a tire for all my usage

Of course, there is no such thing.

But what I am looking for is a tire which will suit the needs I put my cyclocross bike through.

It needs to be a one tire does it all and does it all reasonably well kind of tire.
Here is the list of what it needs to do:

• Roll fast. Heavy duty treads or anything beyond light siping is out.
• Be very resistant to punctures. I want to ride my bike, not repair it on the road/trail.
• Be 700x25c. I am tired (haha) of larger sizes and want a tire more in line with a road tire. I have been riding for decades, often off road, and am not scared of tires even as small as 700x21c on crappy surfaces. The worse this tire will encounter is slick wet clay, and for that we have balance and slowing down :)
• Be able to handle a serious pounding. I ride on rail trails, gravel, and pavement which is often times quite broken up. These tires will also be in an urban environment a fair bit with all that entails.
• Have a good long life. Road tires which wear out after less than 2000km are not good. I would go through two sets a year minimum, likely more. That is too costly for me as someone who rides for pure pleasure and is not racing.
• Be relatively light. Relatively. This means 350-400(ish) grams per tire. That is light compared to some which meet my criteria, and heavy compared to a road race tire.
• Must be a clincher.
• Notice I didn't mention cost. It doesn't matter, within reason ($100 plus or minus a few dollars per tire). Savings come from beating the tires up over a few seasons and not replacing them twice a year.

 Picky, aren't I?

I have managed to narrow my search down to a few tires to consider seriously.

Tire choice 1: Schwalbe Marathon Racer HS 429

Why this tire? Well firstly, I have experience with the Schwalbe brand and Marathon tires in particular. They state that they are very tough and very durable. I can attest to that. The old school Marathons I had on my old cyclocross bike still had a bit of life left in them after 5500 plus km of use over gravel, bashed up roads, some mud, and under load (part of the time) as a commuter tire. They also did not have issues when being used on a trainer, so they can handle heat nicely. I never had a flat with them. Not even once.

This tire looks like a nice upgrade to the one I had last time as well since it falls right in my weight category at 395g each.

But, they are a bit of a pig. 700x30c is the size. I would prefer smaller. This is not a deal breaker, but I would prefer a smaller size.

They also don't cost much. MSRP is $48.35 which is cheap for tires (if you are me).

Tire choice 2: Vittoria Randonneur

Why this tire? I have them on the bike now. I like them. But...
I melted the rear tire on the trainer. It is basically shot. The rubber is quite hard and did not take the heat well at all. I will finish it off on the trainer and just let it fall apart. Oh well. This is what prompted my search for another pair of tires.

The plus about this tire is that I can get it in the size I want (700x25c) but they are quite heavy at 430g for that tire size. This is less than what my current ones mass though. I have the 700x32c on there now which mass 580g each which is way higher than I want to go next time around. Another plus with this tire is how well they wear. There are something like 1400km on the tires right now, and they have no noticeable wear on them at all (melted tire aside). Also, I have had no flats. They don't grip as well as the Marathons do though over wet clay. But they do roll faster on pavement. It is a trade off.

Cost is about $50 a tire. Again, not objectionable.

Tire choice 3: Continental SuperSport Plus

Why this tire? It looks like the best option from what I have seen so far.

Firstly, I can get them in a 700x25c size with a mass of 400g per tire. Right on the target. I can also get them as a 700x23c at 320g a tire. Two of these are only 60g more than ONE of the tires I have on the bike now. How about them apples. I am not worried about gravel with a small tire size. Most of the gravel around here is more like a packed clay with a few stones anyway, and the rail trails are all crushed limestone with occasional slick bits. A good friend of mine has been riding literally for years on rough surfaces on 700x23c tires and has never fallen off or flatted. He has disgusting luck I will grant you (aside from getting hit by a car but even there he got lucky), but still. I am not worried about the small size being an issue for what I ride.

Flat resistance appears to be on par more or less with the Schwalbe. I base this on how it is made and how the Schwalbe is made. If the tire is in fact made of similar compounds to the Schwalbe, I am not worried about flats. The tire is specifically designed for fixies and couriers, so it can take a pounding. It should last a good long time. Win for me if I go for it I would think.

Cost? Who knows? Don't care if they fit the bill well enough.

They are basically a siped slick, so they won't grip on crap as well as the Schwalbe does, but shouldn't be much worse than the Vittoria which is basically a fatter siped slick. No concern there then. As a bonus, they have a nice high PSI rating which should make it scoot quite quickly.

