WARNING: Ride equally in both directions over time

[dicorci]

So time for a little PSA from someone who's had his for over a year.

Ride in both directions as equally as possible to avoid uneven tire wear.

when i first got my one wheel i thought to myself "i should get on the board and ride it both directions so i don't screw up my tire with uneven wear, i'm so smart." Then i totally ignored my own idea because i loved my new toy so much and well the piper has come to be paid. Just had to slime my tire because the unequal wear has caused one side of my tire to wear down MUCH faster than the other and has begun to slow leak air. Luckily the slime has fixed it so far but the problem is entirely because of uneven wear not because i hit something or ran over anything, just poor management.

So if you want a simple rule: it's like rotating your tires. Don't ride your onewheel in the same direction all the time. If you ride switch this probably won't happen to you but if you're like me and ride with the same foot forward 99% of the time you need to get on to your board in different directions regularly so you aren't riding with the same side forward all the time.

Don't do what I did, this problem is totally avoidable.

[D-Wave]

@dicorci - great advice. A couple months ago I started forcing myself to ride switch - I try to do it for at least 1/4 of each ride...while it's not quite as fun (yet) - each ride gets better and I feel like it's helped me improve all aspects of my riding - especially off-road...

[njcustom]

I only ride in one direction and my tire wear is even and I've been riding almost a year....check your air pressure .. if you ride low it will wear faster.. it shouldn't really be below 13-14psi if you're a lighter person..over 150 pounds you should be above 14psi..

[Polle]

@dicorci do you go straight a lot?
I tend to carve constantly, maybe wears more even this way?

[duc809]

Might be a difference in toe vs heel side aggressiveness in turns.

[donny h]

@duc809 I always think that same thing. I carve more aggressively to my toe side and I think that it will wear my tire unevenly

[Aaron Broward FL]

I am total shit riding "backwards" (right foot left foot) from my perspective :) but, I like to lean in both heal toe.... When I was first trying to get on the board, I was skidding the one side side wall... But, I have total even tire wear since then. I ride at 14 PSI AND at your weight scale I am huge fat jumbo snuffalufagus at 220 lbs. but my board is still real new to.

[Seekwence]

how much does it cost to send it in to have FM replace the tire?

[thegreck]

@Seekwence said in WARNING: Ride equally in both directions over time:

how much does it cost to send it in to have FM replace the tire?

Here you go:
https://onewheel.com/collections/service/products/tire-change

[Franky]

I'm shipping mine back today for a tire replacement.
Mine too has excessive wear on one side but I'm pretty sure this was mostly caused because I was riding with very low PSI.
Unfortunately I only noticed it from seeing the tire wall rippling/buckling while carving but the damage was already done after a few rides.

I had been using tire slime with some hilarious results...
Last week in Chicago I decided to ride about 5 miles from my hotel to the convention.
While riding by Michigan a guy on a bike pulls up besides me and says "hey that's cool".
I said thanks and then immediately tire slime started shooting out with a whooshing noise in the direction of the guy on the bike.
In shock the guy yells, what is that? I yell back "tire slime" and he rides away...haha

I rode all summer on long rides and didn't experience much wear.
It was riding a small amount in my basement with too low PSI that did the damage.
I'm pretty sure my tire would be fine if I had been checking PSI before ever ride.
Lesson learned.

[thegreck]

@Franky Hahaha! That's like some James Bond sh*t!

[Franky]

Riding in across downtown Chicago in traffic was a blast.
I've really only seen Youtubers do this in NYC with boosted boards so I thought I'd give it a try.
Thought maybe the speed on ow would be an issue but it wasn't since traffic downtown doesn't move that fast.
Got a little bit hairy once while riding up to a light between two cars and they started moving on a green.
Thankfully I quickly zoomed in front of them and I was off.

[thegreck]

@Franky Wow... it seems like it would really suck to have to drive in that kind of traffic! LA traffic sucks too, but it's mainly only really clogged up on the freeways. People drive way too fast on the main roads to even consider riding a Onewheel there. I have to stick to sidewalks.

[pipefighter76]

Glad you posted this. I know about the tire pressure being low causing extra wear on the sides of the tire. I found mine low a few times. After reading this I looked very close and it as a bit uneven. I have been turning the board around cuz I don't trust myself going regular footed. This leads to a whole new experience during dismounts, and allows you to shimmy your front foot around until it's comfy without fear of losing contact with pressure pad. Cool !

[dicorci]

i'm seeing a lot of posts about tire pressure and yes: lower pressure will of course damage the sidewalls and overall integrity of your tire at a much faster rate... but i think it's a given that you shouldn't ride on flat tire; not really something that should require a PSA

i just posted this because i've gotten more miles out of my first OW tire then i ever thought i would and had i been more careful about riding as evenly as possible i'm sure i could have gotten even more.

frankly it's just impossible for the wear to be perfectly even when riding in the same direction all the time

-maybe you are more aggressive on your toe or heel side
-maybe you make more right or left turns because of where you ride
-maybe you tend to get on to your board with your weight slightly off balance in one of two directions

i'm sure there are other possible reasons but regardless swicthing your riding direction evenly will account for all of them.

[Franky]

@dicorci agreed that a psa is not needed about tire wear on low psi. But a psa is needed to remind everyone to check psi regularly and definitely more often than you would think to do for a car.

I think they might now be shipping with tire slime in the tires and that might be helping tons. A year a go when I got my board without tire slime, the psi started slowly going down several weeks from getting it. I always tried to remember to check it but last summer my psi was all over the place. I'd finally notice it was low so is up it to over 20 which is a different riding experience and then a week later I'd be riding a marshmallow at 10. Then in the winter I was riding in the basement many times and didn't remember to check psi until it was too late.

[thegreck]

I like the idea of a PSI PSA.

[dcosmos]

How about a TPMS for the OW, @futuremotion?

[thegreck]

@dcosmos They probably still won't read it, but try @Future-Motion

[wr420]

Something like this might work if there is enough clearnce.
http://tiny.cc/ij1gcy