Hot take: I hit 10,000 shop repairs last month and I still think tire pressure checklists are overrated

I mean, everyone in our shop treats them like gospel but I've been skipping that step for years on basic tune-ups and never had a come back. Maybe it's just me, but has anyone else found that just eyeballing it works fine for most road bikes?

2 comments

2 Comments

bell.emma1mo ago

Last year during a local charity ride I saw three flats within half a mile, and every single one was from tires that looked fine but were actually five pounds low. The real problem isn't the checklist itself, it's that shops train people to treat tire pressure as a binary good/bad thing when pressure loss on road bikes is almost always gradual. That gradual loss costs riders watts and grip long before it becomes visible to the eyeball.

ellis.jennifer1mo ago

Yeah, I get what you're saying @bell.emma, but I think checking pressure by feel before every ride is actually part of a good habit, not a binary thing. A quick squeeze tells me if I'm in the ballpark, and the real issue is people not doing even that basic check.

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