meaning, they don’t have time (or $$$) for that shit.
question there is whether it’s cheaper to do the research and have defensible tire recommendation ranges, or if these companies are all comfortable absorbing the costs of any possible lawsuits when a rim / tire combo goes kablooey out of nowhere.
and if it made your stem insert unglue, then there’s a whole nother pile of problems
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A good question for sure. I feel like it’s easier to make a rim to ETRTO standards with some degree of consistency (especially if carbon) than it is to make sure all your tires are right. I suspect the rim companies that actually have control over their process can easily pass the buck to the tire makers.
From what I have read here and there is that what it mostly comes down to is if the bead stretches the right amount or too much. We all know from experience that some tires stretch quite a bit more (to the point getting them to seat again later can be a problem).
It definitely doesn’t help that both sides are fairly slack about pointing to approved tire size to rim width charts.
At Outpost and Endpoint we regularly get questions about this sort of thing and I’m always amazed that it ends up falling on some tiny bike company on the internet or a shop in some backwater town in Virginia to google the WTB chart or start emailing companies.
At least that information isn’t that hard to find, but the amount of what pretty much amounts to disinformation out there from some brands is pretty shocking.
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DQ: If it doesn’t snow and I need nice tires for the 650b wheelset before I get the 700c set built, what should I get?
For mostly paved commute.
650b x 45-50 ish I guess?
Rolling resistance on cobbles simulator, all are 28-30 mm
The net net is that Challenge sadly does not perform well and Specialized Cotton Turbo with tubes performs best. I have those tires on my black bike, since I don’t have tubeless yet on that one, and I can attest they are awesome.
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where did you find this?
It jibes with my experience, but i’m always struck by how much faster fast tires are. At normal road speeds, that’s a little under a 1mph difference in average speed!
This was in VN a month or two ago, written by Zinn. There is a whole huge article associated with it.
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40 watts difference is only 1 mph? I would have thought more (assuming average rider who rides at roughly 20 mph)
it looks to me as if the difference between fastest and slowest is about 20 watts at 4.5 bar, right?
Times 2 tires tho
ahhhh yes, it’s right there in the name of the vehicle!
that’s wild, it’s a difference on par with aero vs box rims.
It would be cool if I could match the colors on the chart with the tire name easier
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i think it’s easy to contrast elm ash with thundercloud, not sure what your problem is
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Fucking decoder ring charts, anyway.
I confess, i looked at the chart for 2 minutes and im still not positive whether gp5s did good.
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It would have been nice if they had used different colors rather than 4 shades of orange and 4 shades of blue
But I think the key takeaways are:
- Challenge is never a great choice in this size
- If you use tubeless, use GP5000
- If you use tubes, use Specialized Cotton Turbos
- There’s no good reason to use any of the other tires unless there’s a major price or durability advantage for one of them. I’ve never had a puncture on the Cotton Turbos though and I hear that the GP5000 is pretty puncture proof as well
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I’m dubious about those results, but I can’t access the original article, so…
Challenge Strada Bianca Pro HTLR is the top of the heap, there. GP5k would be faster, but they don’t land in the “CX/Gravel” category.
GP5k results:
15.7W at 60PSI for a 36mm Strada Bianca Pro vs 10.3W for the 32mm GP5k at the same pressure. There’s a few watts difference, but at anything 20MPH or above, the tire width and relative aero drag are going to make a larger difference.
I’m hoarding some tubeless 26" tires because they’re going the way of the dodo. The three I’ve found are this Michelin “pump track specific” tire:
The abysmal Surly ET:
And of course the hated Gravelking
How much will I regret buying a GravelKing?
Does anyone know of any other decent 26" tubeless slick or semi-slick tires out there in the world? I wish Maxxis still made the Re-Fuse in that size or the TreadLite. Those were adequate and terrific tires respectively.
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i heard that bigger is better with GK, but they’re all sorta one-time tubeless, they stretch to where re seating is pretty ¿¿??
I was looking into those Pumps a while back. They’re not actually tubeless, even though some places that sell them say they are.