Stock Tires - What do you do with them after replacing?

around here we ride on old levee roads beat up by the sun from May thru October, and a road base that is undermined by flooding in the winter resulting in potholes and unstable road surfaces. Random Google Maps shot showing a typical road surface outside the metro area:

Riding over broken road surfaces like that, you can actually here the pavement shift. Kinda weird.

The levees next to rivers are even more fun, there are 20-50 foot long cracks in the direction of travel with something like a 1" drop and those can be pretty treacherous to sidewalls and staying upright:

On top of that we have tribulus terrestris (goat head thorns).

As a result I’ve NEVER had GP4KS2 tires last more than about 2000-2500 miles. Everyone around here gets flats, even with Gatorskins (just not as frequent). I’m having better luck compromising with Conti 4 Seasons, but the thorns are coming and so I’m looking for a sturdier tubeless tire as the sidewalls on racing tubeless have taken a beating.

And I thought we had bad roads in New Mexico!

We definitely have rough roads around here but, at least they are consistently rough. I’d definitely go tubeless to combat the goat heads. We have lots of goat heads here but they seem mostly combined to trails and I don’t get goat head flats on the road. On my gravel bike I can go through sections of trail and pick up 20 goat heads at once. Tubeless is required.

August 2017 conversion to tubeless, and back to tubes October 2019 because I’m tired of tubeless sidewall blowouts and large gashes too big for plugs to seal. The latest tubeless tires (GP5000 TL and S-Works) are so tight that I couldn’t pop off the bead with my thumbs on the side of the road and/or in garage. Converted back to Conti 4 Seasons and so I’m searching for (not made by Hutchinson) tubeless with stronger sidewalls for this thorn season…

That’s funny.

Any suggestions on shipping? Not sure if the bead will fold up.

You can cut sections of old tires and glue them to tubeless tires with relatively large holes that won’t seal with sealant or plugs.

ahh…if they are wire bead rather than folding then unless you are going to send a giant parcel then you probably can’t - you can’t fold wire bead tyres

If a bike has tires on it that I don’t love, I’ll ride them until it’s time to replace and then put what I want on there instead. OR you could remove them and keep as a backup tire for if/when you slice open your nice one and don’t want to wait to order a new one or drive to a bike shop before your next ride.

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