How does it feel with the mismatched tires?
Also, as a general question, is the larger width tires more beneficial for front, rear, or no real impact?
I currently have 48mm (measured) pathfinder pros on my mosaic and have 7mm clearance on each side up front. I know I could fit a thunderburt, although potentially not in the rear. Wondering how beneficial it would be to run the mismatched tires in that aspect. If someone comes out with a good 50 I’d certainly run that in the rear.
Absolutely no issue for me running the mismatched tires. The thunder Burt is knobbier and should have more grip in the front, which is what you want for mountain biking or dirt biking. Of course a bunch of the lifetime GP people are running a mismatched setup.
Honestly though, I don’t even think about it or notice it while I’m riding.
Agreed, I think a 50mm Terra Speed would be awesome, I’m a huge fan of those tires.
Yep. He dominated on 650b. Dropped maybe only a handful of races.
But the Scott’s marketing machine didn’t like his story I guess and had him back on 29ers.
Got a pic of front clearance?
Also, as a general question, is the larger width tires more beneficial for front, rear, or no real impact?
There’s more weight on the rear tire, so in terms of rolling resistance and avoiding punctures the benefit on the rear is higher. Also the aero penalty is probably smaller.
On the front, there’s increased grip in the corners.
There’s also the issue of blindly hitting larger rocks when drafting, where I think the benefit is larger on the front.
Just to add to @nin answer, there is usually more room up front for a larger tire, so most people seem to be using one up front.
Agreed that a larger one up front provides better cornering grip and a larger one in the rear provides better flat protection.
A lot of talk about grip on the front tire. Serious question, do we think grip matters on gravel? In my experience, a slick gravel tire and a tire with some knobs don’t feel any different on a gravel surface when it comes to turning. It feels different on dirt or grass or sand, but not gravel.
Tires should be optimised for terrain, conditions and what one is trying to do on a bike.
Generally in MTB terms - front tire is where you want the most cornering grip, while rear tire is where you want less rolling resistance.
Plus yes current limitation of gravel bike frames and forks informs the choice further.
Gravel is a discipline rather than just particular terrain description which is where some confusion and arguments come from.
You can take a gravel bike on a sunny day across dry hardpack and use 40mm like MVDP to win world champs. Or you can take the same gravel bike down wet and muddy single track with tech features. Where you either need an actual MTB bike or certainly the right tires for the occasion.
I think it makes a difference on Appalachia mountainous gravel (steep, sometimes sketchy and washed out). Ive ridden a pathfinder on the front here and its not great, while i’m totally happy with a pathfinder on the front in other areas.
So, it depends where you ride me thinks
That said would a terra speed 50 be so bad?
The 2.2 Protection Raceking and 45 Terra Speed are remarkably close at 25psi on BRR?
Not at all, it would be a great tire, it just wouldn’t be particularly exciting (to me). We do actually now have a decent range of tires with pretty similar performance in the 48-55mm range. In particular:
Thundero 48
Hardpack 50
Thunder Burt 2.1
Race King 2.2
These tires all tested within 1w of each other at low pressure on BRR. In comparison the new Caracal Race is 5w faster than all of them. It should be possible to make a semi-slick 50mm gravel tire that’s meaningfully faster than the above options.
Depends on the type of gravel….for most of the gravel we ride here ( kitty litter over hard pack), a slick is absolutely horrible. It is like riding on marbles. You need knobs to give the loose stuff somewhere to go.
For other gravel (say chunkier stuff you see on gravel roads), a slick can be a great choice and it is technique that will primarily determine cornering stability.
But a wider tire is almost always gonna provide more cornering grip because you have more rubber in contact with the ground.
I agree, of course with the caveat that it depends what your riding on. But where the MTB tire helps with grip is often due to it just being bigger than the knobs on it. A 2.1” tire that had a tread like the g-one RS would be great on a lot of terrain.
So having the 2.1” in front going around loose gravel corners is still beneficial IMO, its just that it isn’t because of the knobs.
We have some loose, steep gravel climbs where I ride. I definitely prefer more grip when climbing up these. Sliding out while going uphill is no bueno.
Yes. Sure, grip doesn’t matter much when the surface is moving beneath you, sometimes it’s even counter-productive… but it matters when it isn’t, which is a lot of the time, even for fractions of a second during a very gravel-y corner.
This is where I noticed a massive difference in riding Vittoria Terreno Dry 50mm vs a Race King 2.2 on back to back weekends on the same course. The gravel was hard packed but with some loose stones over top. Everytime I stood up with the Terreno Dry’s the rear slipped badly that I immediately had to sit back down. With the extra drip from the knobs and physically bigger RK’s, there was no slippage at all. Night and day difference.
I ran a slick at big sugar this year and it didn’t seem any worse than anything else in the gravel and felt great on the pavement. But it all depends on conditions as previously mentioned.
Joe
Isn’t that the whole point of cyclocross though? The idea is that everybody is on a sub-optimal setup. Using a drop bar MTB and MTB tires feels like going against the spirit of cyclocross (pun intended).
Kind of a tangent, but I have no issues with MTB tires or drop bar MTBs for gravel races. Optimizing the best setup for the course to get the fastest times, that’s all cool. But I actually think they should still be illegal in CX, at least for anything above a cat 5. You’re new? Cool, race whatever bike you have. But anything higher go back to CX bikes with 33s. It’s supposed to be hard and not the most optimal setup. More about skills and power, not bike setup.
Back to this topic, what is the biggest tires people are getting on the Crux? I feel like going fat.
