minnaar's sew up maxxis DH tires

I didn't think of that option when you guys showed them in the Pit Bits. Or was that Dirt? The glue around the rim seems to point in that direction. It looks like they need to hire a roadie to do their glue though. (No offense Doug.) What a mess on a $2400 wheel set.

There goes your burping problem. Good idea.

I have to admit I am disgusted by this.

Whats going on here?

Experimentation. We cannot progress unless we figure out what works best. It's not like he raced it on road tires.

Tubular tires as used in road, cross, track, xc racing.
On a track where you don't have to worry about killing sidewalls they'd be so awesome.
All of that casing offers a really lively pedaling feeling that makes you want to pedal hard as hell.
You can also run super low tire pressure.
The increase in grip is most noticeable on off camber turns.
Off camber grip with XC tubulars is off the hook fantastic.

this could get interesting, very cool for his application. Can't wait to see weekend warriors in the parking lot covered in glue for no reason though.

So, that is an XC casing, mated to a DH tread, glued to the rim?

It's a full tubular casing. They're different than a standard clincher casing because they are fully round. The tube is sewed into the tire.

A high TPI cotton sidewall is used on the Dugast mtb tires that I have one of my racers on. Cotton(or silk) sidewalls suck, they're fragile and exposure to wetness helps to destroy the casing. These fuckers are hand made by some French dude in a shed. The tread is in fact glued on. Some of the xc teams send the tires that they are sponsored to ride to the back-yard tubular makers who glue that tread on. The Scott/Swisspower XC team has had Ritchey tread on Dugast casings for a few years now.
The Maxxis mtb tubular xc tires haven't been spotted in the wild yet but they will likely use an Aramid reinforced casing for sidewall protection. An XC casing would be close to 300tpi for teh supple. Tubualrs will continue to gain market share in the $6k plus Olympic-level XC market until the gear used in elite races is nothing at all like tires that are suitable to every day riding.
If there was a Maxxis HD casing I'd imagine they'd be about 125-150tpi with larger cords with a high Aramid content to tune the ride feel and promote somewhat reasonable sidewall durability.

Gary Fisher worked with Vitoria to develop XC tublars in the early '90's but they slowly slipped into obscurity.

Factoid- there were no machines for making tubulars in Taiwan until 3 years ago. Tubular production stayed in the EU, Eastern Bloc and Japan until the market for carbon tubular wheels exploded.
Now most brands are made in Thailand.

Tubular makes perfect sense for DH. No thorn flats to really worry about, which is a downfall of tubular tires, no tubeless goop, which is a downfall of regular tubeless. No burping, which is why I won't run tubeless. Same pressure, same casing, just better flat protection than with tubes? I'm in. Plus, I run my DH tires until they are about dead anyway, so why would I need to take it off? I don't see much of an argument for the 'well what if it rains' crowd. If you are well off enough to have mud spikes and go race downhill in the mud then you can have a cheap backup wheelset, or just don't run tubulars if they ever come to production.

This is a step in the right direction.

PFFFT... WHAT'S NEXT? BOLT ON GRIPS?

Mickey, always with the solid tech answer - thanks that actually made sense and informed me. 1 point for the internet today.

BeigeWolf, is that a pup in your pic? What happened to the murder-loving beast of the past? Also, 1 point to you bc on here it's like Who's Line where the points dont matter, but giving them out is still fun.

THE ONLY THING DUMBER THAN THE WAY THEY KEEP TRACK OF POINTS ON THAT SHOW ARE THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP WATCHING IT.

SORRY.