Street and racing bikes have very skinny tires, for reasons which probably have something to do with friction or something. Mountain and off road bikes have fat tires, probably for more grip and less skin on sand and gravel. One must choose what sort of tires to have, then ride with the choice.
The Conversion Clamp consists of two circular flat metal rings on either side of the tire. By clamping them down, they compress the sides of the tie but allow a small bulge of tire to protrude out, converting your soft fat grippy tire to a hard thin racing tire. Now you can ride your skinny tires along the street, pop the clamps loose for your shortcut through the canyon, then clamp them back for your ride home! You can be thick _and_ thin!-- bungston, Jun 09 2006 It's not only the width (or surface area) that matters, it's also the tread design and grove depth that matters for grip.-- BJS, Jun 09 2006 well, i can see your tires wearing out oddly, and the pressure will be kind of wonky. if you really need the mountain bike tires, get those, because they can still be used in city conditions.-- tcarson, Jun 09 2006 Thought this was going to be mega-scale landscaping with used tires.
//pressure// Of course, skinny road tires should be at a higher pressure than fat tires, so this might work in your favour. The required force would be rather large. It's a step in the direction of bicycles that can reconfigure themselves on the fly, so (+).-- spidermother, Jun 10 2006 Interesting thought, but not enough info to make it half-practical, yet. The clamps would have to be very light, easy to put on and off, and compact to store. No vote, in case the design is secret.
Hmm. As the tire is squished from O to (), the center bead would have to increase in length--the circumference would change with the diameter.
Street-to-Mountain? Shirley, you'd have to have mountain tires on the bike. Mountain-to-Street, eh?-- baconbrain, Jun 10 2006 Now we need an automatically adjusting speedometer. +-- Shz, Jun 22 2006 random, halfbakery