Are solid tires worth it?

Quick View: Solid Tires vs Pneumatic Tires

• Solid tires require no maintenance and never go flat
• Pneumatic (air filled tires) should be checked and topped off with air once a week. They are subject to pinch flats (if tubed) and punctures and often require a professional to change (if tubeless).
• Air filled tires can be less durable, but they are more comfortable than solid tires. They also provide better traction on wet or icy terrain.
• Tubeless pneumatic tires provide more comfortable ride quality when run at lower tire pressure.

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What's a Solid Tire?

If you’re new to the world of electric scooters, “solid tires” might sound like a contradiction in terms.

After all, when we think of tires, we think of the circular, black rubber three-quarter-hollow tubes mounted on wheels and filled with air. Everything from airplanes to cars roll on air filled tires.

Whether we're on a motorcycle, bike, or e bike, almost all the tires on two-wheeled vehicles are pneumatic. E scooters are, for the moment, one of the few two-wheeled vehicles for adults to offer the choice between pneumatic and solid tires.

So, why would riders choose a solid tire over a pneumatic tire? Well, there are good reasons, and we’ll look at them below.

But first – pop quiz, what’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear “tire”? If you said “flat,” you passed. Because, yes, that’s the biggest problem with pneumatic tires and the biggest advantage of solid tires. They never go flat....

Fully Solid Tires

Some solid tires are just crude plastic circles, the kind of thing you find on children's toys. Fully solid tires provide an unforgiving ride.

Fully solid tires are found only on cheap scooters made for kids and generally offer nothing in the way of shock absorption or damping. They are also more prone to developing flat spots, which can't be fixed and require a full tire replacement.

Solid Tires with Vibration Damping

Premium solid tires use durable, high-grade materials that maintain their shape. They also tend to use a honeycomb or vented structure, with hollow areas to provide cushioning and absorb vibration.

You'll find solid rubber air pocket tires on high quality electric scooters for adults like the Unagi Model One.

The Pros and Cons of Solid Tires

Solid Tire Pros

Low Maintenance? How about No Maintenance....

The biggest advantage of solid tires comes from the fact that they require no maintenance, in contrast to the routine air pressure checks, tube and tire repairs, and flat tire anxiety pneumatic tires tend to provoke.

In fact, if you ride an electric scooter as a lightweight urban commuter vehicle on mostly well-paved roads, you might want to ride nothing but a solid tire scooter because of their ultimate ease of use.

Solid tires can be replaced. But they only occasionally need replacing if they develop flat spots or sustain damage that puts them out of round. Such events are rare compared to the frequency of pinch flats and punctures with air filled tires.

Travel Lighter

While it's a good idea to carry a small multitool with you when riding any small vehicle, a solid tire electric scooter eliminates the need to carry a full toolkit. You won't need to pack a repair kit, tire lever, extra tube, air pump, or any of the essentials needed for proper roadside pneumatic tire care.

Solid Tire Cons

Ride Quality

Solid tires do not provide as smooth a ride as pneumatic tires. They can be more jarring and uncomfortable on bumpy terrain. Pneumatic tires offer better shock absorption than their solid counterparts.

Less Traction

Solid tires have less traction than pneumatic tires, which can be a problem in wet or slippery conditions.

Pneumatic (Air Filled) Tires

Inner Tube Tires

If you regularly ride or drive a vehicle with pneumatic tires, it's generally recommended that you check the tire pressure once a week.

While checking air pressure weekly can be burdensome and unnecessary with cars, when it comes to the smaller, low-volume tires on bikes and especially electric scooters, this routine become much more important.

That's because most air-filled tires on small vehicles contain an inner tube, the part of the tire that actually holds the air, and inner tubes require a minimum pressure to stay inflated.

Tubeless Tires

So-called tubeless tires (which, you guessed it, lack an inner tube), are standard on cars, motorcycles, and even high-end bikes. And they are becoming increasingly common as premium electric scooter tires.

The Pros and Cons of Pneumatic Tires

Inner Tube Tire Pros

Inner tube tires offer the benefit of holding the air inside the tube rather than the tire, which means that the outer tire can take a beating and the tire can stay inflated. But once the tube is punctured, it must be repaired or replaced.

Inner tubes, however, are relatively inexpensive compared to new tires, and most riders can learn to fix a flat tire themselves.

Inner Tube Tire Cons

Pinch Flats

Tubed tires must be kept at the minimum recommended tire pressure because they are subject to what are called "pinch flats," the most common type of flat tire.

A pinch flat happens when the inner tube is literally pinched between the tire and the wheel rim, resulting in two tears that look like a snakebite on the inner tube.

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Pinch flats happen without warning (if you don't top off your tires), no sharp objects required.