Tire choice 4: Specialized Roubaix Armadillo Elite

Why this tire? The armadillo tires from Specialized are very strong and very flat resistant and roll fast. In theory they last a good long time. These ones are very light for a tough tire - 700x23/25c coming in at approximately 305 grams each and should roll very fast.

However. There is a BIG however here. I have owned two sets of armadillo tires over the years and without exception, they have cracked and delaminated within half a year. The rubber cracks, and starts to split. While they don't flat much if at all, and roll pretty fast, they are not durable at all. I include them on the list because many have reported success with them, but my direct experience is that they are iffy at best. The one set lasted less than three months before they started to crack. Not impressive.

It might be worth looking at the non-armadillo variant on the tire though. Currently, I am using a non-armadillo Specialized tire on my commuter in the spring/summer/fall and really like it. It is the Specialized Crossroads. The rubber is supple, it wears well, rolls fast, and has not flatted. Granted, it is a knobbed city tire and is fairly massive, but whatever they do for flat protection does not result in the tire falling apart. So the Specialized Roubaix Pro might be worth a look seeing as it uses similar tech to the Crossroads. As a bonus, the 700x23c tire masses 260g which is very very good.

Cost? No idea. But there is a local Specialized dealer that I am confident I can get a good price from.

That's it so far.

Anyone else have any ideas? Thoughts? Experiences they would like to share?

If so, leave a comment and point me in the direction of a tire you have used over rough terrain that has stood up well for you.

Thanks!

Continental Top Contact Winter II

 Tire Test: Continental Top Contact Winter II

Time for another tire review. As before, I am not a professional reviewer, I just ride bikes and use stuff. I pay for what I use myself with my own money, blah blah etc etc etc.

The tire this time around is a lovely little winter tire called the Continental Top Contact Winter II. Readers of this mighty blog of mine know that I am a big fan of the right tire for the job, but in case you are new here, here is a bit of history for you.

When I started riding a bicycle as a car, and decided to ride all year round, I got through my first winter with a set of burned out mud type cyclo-cross tires on my bike. I was using a Kona Dew with 700c wheels. The tires were great actually, and did a good job. I forget what they were though - something from Nokian I think (heck, I doubt I even have the name right even in my guess!).

The following winter, I used a set of Schwalbe CX Pro tires in the winter. They sucked. Complete crap. While very good in mud and on gravel (what they were made for to be fair), on snow and ice, they sucked. No other word for it. Two bad falls in six hours put me off of them in the winter for life.

I swapped them out for Schwalbe Marathon Winter tires, with studs. Loved those, even if they did have a tendency to toss studs out at the drop of a hat.

A bicycle swap saw me go from 700c to 26in tires. Enter a need for new winter tires. This time around, I did not mess about and went with Schwalbe Ice Spiker HS 333 tires. They were fantastic. Huge amount of grip in the snow. Very good on ice. But, they had some serious drawbacks. The rubber wore a lot since I ride on asphalt a lot. Also, the things are very heavy, and buzz like mad. But if you ride over hard packed snow all winter, they are well worth it.

This put me in search of a good winter tire which did not have studs, but would still give vastly improved grip in the snow.

Enter the Continental Top Contact Winter II.

Here is the company link for the tire for those who care about such things: http://www.conti-online.com/www/bicycle_de_en/themes/city/winter/topContactWinter_en.html

I went with the 26x1.9 tire size.

The first thing I noted was that the tire rolled much better than a studded tire. Gee, ya think? It was almost as fast as a slick, but not quite. Due to the soft rubber compound - supple until -25C - the tire has a lot of drag compared to summer spec tires with similar tread patterns. Pump it up to its maximum tire pressure, and it rolls along quite nicely. Other than feeling a bit squishy, it is hard to tell the tire is not "ordinary".

Like all winter tires, best grip is had in snow when the tire pressure is lowered and the tire is allowed to squash out a bit. Remember - get narrow tires for winter as they sink into the snow and bite the surface underneath. This is good unless you are "fat biking".

The winter specific rubber compound tires, like this one, are great in cold weather as they offer better grip on bare asphalt than a summer tire will, even if the tread patterns are identical. That right there makes these tires worth buying. The rubber does not freeze into hard blocks with little flex and reduced traction.

