Continental Road Attack tire question

 While installing the Road Attack tires I just purchased, we came
across a question of which way is the correct rotation. The front tire
has the arrow on the sidewall with "front" inside the arrow. Does
"front" refer to the rotation or the actual front of the bike? Because
of the inverted writing, if the tire is mounted with the text
readable, the arrow would be pointed either against the rotation or
towards the rear of the bike. I mounted it as the rotation, but
noticed that it causes the tread pattern of the front to be opposite
of the rear. Which is correct?

 Bodine wrote:

There are probably some deep physics involved here which are beyond me,
to do with pressures and directions and fluids, but in practice any
arrow when viewed from the left side of the tire, should point forward,
ie in the same direction as the bike's normal direction of motion.
Bicycles are the same even though their tires don't usually have arrows
on the sidewall.  If you straddle some tires, assuming the fender
doesn't hide their surface completely, there may be diagonal grooves
which form a sort-of arrow as you look down.  That imaginary arrow
should point in the normal direction of motion.  Seems counter-intuitive
if one imagines viewing the tire bottom from underneath the road's
surface instead of from above.

 paul c wrote:
...

Oops,sorry, left or right doesn't matter.

 

The funny thing is, Continental inverts all of the writing on the Road
Attack so that it is read from the tread side of the tire, not the rim
side, like normal tires. That allows you to see the cool race flag
pattern, but is the cause of the confusion. On a normal tire, you
would read across the top of the tire, where the writing is right side
up. If that were the case, the arrow and writing would be OK. On the
Road Attack, you read across the bottom, where the "front" text inside
the arrow is right side up, but the arrow would point forward, against
the forward rotation. That's why I'm wondering if the text "front"
refers to the rotation or the physical front of the bike.

 Bodine wrote:

  heh, heh, obviously i'm not familiar with Continentals, sounds like
"dot's" answer was much better than mine, just ignore the text and
follow the arrow!