Tire chat (nerds only)

Today I learned there is actual thread wear indicator on maxxis tires.

Haven't noticed a significant difference in the radials when riding at 7'k vs 10-13'k elevation as far as feel related to pressure. Temp ranges so far are all summer range- 60-90F and no major differences that I can detect. I wasn't changing pressure with my old non radial setup at altitude either. 

Agree that fine tuning is in order- 1psi makes a difference. I try to set pressure right before I ride with the same pump every time. Yes I am a tire nerd. 

Not sure you understood me. If 1 psi makes a difference and you set pressures before the ride, surely you notice the tyres are too stiff at the top, as they warmed up from the sun and the effective pressure raised due to altitude gain? Both combined can be multiple psis

For crying out loud you can easily feel a difference between tire pressures with normal tires too. You just got to set a different pressure, that's all, given they work better at higher pressures compared to normal tires.

No reason to make this complicated. If you are going to do a lot of elevation gain that will also affect your suspension(air) so just simply carry pump(s) and a gauge and you can quickly correct what's needed, on the spot. Personally I carry shock and tire pump + a gauge for every ride no matter. I ride alone so I just want to be prepared + also I'd like to be able to help others thay may have ended up in a trailside situation. 

I never bothered changing pressures even at bike parks with heaps of elevation like 1400m top to bottom, I set the pressures for the day and we run with that

I’ll check soon in Whistler if there’s any perceivable difference but I won’t know what pressures to run going from trail Albert to gravity Albert anyway 

Yeah, I also usually set the pressures for the day(shock, fork + tires), I just wanted to point out that pumps and gauges exist and you feel differences in pressures with any tire. I ride with a backpack with 3L water bladder so as I have lots of room I might as well just carry pumps and a gauge as it weighs hardly anything. 

The only real important part is you need to find a new preference because radial tires behave different, that's all. Once you find your preference, there's nothing different. You adjust the pressure to your liking and you go ride. Maxxis DHF felt too squiggly at 19psi for me, but ok at 20psi. MM radial felt vague at 23psi, and 24psi felt better but not quite right. That's why 25psi made most sense to me.

At the end of the day, small changes can be a dealbreaker with any of these tires. Just find your preference that's all there is to it. 

Okay... I'm not disputing that 1 psi of difference is noticeable. Obviously changing pressures makes a difference, regardless of the casing, otherwise we'd be running airless tyres. And to make it clear, I set pressures with a pressure gauge, lately at the top of the descent. 

What I'm wondering, asking, (disputing?) is how important is that 1 psi of difference. If it is, surely people to whom it is so important are adjusting pressures mid descent (not mid ride, mid descent) multiple times? 

Setting pressures in a cool cellar and bringing your bike out in the sun can add up to 10 % of pressure from the temperature difference. 1000 m of elevstion (between sea level and 3000 meters) is roughly 0,1 bar or 1,4 psi. Dropping 1000 meters (not impossible will alter the pressures more than the 1 psi mentioned as a change in feel.

Thus me asking, if you feel 1 psi of difference when setting pressures, surely you feel the difference between the top and the bottom of a long descent? And where (and to what) do you set the pressures then? How do you measure pressure? A digital gauge? Always the same one? And I didn't even touch temperature changes (morning vs. midday vs. afternoon). 

for example, where i ride now i get 300m of elevation top, so it's basically unchanged, and that 1 psi sometimes mean i'm hearing my rim banging or not, that's the only thing i feel/hear, if im dropping 1000m vert my legs will be cooked anyway so that psi more or less, make it 3 even, i won't feel.

You're still locked in on the 1psi difference thing. As I've tried to convey more than once is you just have to find your new preference. How and when you choose to adjust it is obviously up to yourself. If you feel something is off, ok then you make an adjustment. 

I at least don't feel like there's a incremental difference between pressure from normal to radial. They just behave different and so you need to recalibrate your brain to that new behavior, that's all. As others have stated before me is that the impression is that lots of people have ridden these new tires with too low pressures, and that's where I feel the misconceptions have arisen from. If you try to make them feel like normal tires you are working against how they're supposed to function. You just got to recalibrate your brain, and personally I'm in that process myself as they are new to me as well. I just try to adapt rather than resist it. 

I'm light (65-68 kg without gear) but ride the radials on a light Levo built and I almost use as low pressures as with the supertrail casing in the trail casing. And really low because I also mostly ride natural trails with rocks and roots and no high g force turns or jumps. I also carry a gauge with me and try to go as low as possible without damaging my rims. So most of the time I can get away with 18 psi in the front and a little more in the rear. Sure I get an occassional rim ding on a rock or a root and my rear rim looks a bit funny but the grip is phenomenal and I can tell when its a critial hit or just damped enough that it doesn't dent the rim too bad. Its just comfy and grippy.

I can't say I notice a difference in pressure when I go from the top a long descent (1k+ of vert) to the bottom.

That is some low pressure Tabletop84! 
 

I had the chance to ride a Demo recently at Windrock which had the Specialized Cannibal tires front and rear. I would agree with Cahal's review on youtube. Tires were great on the downhill trails, lots of support in the cornering lugs and pretty good braking - but on the slower enduro type trails the tires felt pretty dead. It didn't have the 'always on' type grip a la assegai, but the transition from center to cornering knobs is pretty quick.

Its only working becuause I'm light and prefer to ride natural hiking trails which are usually way more damped because the soft top layer soil isn't gone and the bottom layer not compressed by thousands of riders so that its hard as concrete like bikepark trails. You also can't go as fast on them because they are narrow. I also keep an eye on the pressure all the time and have a pressure gauge with me. And yeah my rims have many micro dents and some bigger ones. Like my rear wheel wobbles into all directions but I don't notice it when riding and the traction/comfort is nice. 

