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Wolf Tooth Components Bike Tire Pressure App Takes the Guesswork Out of Low Pressure Inflation

Wolf Tooth Components tire pressure calculator
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Wolf Tooth Components has gone digital. Don’t worry. Their precision-machined parts aren’t going anywhere, but to help you get the most out of your ride, WTC just released their first app – the Bike Tire Pressure Calculator.

WTC is not the first company to release their own tire pressure app, but they wanted to address their own specific tire pressure needs. Specifically, fat bikes and bikes with wider tires. According to WTC, the calculator is based on the Wolf Tooth philosophy that lower pressures are better for performance, and “the lowest possible pressure consistent with terrain, riding style, and equipment is better”.

The WTC Bike Tire Pressure Calculator is available for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play, and starts with the option to choose from Advanced or Basic options. The Advanced setting gives you more input parameters to get a more precise pressure recommendation. Basic will get you off and running with half those inputs. Simply punch in each field and the app spits out precise front and rear pressure recommendations.

Advanced:

  • Weight of Bike + Rider + Gear
  • Tube/Tubeless/Inserts
  • Casing Type
  • Riding Conditions
  • Inflation Temperature/Riding Temperature
  • Tire/wheel Diameter
  • Sidewall Tire Width
  • Measured Tire Width
  • Inflation Pressure
  • Riding Pressure

Basic:

  • Rider Weight
  • Ebike
  • Riding Conditions
  • Sidewall Tire width
  • Inflation Pressure

First Impressions

I’ve been using the WTC Bike Tire Pressure Calculator for about a month on gravel, mountain, and fat bikes. So far, the recommended pressures are almost exactly in line with what I would typically run – which is a good thing. I spend a lot of time riding and testing different tires, wheels, components, etc., and I’d like to think that I’m pretty good at choosing the right tire pressure by this point (and being able to feel the difference). One of the most critical parts to getting the right tire pressure is considering the entire weight of not just you, but your bike, water, gear, etc. Before your next ride, guess how much you weigh completely ready to ride with your bike and all gear/water/food, and jump on a scale. You might be surprised…

The one thing that the app has convinced me, is that I should be running my front tire pressure 1 or 2psi lower than I have been. I typically run 1 or 2psi lower in the front than the rear, but the app often suggested 2-4psi lower, which I now use.

But for those that don’t ride almost every day and have decades of experience dialing in tire pressures, the WTC app seems like it will give excellent advice on where to start. The app is also a handy way to store your pressure preferences for multiple bikes, or even the same bike with multiple tires. Note that you have to click on the ‘My Bikes’ tab first, then hit the ‘+’ to add a bike before calculating tire pressure to save it.

There’s also a Temperature Compensation calculator which isn’t that important when you’re riding a normal bike in the summer, but it becomes far more critical in the winter. If you’re filling a tire at 72ºF and you want your tire to 5psi once you’re outside in 0ºF weather, you have to inflate that tire to 8.1psi while inside. You can use the Compensation calculator alone, or it is integrated into the Advanced Pressure Calculator.

The app won’t work for everyone as there isn’t an option for road bikes with tires narrower than 30mm, and some wheel and tire sizes (like the new Surly 24 x 6.2″ fat bike tires) aren’t included. Also, it could use a few improvements like replacing invisible cursors to let you know what field you’re typing in. But like any app, it can be updated in the future. For a free app, it seems to work pretty well and is highly recommended if your riding buddies keep telling you your tires are way too hard…

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James butler
James butler
23 days ago

I just tried it – recommended 20psi for a rear tyre in 2.4 size – I have carbon rims, i am sticking with 28psi thank you! Madness!

Tom
Tom
23 days ago
Reply to  James butler

How much do you weigh? With a 2.4 tire I run 17lbs and it rides like a dream. And yes, I like my rims very much.

Last edited 23 days ago by Tom
Tyler Benedict
Admin
23 days ago
Reply to  James butler

I weigh about 200lbs kitted out and run 22-24psi in the rear, depending on tire, and almost exclusively ride carbon rims and no inserts. If you’re running a fragile ultralight XC tire, than maybe stay a bit higher, but you’d probably be fine running lower pressure with most modern tires and rims unless you’re absolutely smashing rocks and hucking to flat from high places. Definitely need to take your use and terrain into consideration, but 28psi would bounce off everything for me.