The tire pattern is quite bizarre for one used to aggressive tread in slippery conditions like I am. It is very shallow, and is basically a pattern of sipes designed to "grip" to ice and snow. Think Bridgestone Blizzak for example, or Spiderman's fingerprints. Whatever the case, it works.

The tire actually will retain some semblance of control even when black ice is hit. Don't think it is a studded tire though - the ice spikers currently sitting in the basement out perform the Continentals on the bike right now on ice by such a large margin that they are not even close to being in the same league. You MUST take more care on ice if you are coming from studs to this tire. Otherwise, they, and the ground, will bite you on the ass.

That said, the difference from a summer tire is remarkable. I was able to do limited steering and braking on black ice and did not feel as if the bike was about to slide out from under me.  Sudden moves are a bad idea though. And the bike will "float" a bit without a doubt, but if you keep your eyes up, relax, and let the bike float, it is not much worse than floating a mountain bike over liquid clay. Doable, but take care.

What about snow?

It is actually not too bad. The above picture shows what the tire looks like when rolling through a bit of snow. It packs up a bunch, but grips really really well. The tread pattern just plain works. I could brake hard, steer (some slip, but not bad) and accelerate just fine in the snow today. Today, we had a layer of black ice with about one to two cm of snow on top. Not much, to be sure, but potentially very slippery due to the ice underneath it. The tires were just fine. I was quite impressed when I pulled away from a stop on a steepish hill with snow and ice on it and the bike just went about climbing it. There was no slip at all from the back end and steering on this surface was fine. I was running tire pressures a bit below optimal for dry roads, which definitely helped.

Once I got more comfortable with the grip levels, I deliberately tried to upset them. Jerking the handlebar side to side at low speeds in the snow did not result in much if any real slip. Works for me. I know that they will skid, but the skid appears likely to be very controllable. Should be good.

One thing to note is how much water they hold in the sipes. You will leave a long track behind you after running through a puddle. It is this heavy duty siping coupled with the soft rubber that gives it its grip. While they hold a lot of water, they don't kick up as much snow as the knobby tires do. The mud flaps on the fenders did accumulate some build up, but not a lot. Very little to nothing got on my feet either. This is due in part to my fenders - I use Planet Bike Cascadia ATB fenders from MEC which really help keep the slop off of me. But the tendency of the tires to not throw a lot of snow helped as well.

I reserve judgement on their flat resistance since I only have about 100km on my set right now. They claim some protection from flats, but I don't expect protection on the level of a Schwalbe Marathon commuter tire. We shall see :)

This serves as a preliminary run down of the tire. So far, other than being a bit sketchy on ice, they are wonderful. A good friend of mine, who runs two bikes in the winter - one with studs, and one with these tires - reported that he only needed his studded tire bike five times last winter. His bike with these tires did it for him for the rest of the season.

Good deal if you ask me.

Update 1:

More snow riding has been done so I figured that an update was in order.

My earlier initial observations about the tires being good in the snow turned out to be correct. In general, I just ignore the tires and let them do their thing. Tires that just vanish and do their part are a pure win. They slip a bit, but do not dramatically skid out or cause concern. They remind me of the old Continental Cross Country tires that I had on my mountain bike over a decade ago. Those tires would grip like mad while slipping at the same time. It was a strange feeling - basically, they would skid out but in a very controlled manner which made "floating" the bike easy. They could be pushed very hard since the point of adhesion loss was so progressive. These snow tires do a similar thing.

Deepen the snow a bit though and they start to fall apart. They do not like deep snow very much and the bicycle will get a bit squirmy. It does not make the bicycle significantly unstable, but it is important to note. Rough unplowed paths are also a bit of a problem with these tires since they lack the tread to really bite into such surfaces. The machine will bounce around a bit. It won't dump a rider that is used to off road riding, but the tires are not as good as my studded Schwalbes are in similar circumstances.

When riding through slush and water on the road, the bicycle handled flawlessly. An incredible amount of water gets tossed up by the tires in such circumstances. It is very important that proper full fenders be used or the rider WILL get soaked.

Try to avoid hitting rock hard "pancakes" of ice on the road. The kinds of ice that are mixed in with slush and almost invisible. The bike will bounce off of them and get a bit skittish. Studded tires are better for that. So, avoid deep slush after an ice storm unless you are sure that the slush is all slush. Of course, these conditions are fairly rare.

My over all conclusion from initial observations remains the same. The tires are a good deal and work very well in urban environments. Don't trail ride them.