Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
That's a downhill casing, supersoft compound, but the Fr is "optimized for front wheel"
Thank you! Couldn't find this chart. Very helpful.
Ah yes, the periodic table of continental tire skus. If there ever was evidence of how impossible it is to keep mtb consumers happy, it's the list of tire mfg skus.
Trek would like a word
This is the full fat. Downhill riding (first icon with arrows pointing down) Super soft copmound (second icon with all dots filled in) Downhill casing (third icon with all dots filled in).
Question. I see lots of discussion re treads, compounds, casings, grip, trye damping and feel. But don't see this discussed. The tyre casing breaking down over time, mainly speaking on the rear tyre in particular, but is a longer timeframe on front tyre.
For example, im not light (95kegs in riding gear), competent i guess. Ride with only DD or DH casing tyres on all bikes from trail to park (be it maxxis, continental, vittoria etc). I find the casing is breaking down long before the tread is wearing out. Support and tyre feel falling off drastically after 4-8weeks depending on the weather. probably most obvious by how much a removed tyre rolls into a wee ball and so pliable in your hands compared to a fresh DD/DH. Rear tyre pressure is 28-31psi tyre dependent. No inserts for a couple years. Over time the rear becomes a bit tooo forklift steery. Riding in Canterbury in NZ but all over south island of all type of soil and surface.
I end up replacing tyre due to feel on bike not tread. Is this just a me thing or other people in the same boat? There is huge debates in here about the best tyre to ride in a certain location when its a full moon but only when humidity is 80% but not suitable after 2 IPA pints, only on a 140mm bike and unrideable on a 150mm bike. But not so much on tyre casing. Apologies if this has been discussed and iv missed it.
NOTE this isnt a criticism of tyre manufacturers but just an observation that i dont see discussed and isnt mentioned in my riding group. Maybe I have more enthusiasm in corners than my friends haha.
Add a fat insert. Maybe the odyssey one? Maxxis DH casing instead of double down.
I’m similarly sized and will be going back to dhr2 dh only in the rear just because of this feeling. I thought Cush Core pro would help, but it didn’t. Noticed it within 10 hours or so of ride time.
yeah tire casing breaking down makes a huge feeling difference. for a DH casing, its pretty different after just a couple days going from stiff and supportive to more compliant. anything less casing wise just feels somewhat consistently soft from the get go
i'll never understand the point of "riding style"and "chasing" logos telling me the same exact thing twice
https://www.bikeradar.com/news/vee-tire-co-rad-core-radial-casing-tyres
First (of many) Radial competitors to the market. Looks like they're not available for purchase yet.
@ARonBurgundy Are you guys going to roll out your new stuff (the new casing, that new tread) soon?? Need to get on it! A bunch of the local DH teams are all putting in tire orders for this season. Vee dropped their Radials, and I'm hearing another one of your major competitors is dropping their new casing quite soon. It's Feb 10th, and the spring boom for purchases is starting in a coupe weeks.
CC: @schwalbai When are you dropping your other treads in Radial and the new 2:2:2 prototype? You're going to have some stiff (or should I say, supple) Radial competition very soon here. Time to move!
Good news about these Vee tires.
Cmon Schwalbe, lets have those tacky chans, radial, enduro and DH casing, soft and super soft!!!
Lots to be excited for this coming release season!
I'm stoked that riders will have lots of radial tires to choose from.
If Vee makes the casing, I wouldn't be suprised to see it show up in the tires they produce for other brands.
Anybody know who else Vee makes tires for? I think they make the E13 tires, and probably others. Maaaaaaybe Specialized tires too?
IIRC Vee and Vittoria (Lion tires) are the main bike tires factories in Thailand. So if another brand of tires is made in Thailand I would think there is a good chance it's one of those two. The other main bike tires factories are in other countries.
This will be the year of the "Radial" or other company's takes on it. Schwalbe should have had all their tires in Radial by this winter to capture early spring sales before the other big dawgs roll stuff out very soon. It was good to see a renaissance of the Schwalbe brand. But their major growth over the past 18 months is about to be derailed.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. In the US I've been consistently seeing Schwalbe radials for $80 on Amazon and bike online retailers for at least the past 9 months. Conti Enduro casing is $110 Maxxis DD is now up to freaking $115!! (I've had a new takeoff Assegai (yellow label) for sale for $75 for months and zero interest) I fully expect both those companies radial tires to be priced higher because it's the new hotness. I'd love to be wrong but I know they won't be any cheaper than current offerings so still $30+ more than Schwalbes. Conti can maybe charge a little more for their radials because their tires last so dang long. It'll still be hard to pass up a Tacky Chan under that $100 price point, and I'm a total Kryptotal R fanboy.