Deputy Dawg
Deputy Dawg
22 days ago
Reply to  Tyler Benedict

Same weight, same pressures, so now we have a sample population of two! Typically Bonty XR3 or 4 up front, Mezcal or XR3 out back

TheStansMonster
TheStansMonster
23 days ago
Reply to  James butler

Do you weigh 250lbs+?

I run 17-18 in the rear and 16-17.5 in the front with 2.4s, and I live somewhere with a lot of edgy rocks.

Optimized tire pressures does assume you actually try to ride and don’t just indiscriminately dead-sailor smash into everything in the trail.

Last edited 23 days ago by TheStansMonster
Bob Jones
Bob Jones
21 days ago

Maxis 2.4 Aspen’s (regular and ST) and or Recon Race. WT app recommends too much pressure. Silca closer to my testing. My testing also closely mirrors reported psi from World Cup XC tire pressures. I’m typically 15-16psi F and 17-18psi R. Ride southwest deserts and in lots of rocks. Carbon rims. Haven’t wrecked a tire or rim yet. Less psi=less sketchy front end in the dry desert ball bearing corners 🙂

Dinger
Dinger
20 days ago
Reply to  James butler

@James Butler, I don’t go as low as some of these other respondents but @ 175lb on 2.4’s I’m usually @ 20psi rear/18psi front and I almost never feel the rim touch anything. The roll speed is great, the traction is great. Give it a shot, I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If it’s making you nervous while you ride, bring a mini pump to come back up a few psi.

David
David
22 days ago

Seems to give me reasonably similar numbers to what I normally run for MTB. But gravel isn’t close. But that could be due to lack of options, I have a feeling the fire roads around here are a lot rougher than “Medium gravel/rocks”

Could do with a few more options, like different casing front and rear. Insert both or just rear. Hardtail vs FS. Rider skill level.

But the main thing I like is being able to save my bikes in there instead of having to go to Schwalbe Pressure Prof and atart from scratch each time I can’t remember how one bike needs to setup.

Wolf Tooth
22 days ago
Reply to  David

Hi David,
Did you try condition 1 for the gravel pressure? That drops you down quite a bit from condition 2 that you mentioned.
As far as more options, we are always looking for feedback for future releases. It’s always a balance between keeping it simple enough for most people vs. having every possible option for folks who like to really dive into it.
Glad to hear you like the saved bikes option too!
Feel free to reach out to us directly as well: sales@wolftoothcomponents.com

David
David
22 days ago
Reply to  Wolf Tooth

Hi,

It’s the other way around. It’s recommending 38psi for my gravel bike running 38c tyres and tubes and a weight loaded for bike packing. I know from painful experience those pressures will lead to a pinch-flat. Even after I went tubeless, with tyres that thin I risk rim damage at pressure much below 40psi, took the sealant quite a while to plug the leak near the bead.

Mike
Mike
22 days ago
Reply to  Wolf Tooth

Please include an internal rim width field to the calculator

Last edited 22 days ago by Mike
Jim E
Jim E
22 days ago

I tried it for gravel and it seems to recommend about 10% higher than the Silca calculator.

tech9
22 days ago

Holy Smokes @james butler. I actually feel sorry for folks like you. In the sense, that some how the old school mentality of higher pressure = faster or better. Or.. you weigh like 250lbs.. It blows my mind how high of pressure people run on bikes that come into the shop. You just think “man their ride must be brutal, and love washing out on corners much easier”. Same happens on Road. Even though you see a majority of folks finally running road tubeless these days at our shop. They still have his mind set that they need like 80-100psi of pressure on lets say 700×28’s @ a rider weight of lets say like 175lbs.

To add to @deputy dogs’s sample base.
mtb xc 30mm wide rims with 2.4 wt tires @ a rider weight of 145lbs
front 14.5 psi
rear 16.0 psi

mtb trail or park 30mm wide inner width rims 2.5 and 2.4 tires
front 15.0
rear 17.0

road. 25mm inner width rims with 700×28 tubeless
front 48psi
rear 50psi

Have never cracked a carbon rim and some of my carbon rims are china specials.

Do yourself a favor and just try lowering your psi and see how much better your ride is regardless of terrain.

