Not surprised, especially with a 30mm IW rim. And @ABG’s 42’s came out wider with a 25mm rim. My 42’s measure at 42 on a 23mm rim. The sizing issue seems to be with 47’s, for whatever reason.
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My pathfinder 47s measure 48mm on a 25mm rim.
The pathfinders have been on my bike for a little over a year - so have had time to do any stretching. I think I measured them right after I installed them, and recall them being close enough to 47mm where I wasn’t concerned.
Are Specialized tires still made by Kenda?
Kenda was historically known for not having great QC…maybe trickled down into the Specialized line as well.
Are those S-Works or not? I bought a 3 month old, rarely used gravel bike. Came with 42 S-Works Pathfinders, moved them over to my Roval Terra 25 ID rims. They have always measured 47.
Pros, I have not tried sworks
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I’ve spent a good amount of time racing the 42 s-works and 42 pros and the s-works feel more supple and roll faster. I haven’t done any real measurable field testing between the 2, so it might be in my head with the “s-works” label on the side, but I like to think I’m not swayed by that stuff. I only bought them because I couldn’t get my hands on the pros at the time, but they became my favorite race tire. Only downside is they are more prone to sidewall cuts in my experience. So, I wouldn’t run them on a chunky course.
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Mostly a training tire on crappy tarmac, as I have to ride an hour to get to gravel and single track. They feel surprisingly fast due to suppleness. On training rides and fast group rides I don’t see much loss of speed versus my Tarmac with mid-aero wheels.
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Did Specialized make a special edition Pathfinder Pro for Unbound this year? Or possibly just an update to the current model?
Sarah Sturm mentions her Pathfinders are reinforced and they have a different logo than I can find on the Specialized site - including the regular Pathfinder and Pathfinder Sport.
Starts at 9:02, Laince Haidet is on the same tires later in the video but doesn’t mention anything different than the regular Pathfinder Pros.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Spesh (and other brands) alter their lineups to accommodate the wide-to-very-wide rims that are emerging. I think those Zipps that broke cover at Unbound are rumored to be quite wide, maybe in the 30mm ID range. Meanwhile many gravel tires seem to be optimized around 20-23mm ID rims, and both size and profile get weird as the rims get wide. I think Panaracer addressed this to some degree with the revision of their GravelKing line, and I expect other brands to do the same.
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and I thought my HED Emproria rims were wide at 26mm ID, but I did get them way back in the day [2021] when that was wide for a gravel wheel.
Can someone help me understand the benefit of going wider on gravel rims? is it just bigger surface area so more comfort/compliance? Could it be more aero? Asking as I am curious how this will impact clearance on new gravel bikes in the future. As of now a bike that can clear 50mm will have their clearance reduced if the new rim norm is say 27mm internal since that 50mm is probably based off a 25mm rim? or in my case on my old gravel bike a 21mm rim…
I believe DJ used narrower rims in order to get the 2.2 tire to fit. So theres that,
The Reynolds wheels he used were 21mm internal width….which given his focus on details is pretty damn narrow for today’s gravel wheels.
But they are also an actual sponsor, so…….
Wider rim bed allows tires to be bigger and spread out contract patch.
I believe they were also 60mm deep road wheels, so the narrowness probably helped fit the MTB tires in a frame that claims 50mm max clearance but I think he tested some different wheels as well and found an aero gain with these wheels despite not being even close to 105.
Did he go 60mm deep and 21 ID because no one makes the ID wider on a deep wheel?
Or does ID not matter with a 2.0 tire?
He said a 45mm tire on a traditional gravel wheel was 1w or something slower then his road wheels?
I would guess his sponsor doesn’t or that if he put his Race Kings on a 25mm ID there wouldn’t be enough clearance on his Felt. Reynolds is his wheel sponsor. The 3T Discus is wider than the Reynolds road wheels but expect the 29mm internal would make the Race Kings blow up too large, they are also not as deep so maybe wouldn’t be as much of an aero benefit as the deep road wheels.
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In theory 60mm deep 40mm external and 30id would be best?
But if windy that wheel would be a handle full and that’s why it’s made in a 45mm
On the Marginal Gains podcast Josh Portner talked about testing with DJ ahead of Unbound. They said the RaceKing 2.2 had unaccountably excellent aero characteristics; while most tires followed the expected narrower-is-faster rules, the RaceKing 2.2 had similar drag (wheel alone) to most 40mm tires despite being like a 57mm tire. They didn’t know why; something about the casing shape, tread pattern, or the weave/scale pattern of the sidewall, they speculated?
Likewise the Lauf suspension fork; it was actually a few watts faster than the stock Felt fork, though they noted that the Felt fork was not really aero optimized to start with.
Point being I think DJ actually tested his gear and found the combo he used to be the best blend of comfort, rolling resistance and aero, but this would not have been predicted by him, Josh or anyone just using the “eyeball wind tunnel.” For the rest of us, unless we have access to a tunnel or are willing to do a ton of Chung method laps, we’re doing a lot of guessing in choosing wheel/tire combos for performance.
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I’ve mentioned this before, but they need to do more testing based on their results. When you get an outlier result like that, you need to dig deeper into it and test more in order to confirm the results.
It may well be that the results are correct (lord knows Poertner knows his way around a wind tunnel), but as a one-off test that seems to defy all accepted “rules” of aerodynamics, more testing is necessary to confirm the results, IMO.
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