Crazy prices over there. I picked up my radicals for 50-60€
This is definitely a thing, although more common among DH racers. There's a sweet spot for the casing feel that riders are looking for. A brand new tire needs a couple runs to soften up and then there are X (varies) number of runs with the casing in that sweet spot before it starts to go away. It's quite common for mechanics to swap out tires after a set amount of runs, long before the tread is gone.
Unfortunately, it won't be until later in the summer for the stuff you're after.
So sure of what? Not sure what point you're making here since it was in response to me, but I didn't say anything about pricing. My comment was that once the other brands release their Radial competitor casings, Schwalbe is going to fade back into the shadows again, like they were (in the US) prior to their Radial boom. It won't be that bad, but they're going to lose a lot of the steam they have behind them right now.
That said, regarding your comments on pricing:
1. Schwalbes were full price for a long time over the summer and into the early fall. Then a glut built up in the system from wholesalers and shops over-ordering. Sales on Radials were not common until this winter, though. And still today, if you're seeing a sale on a Schwalbe Radial, is much more common to be an Albert. Many people started with Alberts, then realized they're not Assegais and are moving to the more aggressive Magic Mary. So there is an oversupply of Alberts right now. You couldn't find a Mary in stock at all this fall in many places. That is changing now, too, as glut is building up.
2. When the new "Radials" (or their version of it) from Maxxis, Conti, and Specialized ship, they may be slightly higher--$5, $10/per tire. Hopefully not, but it's possible. I mean, in theory, they shouldn't be any more expensive since the primary difference will be the alignment of the fibers in the casings, but there could be a small bump in price. Keep in mind that Schwalbe Radials were $103 (same as Maxxis, and Conti locally) when they dropped, for many, many months while supply was short. Now there is a glut, so there are some discounts.
🥲
Yes, meant comment on this as well. There was a telling video segment from the 2024 season where a Frameworks mechanic talks about how he usually only has riders doing 2-3 runs, 4 max on a set of Contis DH tires before the casings are too broken in/soft. He says the tread is fine, but the casing is what is 'stressed' and not the same.
I know all stouter DH tires experience this on some levels, but I was personally shocked by my Conti DH tire... I went to replace the rear tire after it had been used for a few months of riding. I took it off, and the casing felt super soft/supple, almost like an XC tire's casing. I was replacing it with the same DH casing Conti tire, and the fresh one was extremely stout/rigid, stood up on its own, leaning against my workbench. The two casings, while technically the same, would feel/perform VERY differently on trail.
The video is on this page (convo starts ~9:00min): https://www.pinkbike.com/news/video-big-disc-energy-and-setup-insights-…
Question about Schwalbe radial tires. Is there a noticeable difference in ride feel between the Schwalbe Magic Mary Trail and the Gravity version? I’m planning to run it on the front of my enduro bike. So far, I’ve been using Maxxis EXO+ tires on the front without any issues (no punctures). I do care about weight since I pedal this bike a lot, therefore, from a ride-feel perspective, is the extra weight of the Gravity casing worth it?
Thanks for the reply and explanation of things. Explains the felling from start of tyre life to the feeling of them being the best to where they fall away. Obviously this cycle has many variables like the casing, environment/ground, riding style, frequency of high load cornering events, temperature? Has to be said that the DHR DH casing in 2.5 has been the best for me to date.
I don't think the hans Dampf feels slow. But I also had it in pacestar or some similar fast rolling compound in the back.
yeah this is running it as a rear.
To JVP's point about rougher terrain...
Coming from the world of cyclocross tubulars.... A super supple casing at 20psi (almost riding on the rim) is faster on very bumpy grass/rough fields than a stiffer casing tire at 30psi because of deflection (casing having to deform over bumps). The same is true these days with UCI road racing and gravel racing. All are going to lower pressures and all have supple casings.
Also, rolling resistance tests on drums are helpful for comparisons between tires, but they aren't fully translatable to the real-world trails.
The Radials definitely rolls slow on smooth terrain (because of the bigger contact patch), but on gravel or rough trails, they roll about the same, in some cases maybe a touch faster, because of the supple casing (more so with the Trail casing versions).
I think that's why you hear so many different opinions on how Radials roll is because people are running wildly different pressures in them. Some of the guys I ride with run them down around 20psi, and there are others, at the same weight, running them at closer to 30. The ones running the lower pressures will have a much larger contact patch, therefore more drag.
Spot on.
Ideal operating pressures is often neglected from testing and comparisons, rightfully so because it's like opening pandoras box.
The Enduro-MTB test was cool to compare many different brands/treads/casings/compounds, but a control pressure of 1.5bar/22psi is certainly not ideal for many tires.
At 200lbs, I started riding the Mary Trail Pro Radial at 22psi on the front (what i used to ride with a bias-ply trail casing). Tire felt objectively slow, but
rolling certainly improved when i increased the pressure.
Post a reply to: Tire chat (nerds only)