don’t want to invest too much effort into preserving regular tires, then you should definitely get bike training tires. These usually last longer, even with less effort.