Punctures

Next to pinch flats, punctures are the next most common cause of flat tires. All tires are subject to punctures from objects in the road, including broken glass, nails and screws, and other kinds of debris that can slice through the rubber and cloth of a tire.

Punctures in the tread areas of a tire can usually be repaired, sometimes while on the road. But if the sidewall is punctured, the tire will have to be replaced.

Tubeless Tire Pros

Many tubeless pneumatic tires are puncture resistant and even have "self-healing" properties, but no tire is 100% flat proof.

There are many good reasons to ride on pneumatic tubeless tires: with no risk of pinch flats, they can be run at lower pressures for more comfort, and they have superior puncture resistance.

At lower pressures, they also provide more surface area for contact with the road, leading to greater wet and dry traction (sometimes at the cost of more rolling resistance, i.e. slower speeds).

Tubeless tires are filled with sealant which keeps the air in at the rim, or "bead," where the tire meets the wheel. This sealant also rushes into a puncture and seals it up before much air is lost, leading to the description of tubeless tires as "self healing."

All tubeless tires have this healing property to some degree. Some use a layer of self-sealing compound inside the tire to provide additional protection.

Tubeless Tire Cons

Tubeless pneumatic tires have several benefits for the serious rider (no pro cyclist rides without them these days). They can also require a pro level of maintenance.

While the average rider can learn to change an inner tube on their scooter, mounting, sealing, and filling tubeless tires with tire sealant can be a herculean effort that is best left to mechanics.

Pneumatic Tire Maintenance and Roadside Repair

Maintenance can be a pro or con, depending on how much you enjoy working with your hands. The advantages of pneumatic tires are many, but they require some level of routine care and special equipment (tire levers, spare tubes, pump, tire pressure gauge, roadside repair kit, tire sealant, etc.).

If you don't properly maintain air filled tires, the risk of flats goes up significantly. And if you don't want to end up walking your scooter home, you'll have to learn to fix a flat tire on the road.

Conclusion

The drawbacks of solid tires are improving, with foam filled tires that offer more cushioning and traction without the maintenance.

But the fact is that there are different types of electric scooter tires for a reason, and not all tires are suitable for all types of electric scooter or every kind of riding.

If you plan to ride off road, you should buy a scooter with knobby off road tires.

If you're commuting longer distances at speeds over 20 mph, and you routinely encounter bumpy roads and bad weather, you might be best off with pneumatic road tires.

And if you're primarily an urban commuter who travels a few miles a day at lower speeds on city streets and sidewalks, and who doesn't want to bother fixing flats, then solid tires can be the best choice for you as the only maintenance free option.

Overall, the choice between solid and pneumatic tires will depend on the specific needs and preferences of the rider. If a smoother ride and bad weather traction are top priorities, then pneumatic tires may be the way to go. However, if durability and low maintenance are more important, then solid tires may be the better choice.

I spent a few years living on a tropical island where there were all sorts of little spines and thorns in the mix of sand, dirt, twigs and wotnot off-road, I had constant problems with punctures if I strayed off the commonly used dusty paths.

I tried tubeless and with inner tubes but both were very prone to flats.

The best solution I came up with was with inner tubes and recycling old tubes by cutting out the valve, slitting down the side and flattening them out and trimming to width to line the inside of the tyres between the inflated inner and tread with 2 layers and a bit of overhang on each side. I had to add a patch or two where the cut inner was too short to make it all the way around, making sure the patched portions weren't on top of each other.

I stuck them in place and together with the sealant/fixative intended for low pressure water pipes and the like, so not glue as such but it held the rubber strips in place pretty well during assembly.

Low-tech but it gave a couple of extra mm of rubber buffer between the outside world and the inflated tube to protect against spines which would have otherwise poked up to a couple of mm into the inflated inner tube.

The water pipe fixative probably wasn't necessary to keep the buffer rubber in place when the arrangement was inflated but I didn't come up with a way to keep it in place during assembly, which was fiddly enough as it was, getting the tyre on with a partly inflated inner without dislodging the lightly stuck rubber between the two was a bit of a faff, but doable.

Thankfully it worked reasonably well, the ride was still fine and I had far fewer punctures so I didn't have to rebuild them often.

If I'd had access to some kevlar strips or something hardier than inner tube rubber but still flexible, that would have been well worth a try. Now I think of it, the sort of tough woven canvas that you get durable luggage straps made from might be an idea.

I did start to make a point of checking the tyres often and removing any spines that I could find, so they wouldn't be driven further and further in but hard to spot unless they're actually dangling out. I wasn't doing this before the rubber buffer upgrade so it might have helped but hard to judge whether I was getting punctures immediately on running over a spine or because spines I picked up were gradually being punched further in.

(I should stress I was a 2 day round trip away from a half decent bike shop, but still one in a fairly backward place, so jerry-rigging was very much the order of the day !)

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