Lynx
Lynx
22 days ago

Since it seems WT are monitoring this article and comments, I’ll chime in in hopes of hopefully helping improve the app…

Put in the info for my XC/Trail bike and it spat out numbers close to what I normally run, if not a bit high for the front. It’s a fairly decent app, but lacking lots of metrics like rim width to help determine pressure as the same tyre on a 23mm internal vs 30mm internal rim is a lot different, extrapolate to bigger plus sizes, which is where determining pressure is quite hard and a 1/4 PSI can alter the feeling.

Also, the tyre size measurement thing, yes it includes measured is best, but at what PSI, because a tyre measured at 20PSI is going to be a lot smaller at 40PSI and that’s the pressure most manufacturers use for their ERTO listed size.

Side note, WTF does Wolftooth need to know my location if not to have metrics to try and sell off?? Annoying AF to have to decline every time I want to use the app.

Also, it tells me that 29×3.0″ tyre is invalid if I use the mountain setup, but then when I try to use the fatbike setup is doesn’t offer 29″ as an option or anything smaller than 3.5″, so is PLUS not a thing according to the industry anymore, because I sure do still love riding my rigid Kona Unit with anything from 29×2.6″-29×3.0″ tyres and appropriate rims/wheels.

Tried doing 29×2.8″ tyres in the mountain setup option and pressures are WAY off, 19 PSI rear/17PSI front for a total rider weight of 220lbs, I usually run 16 rear/13 front if I’m commuting to the trail and sometimes on very smooth gravel, normal trail pressures are more like 15 rear/12 front and this is on i35-i40 rims.

Hope WT reads this and takes these comments into consideration.

Brett
Brett
22 days ago
Reply to  Lynx

No rim width? Eek. That’s a huge factor in pressure.

Wolf Tooth
22 days ago
Reply to  Brett

Hi Brett. Measured casing width accounts for rim width and other factors as well. It takes a little more effort but it gives better results.

Wolf Tooth
22 days ago
Reply to  Lynx

Hi Lynx — Thanks for downloading the app! I’ll try to tackle as many of your questions as I can.
We considered having a field for rim inner width but measuring the actual casing width accounts for this as well as a number of other factors. If you really care about the right pressure, measuring the casing width is the only way to go. Casing width should be measured at something close to your planned inflation pressure. If you don’t want to measure the actual width, using the sidewall number option gets you in the ballpark.
Location is used only for the outside temperature in the temp comp function. Nothing sinister about it. The app should only ask once and if you opt out, you can just enter the outside temp manually or not use temp comp at all.
We will be increasing the max. tire width for MTB and gravel in the next release so 29×3.0 will be an option in MTB.
Your preferred 29 x 2.8″ pressures are probably lower than most people could run at that overall weight but we are big fans of lower pressure so it’s great to hear it’s working for you. Note that if you go to the settings tab and enable the output adjustment for MTB, you can dial in the exact output that you prefer.

Lynx
Lynx
21 days ago
Reply to  Wolf Tooth

Thanks for the reply guys and answering all my queries and again, if I didn’t say it, thanks for creating the app, should be useful to lots of people.
Appreciate that the tyre size selection will be updated, thanks. Always measure my tyres with a calliper, normally fully inflated to the max recommended pressure to see if the manufacturers ERTO is accurate and then I’ll check how much I “loose” at real world pressures.
Total rider weight I listed included the bike, so not sure if you might have mistook it for rider alone, I’m between about 180-190lbs geared with pack and clothes, depending on the ride and what I’m taking with me. but yeah, no issues with those pressures and actually I tend to run a bit lower if it’s really slow, crawly type tech.
OK, got you on the location thing, yeah I keep location completely turned off on my phone, so, but basically temp wise, I’d just use HOT AF 😀

Lynx
Lynx
21 days ago
Reply to  Wolf Tooth

You can’t edit replies, so have to add this here….thinking about it more, on the rim width thing and the casing measurement being sufficient, I say no, because you have much more leeway with a wider rim, vs narrower, say i25 vs i30 AND you can easily measure the casing wrong, measuring rim IW wrong is pretty hard as what’s stated by manufacturers is pretty bang on. I can easily run the same tyre on an i30 rim 1 or 2 PSI lower than on the i25 because of sidewall support without any negative effects, on the bigger PLUS tyres and Fat, even more so.

