Different size front and rear ?

[Reluctant]

My 1990 Lava Dome was my first experience of the bigger front, smaller back tyre thing. Equilibrium 2.2 up front and Propulsion 2.0 on the back if I remember right. Made good sense to me - big front for steering control and shock absorption and smaller at back for mud clearance.
On my later bikes, I used a Dart SC 2.2, paired with a 1.9 Smokelite

 

[MADJEZ]

Back in the REALLY-OLD-DAYS ie early 80s BMX !
We used to run a fatter front than rear for off road and racing.
I also remember running fat nobbly on the front with a whitewall slick 'shopper' tyre on the rear for freestyle.

I forget why but it DID look cool.

 

[FMJ]

Back in the REALLY-OLD-DAYS ie early 80s BMX !
We used to run a fatter front than rear for off road and racing.
I also remember running fat nobbly on the front with a whitewall slick 'shopper' tyre on the rear for freestyle.

I forget why but it DID look cool.

Smaller rear: lower rolling resistance + less weight = better acceleration

Larger front: Larger contact patch = better tracking + better cornering traction

 

[T'boo Ted]

Yeah on bmx i ran big front, small rear...

on mtb I would often run big front small rear, for a ling time it was smoke light rear and wither smoke or pyhco II (spell?) front.

 

[andrewl]

Back in the REALLY-OLD-DAYS ie early 80s BMX !
We used to run a fatter front than rear for off road and racing.
I also remember running fat nobbly on the front with a whitewall slick 'shopper' tyre on the rear for freestyle.

I forget why but it DID look cool.

Smaller rear: lower rolling resistance + less weight = better acceleration

Larger front: Larger contact patch = better tracking + better cornering traction

Beat me to it.

 

[mooster]

Yes, 1.9 rear 2.1 front. I often had mud clogging problems with wider rear tyres, so I'd fit narrower rear to give better clearance. Smoke Lite rear and standard Smoke front would work nicely

 

[saulus]

BITD of '95 I ran a rear 2.1+ / 1.95 front. School of thought for me was to optimise traction for the rear and steering for the front on my rather hefty Proflex 550

 

[bren]

+1 for the skinny front / fat rear combo.
My reasoning was that most of my favourite trails were predominantly mud. Deep mud, really deep! and to afford any sort of steering control you needed to cut through it into something more firm. Anything over 2" on the front and you would just be squirming around on top of the sludgy stuff.
My first foray was smoke lite front/ smoke 2.1 rear. Then I tried a racing porc up front with a fresh smoke 2.1 rear and I found the grail! I never tried anything else after that until selling my last bike to buy my first car!
I'm sure there were better combos for summer use, but Essex always seemed to have a lot of mud even in August!
As a result my spare tyres, continental xc things, tioga mud dawgs and a pair of shitty old farmer johns just hung on my dads garage wall for over 10 years until they perished to dust.

Really tempted to revisit that favourite setup on my modern Saracen thing?! Hmmm

 

[silverclaws]

Same here, most of my riding was claggy mud, so narrow front and fat rear was the order of the day, and I might also revisit the retro set up in the near future. Hey, who knows, I might even try putting the tyres on the wrong way around see what I was missing.