Only sometimes I'm wondering if my front tire folds in fast corners but my suspision is its more just a loss of gripp. 

Since I ride magic mary (not just radial tires) with low pressure in the front I stopped having these loosing the frontwheel out of nowhere moments I had in the past with other tires and without monitoring my pressure. Its basically the same approach as the radial tires. Lower pressure increases the contact patch of the tires and makes it less bouncy. But it will only work if you ride a bit conservative in certain situations and watch out for stuff like sharp rocks. 

Radial update: Went out earlier with my brother, went down to 24psi front and rear (front is super soft MM gravity pro radial, rear is a soft Tacky Chan in gravity) I've never been able to really keep up with him, and I started off feeling really slow, but when I warmed up I started catching up to him, which never happens. We both agreed to go full race pace and I was still catching up to him, provided I didn't make any mistakes or anything. He says his front and rear were both sliding at points (he runs a regular super soft MM trail casing front and a super soft Big Betty DH) and my front felt like I was able to push it way more if I had the skill. I've either been limited by my tyres for a while or I've gotten a lot better at riding in a short amount of time. I'm absolutely loving it! I used to be scared of loose terrain, but recently I've been telling myself "in dust we trust."

Looks like no discussion yet about Jackson running the new DHF in Andorra... That tire is set to replace the Assegai on a lot of World Cup racer's bikes as it becomes more available. Great compromise between the Shorty II and the Assegai.

No offense to Ed Masters (I don't share this quality with him, but I admire it and wish I could be like this), but I wouldn't read too much into Ed's bike setup. I legitimately think any part on his bike might be there by accident.

His bike does seem to be improvised jazz quite often.

I love the run what you brung attitude (because that's my attitude) but I'm also not trying to eek out performance to win races. I'm just trying to be better today than I was yesterday on the same gear so I can actually measure my improvement and put it down actual improvement rather than gear changes.

"I'm my own competition, I'm competin' with myself. Brrrr!" - Cardi B

 

I'm sure this will get as much debate as their brake reviews, but the germans over at enduro-mtb have released a big tire review with some puncture protection and rolling resistance values:
https://enduro-mtb.com/en/the-best-mtb-tire-in-review/

I like how reading this thread and these type of reviews make me wonder how I survive riding on lighter casings when everyone recommends gravity stuff ! A general lack of rocks must help...

If you don't have slabs, sharp rocks, enormous drops, and don't ride park often, then anything above an enduro casing is a waste of energy IMHO. I can't stand my gravity tires for 99% of what and when I ride. I'll use them for the one day a year I ride park.

You bridge two worlds with enduro casings: light enough to not sap your energy on a long climb, tough enough to handle some proper jank, grippy enough to try pushing your limits. 

I've been riding my whole life and the only punctures and flats I've ever gotten were in Nevada and it was because those stupid goat-head thorns were puncturing the sidewalls.

Kind of a bummer that they didn't adjust the Radial casing on the puncture resistance.  If you run a 24 psi vs 28 psi, its likely going to have better puncture protection.

I say this because the radial had the worse scores on the puncture resistance with the albert trail pro being 9%, which is less than an Exo casing (12).  

The right casing for terrain, weight, and riding style is really important. An often under looked factor is tire pressure. This probably doesn't apply to most folks in this thread, but the gen pop frequently has unrealistic expectations of what tires should be able to do. Such as riding XC casing tires at 18-22 PSI on the front range of Colorado when they're a clydesdale, and then surprised Pikachu face when they pinch flat. 

I haven’t ridden any radials yet and looking at there lineup, I’m surprised more people aren’t asking for the Big Betty in radial. Is the Tacky Chan the better option as they are similar in the lineup?

It rolls better and it’s more predictable, that’s why, but sad news 

Damn thing is not uploading the picture, well, Schwalbe says that “there are no plans to include the Tachy Chan with the Radial Carcass in the range at the moment”

It seems dumb to me given the request but…

Do people actually like the Big Betty for other applications than DH? For me, it's a terrible rear tire if you need to pedal.

Anyone have thoughts on Goodyear's Newton or Wrangler? They seem popular in the southern hemisphere for some reason; more than a few times I've seen MTB content in NZ, AU, or S. America riding Goodyears.

Wow the lack of puncture protection on both the Trail Pro and Gravity Pro radials compared to regular tires is pretty astounding. Maybe this is the reason we're not seeing rear-specific radials at the moment?

Got a chance to try Tacky Chans front and rear in Morzine this week and did not enjoy the amount of lean they took to hooik up. (even on bike park trails. That being said, using one as a rear would be a great "training tool" to keep your technique in check, much like going from clips back to flats from time to time. I'm still all in for a radial Hans Dampf for my downcountry bike.

I think the flaw in that test is that they were all tested at the same PSI.  It would be interesting to know how much puncture protection you gain from 1-5 PSI added to a tire.   Since most people are running radials 3-5psi higher, you'd expect it to "even out" a bit the protection I'd guess, but hard to have definitive metrics on it. 

I'm been using them for 6 months and haven't punctured any less or more. Puncturing seems pretty arbitrary sometimes and a difficult thing to test with so many variable in real life. I've gotten flats in areas I've ridden through trails 100x's no problem but because a rock recently got kicked onto the trail I got a flat. I really wouldn't let this one test deter anyone from any tire. 

With every company having a different casing and name, having an unbiased data based test to show puncture resistance would be great.  I would agree with you that these numbers don't necessarily match my experience, when I've had better luck with Continental Enduro vs Exo+ although they show the same picture resistance. 

I just would love to have data to tell me a Spec Grid Trail = Continental Enduro = Schwalbe Trail Pro, etc.  It makes switching brands and trying new much less $.