Tire Pressure: How Low Can You Go?

When I started riding road bikes in the 80s it was simple: you pumped your 23 or 25mm tires up to 100 or 120 psi. And when I started riding mtbs in the 90s, you just pumped your 26 x 2.1 tires up to 40 or 45 psi.

I started riding wider tires on the road in the 2000s, first with the 700 x 33 Rivendell Jack Browns. I was still riding with inner tubes, mind you, but now I was riding my tires at around 60 psi. Which seemed low!

Flash forward to today, I'm riding my tubeless 29 x 2.4 mtb tires at around 24/22 psi and my tubeless 700 x 48 gravel tires at around 28/26 psi.

How low can you go? Good article and video from the folks at GCN. And you can find a nice tire pressure calculator here.

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