Of course not, that would be a huge oversimplification. I am just relaying what the reps from Schwalbe mentioned to me RE their radial construction.
In a recent bonk bros podcast Drew Dillman mentioned he had two flats in a race last weekend with one of the new Schwalbe gravel tires. I think he said he hadnāt had an actual flat in like two years. He was also using Silcaās new sealant.
I received the same Schwalbe tire yesterday, but am returning it tomorrow. Was planning on using it for a rear at mid south for extra clearance if thereās mud, but not going to be a guinea pig now. Iāll run the olā tried and true pathfinder instead.
I had a bit of back and forth with Drew online about the flat, he mentioned he thought it might have been a rim tape issue, as he never found a puncture in the tire, the tire just went down, he filled it with CO2, and it slowly went down again. Sounds to me it could have been a new wheel (early season all new gear for pros) and perhaps he was running a factory rim tape job-I have had many issues with factory rim tape jobs, and have learned to never trust them myself.
I believe in that same segment he mentioned that he couldnāt find any punctures either time and suspected that it may have been the rim tape as he had recently retaped a wheel.
Yes, and Dylan and others mentioned that if it was a rim tape issue it likely wouldnāt have held once he filled it back up with air.
At least with the rim tape issues Iāve had, no sealant or anything would fix it other than re-taping. Also, it was always clearly losing air much faster than a well taped rim. It wouldnāt hold fine for days, and then just go down, twice in a race. Again, just my experience.
It could be rim tape, could have been a puncture. He also mentioned that he wonāt be going back to that tire, so clearly heās not 100% sure.
Saw some new Specialized gravel tires today. New Pathfinder, Tracer and Terra. From least tread to most as listed. Didnāt get a confirm on what sizes each would be offered in. But I am pretty sure my shop said at least one in 50. This was retail packaged so have to be announced soon.
I had a Rim Tape issue, in my case caused by the older Silca Sealant where the tire was going down somewhat slowly - at least nowhere near like a puncture. And no matter what I did, it never sealed back up until I took it apart and re-taped it.
I have those tires and for me they may be slightly oversized and you donāt get that confident āPopā when itās seated in the bead. I had a slow leak (few psi overnight) on one of the tires. I broke the seal and reinstalled the tire and had no further issues.
So wether itās user error or a combination of what rim you have, or even possibly old sealant inhibiting a proper seal, itās not the durability of the tire.
Was this at Homegrown Gravel? Yeah, nothing to give you a flat there unless you hit something big
Word around town is the tires arent bigger than previous tires, they are just stating the tire size base on 25 mm rims instead of what they were on 21 mm. Ie they are still the same size as the current 47mm
I have 47mm pathfinder on a 27mm rim and they measure 48mm. Thatād be pretty surprising if they came out with a ānewā 50mm that was the same. Iām sure weāll find out soon.
Dang guess I canāt run them on my new Lab71 SuperX.
Jokes aside, I wanna get hands on that new 2.2 AirTrak.
In fact 50 mm Schwalbe RS Pro is faster than narrower sizes of the same tire. BRR has a bit misleading testing protocol. It tests all MTB tires at the same pressures. But changes approach when testing gravel tires - then it chooses different pressures depending on tire with. For example āLow Air Pressureā means 1.9 bar when testing 50 mm tires, but 2.6 bar when testing 40 mm tires. Thatās how they came to incorrect conclusion that 50 mm Schwalbe RS Pro is slower than 40 mm. And if we compare these tires at the same pressure (1.9 bar) we see that wider tire has lower rolling resistance: 18.2 W for 50 mm vs 18.8 W for 40 mm.
Iāve also noticed this recently, after replotting some of the MTB, gravel and Road tyre data against pressure (in psi), instead of just low/med/high pressure as BRR does it. It changes somewhat the perception of the relative ranking between tyres. On the other hand, most people would run a wider tyre at lower pressure compared with a narrower tyre, so there are arguments for doing it both ways I guess. Itās odd though, that BRRās approach for MTB tyres is completely different, using fixed pressures, with no adjustment for width.
I have experienced similar rim tape issues, especially with factory rim tape jobs. Now I will always re-tape new wheels. But, I am pretty sure my next wheelset will be from a Chinese brand, and will have no holes to tape, as I am tired of faffing about with rim tape!
In my case, it wasnāt factory rim tape, it was the DT Swiss tape I use because Iāve had great luck with otherwise. The sealant literally degraded the tape and I had failures in multiple places within a week or two of adding the new sealant.
Re-taped, and went back to Stans or OrangeSeal.
Yes, in real world people run wider tires at lower pressures, but on real gravel road lower pressures means lower rolling resistance, yet on steel testing drum itās the opposite - higher pressures leads to lower rolling resistance. So while this ability to run at lower pressure is advantage in real life, in testing it becomes disadvantage, and we get completely distorted results.
We cannot really use BRR data points for drawing strong conclusions about what happens in the real world, on dirt surfaces. If we did, weād all be racing 25 mm Conti GP 5000s! They test on a smooth drum which has two problems: no bumps, which is where the wider tires (and lower pressures) excel, and the drum, being round, has a different contact patch shape (rounder and shorter) than a flat surface. Add to that the very narrow rim they use, and that they often use pressures not in line with what one would use in the real world, and the data is certainly skewed. I do still pay attention to what they find, as I do feel their results give us an idea of which tires have a construction which is relatively fast, but one cannot just draw all of their conclusions from BRR. I will use their data for a comparison of brand to brand tires in the same size, as this likely speaks to general differences of the tiresā constructions related to speed, but BRR is pretty useless for determining what size tire is best for a given situation.
Once you get some hole-less wheels, itās hard to go back to ever taping a rim!
I had many folks ask for a 650B tire test to go with the others Iāve doneā¦ so good news, youāre getting one!
Got a connection to do some schwalbe thunder Burts soon in a 650 x 2.1 size.