Different tyre sizes front and rear on road Ebike?

[DaveV]

Hi. I have a 700c wheeled ebike with a big 17AH battery on a panier and a 360W Bafang motor on the rear hub. I run some 36c schwalbe marathon ebike tyres front and rear. As this is a road bike with dropped handle bars etc based on a touring bike I find the 36 tyres a bit wierd when steering the bike especially at speed. Before I was reduced to e-biking I was on an all carbon frame with 32 gatorskin continental tyres that really felt great. Of course those tyres could not support the weight on the back of the ebike. But I am wondering if I could just put a 32 road tyre on the front and the steering would improve? I have never seen it done and wondered whether anyone else had tried it?

 

[GLJoe]

Hi. I have a 700c wheeled ebike with a big 17AH battery on a panier and a 360W Bafang motor on the rear hub. I run some 36c schwalbe marathon ebike tyres front and rear. As this is a road bike with dropped handle bars etc based on a touring bike I find the 36 tyres a bit wierd when steering the bike especially at speed. Before I was reduced to e-biking I was on an all carbon frame with 32 gatorskin continental tyres that really felt great. Of course those tyres could not support the weight on the back of the ebike. But I am wondering if I could just put a 32 road tyre on the front and the steering would improve? I have never seen it done and wondered whether anyone else had tried it?

Well ... you can put the 32mm road tyre on the front without any worries. However I suspect the 'weird steering' is mostly down to the weight of the battery and motor on the rear, so that part isn't going to change.

 

[Scorpio]

Hi, as said above I suspect a lot of the issue is that moving from your lightweight carbon bike to a heavier Ebike is feels a lot different to what you are used use.
Different sized tyres (or even different wheels) can work fine, no reason why you can't experiment until you find what you like. Even different brands of tyres have an effect, I swapped an old 700x40 tyre for a new one of the same size and the bike feels totally different.

Some thoughts https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/suggestions-please-how-to-modify-a-26-kit-to-suit-a-29er-bike.40437/

 

[vfr400]

The weight on the tyres from the battery and motor is completely insignifican't compared with a heavy rider without those things. weird handling is most likely due to pendelum effct of non-central mass. If there's any adjustment on the battery, move it as far forward as possible and get it as close to the tyre as possible.

 

[WheezyRider]

I've run a 28 on the front and a 40 on the back in the past without problems.