My relationship with my Wahoo Kickr Snap trainer has been rather strained to say the least. I am now on trainer number 4 which is working just fine and I am very pleased with it. However trainers 1 through 3 were a painful story which I will tell another time. Today’s post is a more mundane story of tyres.
Though the Kicker Snap is a “wheel on” trainer I have a spare wheel and tyre combo that I use on the trainer to avoid wearing out my road tyres.
I had been using a cheap tyre which I concluded was not perfectly round. I tried seating it a couple of times but could not get rid of a slight vibration that increased with wheel speed. It was fine when I used it on the road, but when clamped into a trainer the perfect surface of the roller exposed its shortcomings. At low speed the imperfection generated a low thrumming noise. At higher speeds it generated a vey noticeable vibration through the frame.
So with money to spend I invested in a Tacx Trainer Tyre
Impatient to try it out this evening I hastily threw it on the wheel and was immediately completely amazed at the difference. Obviously built to a higher standard than the cheap tyre I was using previously there was no trace of the vibration I had felt previously. The “ride” experience was as smooth as you would expect it to be with a wheel running on a perfectly smooth stainless steel roller.
But the first thing to strike me was the noise, or rather complete lack of it. I am not talking about the throb from the vibration, I mean the background hum and whine that I assumed were noise emitting from the trainer itself. They had completely disappeared.
For a moment I actually thought I had not clamped the roller to the tyre. It was that quiet. Even when sprinting there was a noticeable lack of the whine that I had experienced before with the trainer. The dominant noise now was a rattle from the cain and derailleur which made me think I need to check the indexing of my gears.
It is really quite amazing. Clearly much of the noise that this type of trainer emits is generated by the contact of the tyre and the roller. Trainer specific tyres like this must be made from a different compound that all but eliminate tyre noise. The difference Is quite remarkable and I would not had believed it possible.
If you are using a wheel on trainer and annoying members of your household, or have been put off buying a wheel on trainer for the same reason then I would recommend you try a trainer specific tyre.
rideupgrades 
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Hi Rideupgrades,
I just jumped onto my 1st Tacx Trainer this week. My frustration is whether I should go for a trainer tyre or not. Is this really necessary???
I am now using an old road tyre with the trainer. I can feel the same “slightly vibration” when I pedalled. And this vibration goes obvious with the speed. The generated noise is on ACCEPTABLE level.
One thing I would like to share is the tyre temperature is not high while I jumped down from the trainer. But the roller (side Big Metal Roller) is hot.. Is this same to you?
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Hi Andy, congratulations on getting your trainer, hope you enjoy riding on it. You are fine to use an old road tyre, I know many people who do. It’s a good way to get some more use out of an old tyre but whatever you do don’t use it on the road once it’s been on the trainer. You many not notice it getting hot but the trainer will roller will start to degrade it’s structure very quickly. Yep my roller gets hot also, that’s normal. Have fun.
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