Noticed a strange looking bulge on the side of my road bike from tyre yesterday. (25mm Continental Gatorskin)
I removed the tyre/tube and found the casing had pulled away from the wire bead, exposing around 100mm of wire, which allowed the tyre to bulge out.

Anyone else experience this?

I’ll be emailing Wiggle tomorrow to ask their thoughts, as I think this is a bit poor for an 8 month old tyre (from a premium brand) which has only done around 1500 miles.

On my second set of Gatorskins now and they’ve been fine. Done thousands of miles.

Moaning bastard here but ive never had owt but trouble with conti road tyres.

But it may be just me. For 20 years.

Not just their MTB sidewalls that are crap then?

Strava tells me I have done almost 900 miles on the 25mm gatorskins on my road bike, and 840 miles on the 28mm gatorskins on my commuter fixie. No issues yet and they look good for a fair few miles yet, I will rotate in another hundred miles or so. Reckon they should all go to 2000 miles at the very Least.

I had a pair of Gatorskins which I found wooden and terrible in the wet. They only stayed on for a month or so.
GP4Season however are very reliable and much more reassuring to ride.

IME they’re normally bombproof…. That said, is 1500 mile out of a 25 quid tyre that bad? Has it been clipped on a pothole or a curb maybe?

I had a pair of Gatorskins which I found wooden and terrible in the wet. They only stayed on for a month or so.

I do think they need to “bed in” a bit, scrub the top layer off and lose the mould release, plus the carcass is a bit rigid at first, I also found running them at higher pressure wasn’t helping (following advice from STW actually) they seem happier and gripper at about 6bar (~80psi) or less.

Cheap and durable general purpose road tyres, not really meant to be sold on their handling characteristics hence the pricier GP series of tyres… Conti know their market.