Wolf Tooth
21 days ago
Reply to  Lynx

We agree that the added tire stability provided by wider rims is not fully accounted for by the casing width measurement alone. Unfortunately, we have not yet developed a good transfer function that we could code into the app. We do feel the app provides sound advice on tire pressure for various riding conditions, tire widths, rider weight, etc. and is a great way to get close to your ideal pressure faster. In the end, some experimentation is always a good idea.

Big Mike
Big Mike
21 days ago
Reply to  Lynx

Sounds to me like this guy is running a full SRAM Red kit, huh, Wolf Tooth?

Lynx
Lynx
20 days ago
Reply to  Big Mike

Don’t know if that is supposed to be some inside joke or what, but Absolutely ZERO of my bikes run SRAM, hate the ergonomics of their shifters, RDs unless you go XO/X1 are crap compared to Shimano, double the price, cassettes are 3-4 times the price of Shimano, brakes unless again you’re on their top, are horrible compared to low end Shimano.

Matthias
Matthias
22 days ago

@WT, is the app supposed to be available globally? Because Google Play doesn’t seem to have it in Africa.

Wolf Tooth
22 days ago
Reply to  Matthias

Yes should be available globally. Unfortunately, we can’t control where google makes it available. We will certainly look into this though!
Did you follow the link from our website? What error does it give when you try to use it?

Matthias
Matthias
21 days ago
Reply to  Wolf Tooth

Thanks for the feedback! 🙂 Maybe the store has some international syncing issues. It still doesn’t show up in search here, and the first attempt to install it from your homepage link failed with “Cannot install this app” (no reason given). Pixel 8 phone, nothing exotic. Got it working by simply retrying via the homepage link though.

Finn Cromwell
Finn Cromwell
22 days ago

I have been running my 2.4 xc tires on 30mm rims at around 20-21. Is this too high, if so how much lower can I run them?

Wolf Tooth
21 days ago
Reply to  Finn Cromwell

Hey Finn,
Download the app and give it a try! This is exactly what it’s for.
And yes, you should try lower pressure…

Bob Jones
Bob Jones
21 days ago
Reply to  Finn Cromwell

XC race bike. Maxis 2.4 Aspen’s (regular and ST) and or Recon Race. 145lbs, 29mm inside carbons and I’m typically 15-16psi F and 17-18psi R. Southwest desert with lots of rocks. Also lots of years on a rigid single speed which trains you to ride smooth and to be a good line picker so YMMV.

Finn Cromwell
Finn Cromwell
22 days ago

I forgot to mention I weigh 140 lbs

Lynx
Lynx
21 days ago
Reply to  Finn Cromwell

Finn, you’re a quite light rider, so you can maybe run lower, but that also depends on what casing you’re running and, are you actually suffering any issues with your tyres, not getting enough braking traction, tyres not hooking up cornering etc., if not those pressure are pretty low. Also remember you need to include your fully geared weight into the equation, clothes, shoes, helmet, pack or if you use bottles etc.

The only real way to know how low or if you can go lower is to take a pressure gauge with you on the ride and let out 1 PSI at a time and see how much you can drop without rim strikes or tyre squirm.

Sajuuk
Sajuuk
18 days ago

A road bike option would be cool.

Wolf Tooth
16 days ago
Reply to  Sajuuk

Planned for the next major release in October!

ServingGreenTea
ServingGreenTea
17 days ago

Great app, WT. If one is using an insert in the rear, then do you have any suggestions? Maybe lower psi by 1 or 2 in the rear tire? Thanks!

Wolf Tooth
16 days ago

We do have an option for inserts under the tube/tubeless button. For now, it assumes you have inserts both front and rear.

hufftruck
hufftruck
17 days ago

Works great for my 3 bikes, well done app. It only changed what I was running in my gravel bike by 2 psi but took my mountain bike tires down by 3 to 6 psi. Looking forward to seeing how the bikes handle on different trails in the coming months. After 35 years of mountain biking I got complacent and just ran mountain tires 25 rear & 20 front once I went tubeless. Guess I should have been trying different pressures all along to see what works best for me.

Ryan
Ryan
17 days ago

Gravel calculator doesn’t go higher than 50mm. Lots of people running wider. Come on now 🙂

Wolf Tooth
16 days ago
Reply to  Ryan

Next release will support wider gravel and MTB tires! You can get some good pressures for wider gravel from the MTB menu. Try riding condition 3 for starters.

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