Supple?

A couple of quick shots of three tires hanging from my garage door opener track.

Lots of folks talk about tires being supple, and how this "supple-ness" can be a good indicator of tires with low rolling resistance.

Based on this supple-ness deal, which one of the tires above, would have the _worst_ rolling resistance?

Well, I dorked around in the garage this morning with my new toy (an IR, fixed emissivity non-contact temperature sensor) and measured those tires for rolling resistance and also how much they heated up during the testing.

Turns out that the caveman approach of flexing/bending the tire in your hands is a pretty good indicator of suppleness and rolling resistance - at least at a macro-scale!

Here's a link to some #'s for those inclined:

linky-link