khorse said:
Bigger tires are less efficient, they have more rolling resistance, but will certainly leave space in the frame for 2.5 tires, I can always put skinnier tires if I want more range.
I'm not sure I'm using the right words to express this stuff but:
It's not just the tire size, it's how stiff they are. Stiffer means less flex of carcass, which means less energy lost in squishing the tire. If the carcass too soft, but you use higher pressure, they may use the same energy as a skinnier tire (or close enough), and still give a better ride (or have better grip).
Suspension-wise, the more air volume you have (at the same pressure as a lesser volume) the more bump absorption you get. (so a larger diameter tire that holds more air, like 29"x2.1" vs 26"x2.1", would give a better ride...but so will a wider tire like 26"x2.5"vs 26"x2.1"...the greater the volume difference, the better the ride.
The squishier the tire feels (the more it has to flex while rolling), the more energy it loses to this process, and the less efficient it is.
Also, the heavier the tire is, especially in sidewalls, it usually means it is going to take more energy to flex those, like moped or motorcycle vs bicycle tires. (sometimes that tradeoff is worth it, but not if you ever have to pedal the thing around! :lol: I use moped tires on the back of the trike for loading and puncture resistance and wear, and they give a better ride since i have no suspension, but they take notably more power to move...the front tire is a bicycle tire though)
Chalo has written a bunch of good posts about tires, wheels, etc., from long experience with many types of bicycle usages (including very large pedicabs and other cargo/people mover applications), if you want more details about that stuff.
What are you thinking about to protect the hands? something like MX style hand guards? or moto heated grips?
I'm in PHoenix Arizona and it doesn't get super cold here, at worst we may have a few degrees below freezing a few nights a year in jan/feb, sometimes dec. But riding around at 20mph my old hands get hurty joints riding in even 50-60F temps, and gloves get in my way, so I use these:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F415V8D/?coliid=I3EZ24BXRYIRD7&colid=1YBJWJ5ZSPNWY&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
and they take care of air deflection well enough most of the time, and i keep thin gloves for the times they don't. Iv'e banged them into things and haven't broken one yet. I did peel off the ugly not-really-reflective strips and replaced them with these marker/turnsignal strips:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/393178503261
though I used silicone to glue them down cuz their adhesive sucks. I used these on the rear top bar of the cargo rack:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/393110680933
(if they're too long you can cut them down from the unwired end and they stiill work, you just have to seal the newly opened end for water resistance). they have their own sequential flashers built in, too. )
It's not cold enough here for heated grips, so no experience with those. Just keeping the wind off worked for me.
In fact a bigass motorcycle windscreen would be great.
I tried one of these from an old Yamaha (kinda like the CHIPS police bikes from the old TV series) out in a quick ziptied experiment for aero difference on the trike, just a straightline run down the street at 20mph, and aside from keeping the wind off of me a fair bit, it also made a difference (as much as 25%!) to the aero of the trike, by forcing the air up and over the top of the canopy instead of under it and onto me, but i had to angle it close to 45 degrees to make the most difference. I didnt' try it on a real road trip because it was going to take a lot more work to actually install, and stuff has always come up preventing me from doing all that work so I don't yet know how well it works overall. There was no wind in the test I did, so crosswinds/etc didn't come into the test, and might seriously change the results.
On the trike the mass and size didn't make any difference to handling, but on a bicycle it would certainly make it harder to deal with when not riding; how much harder depends on the piece's size and shape and how it's installed, and what you're doing with it.
You can make a cheapie windscreen with thin and flexible clear plastic sheeting; it'll scratch and bend easier but it'll be lighter and probably cheaper to replace and definitely easier to work around in confined spaces. (like an elevator), just because it does bend easy. They're not good for high speeds, but if you curve it right (partial cylinder, vertical axis), it'll be stiff enough for 20-25mph.