Any suggestions for a good value tubular road tyre in 24 or 25mm?

Planet-X are always worth a look for this kind of thing. I’ve never run tubs but know they have a lot with a suitably big discount.

what do you want to use them for? As above P-X is always good for tubs

Just normal riding, including daily commute. No racing.
Planet x don’t have much choice in 24 or 25mm

Why would you want tubs for commuting?!?
Surely the last thing you need, something like a Gatorskin or the Vee Apache (love mine) as a commuter tyre is a much more sensible choice & run tubs for racing

it’s a brave person who chooses to commute on tubs! Why the need for 24/25mm?

I’d normally recommend Continental Sprinters, I use these to ride over 20 miles each way across London once a week in Summer to race and they haven’t let me down but they only come in 22mm width.

Otherwise Vittoria Paves are pretty robust and yet still fast. They look pro in green too. http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/TYVIPECG/vittoria-pave-evo-cg-ii-tubular-tyre

I raced all last season on Gatorskin tubs in 25mm flavour no punctures and a good compromise between weight grip and rolling resistance

I liked Conti Competitons, but they did go flat on top quite rapidly, wouldn’t be my choice for commuting and daily use.

If I ‘had’ to for commuting, then I’d use Giro’s.

If you’re going tubs then you might as well do it properly, Dugast or Veloflex with a skinwall.

Thanks for the replies.
I don’t find tubular more hassle than clinchers.

…do it properly, Dugast or Veloflex with a skinwall.

For commuting? Don’t think so.

OP, let us know what you go for 😀

Vittoria Pave or Challenge Strada Bianca are lovely but both at least £50 tyres – though i guess that’s what you pay for nice tubs. I’m not aware of any cheaper tyre which are wide as well.

^^ Challenge Strada Bianca, that’s what I’d use.

But hey, whaddyagonnadowhenyagertapuncturelyke ?

😐

Looks like it is going to be gatorskin.

…do it properly, Dugast or Veloflex with a skinwall.

For commuting? Don’t think so.[/quote]
If you’re using tubs for commuting you’re already playing a dangerous game, you might as well play that game with the lightest, fastest tubs available and enjoy the ride.

Gatorskin tubs sound to me like the worst of all worlds. All the impracticality of tubs combined with the poor grip, poor feel, average puncture resistance and general poor performance of a Gatorskin. I would, very honestly, rather commute on a FMB tub at £80 per tyre than a Gatorskin.

I ran the Continental Sprinter Gatorskin last year and they lasted well, punctured a couple of times but nothing that some Stan’s sealant didn’t fix. I then went to Vittoria Corsa Elites – these are a cheaper version of the CX, i think they where £28 or something. Lasted up until this Christmas without a puncture and no need to add sealant. But the ride compared to the Gatorskins was night and day, I can’t see the point of Gatorskins as they take away half the reason for riding tubs – the ride. I have since switched to 25mm Pave’s – the newest version. They are expensive but ride lovely, thing is they don’t ride twice as well as the Elites, also due to the latex tubes in the pave’s i don’t feel as confident putting sealant in them. The elite’s use butyl tubes so it’s not a problem, I will be going back to the 25mm elite’s once the Pave’s wear out – which i don’t think will take to long looking at them.

Gatorskin tubs sound to me like the worst of all worlds. All the impracticality of tubs combined with the poor grip, poor feel, average puncture resistance and general poor performance of a Gatorskin. I would, very honestly, rather commute on a FMB tub at £80 per tyre than a Gatorskin.

Absolutely! Tubs for general use are a mug’s game, so do it in style if you’re going to. Gatorskins are grim things.

Why is riding with tubs a dangerous game?
If done properly, you can change a tub quicker than a tube.

Out of interest how many miles is your commute?

Why is riding with tubs a dangerous game?
If done properly, you can change a tub quicker than a tube.

Not sure ‘dangerous’ is the right word but a pain in the arse if you puncture. And unless you’re doing your own repairs if could get expensive.

unglueing, unstitching, patching, stitching glueing…
or some sort of sealant
or sending them away for repair

beaconjon – Member
Why is riding with tubs a dangerous game?
If done properly, you can change a tub quicker than a tube.

Nah, nah you can’t.

Sorry.

It’s a physical impossibility.

Be like swapping your front wheel with your rear and expecting them still to propel you forward when you peddle.

Also, I have to say, filling a Tub with Stans is madness. Once the Tub gets a puncture at say 90+ psi the liquid from to cut/hole will squirt out like silly string forming into rubber as it ejects. You’ll be left at the side of the road looking like the rest of the kids party has gone home and you are left looking like Ronald McDonald.

I’d say try it though, try Tubs, fill em’ with Stans and commute soon whilst it’s still winter.

Then report back.

I reported back further up – stan’s worked fine in the gatorskins I was running, just they where horrible things to ride.

So ripping a punctured tub off and fitting a pre-glued one is slower than pissing about with tyre levers and an inner tube, not to mention making sure you remove whatever caused the puncture before fitting the tube?

Admittedly it could get expensive but only if you puncture a lot.

I had 2 punctures last year across 6k miles on two road bikes, an MTB and my TT bike with a mixture of tubs, clinchers and slime tubes.

Both tubes and tubs have their pros and cons, but dismissing tubs for everyday riding?

Back to the OP, I run 25’s on my road bikes and 22’s in the TT bike due to very tight clearances.

Continental sprinters are a good half way house between reliability and speed.

I commute in the summer on Tufo Carbon Hi-composite tubs filled with their sealant. Not had any problems. I don’t really recommend it for glass-strewn city streets and I wouldn’t be using expensive tubs either. But the Tufos aren’t as bad as the reviews would have you believe. A good training tyre that, when combined with my light track wheels, makes for a lively ride into work.

So ripping a punctured tub off and fitting a pre-glued one is slower…

I would imagine so, but it probably depends how you glued it on to start with. It takes me 15 minutes, with tools and swearing, to remove a well-glued cross tub indoors. With cold stiff glue and cold fingers it’d be a bloody nightmare. If you’ve got a weak glue job, ok, I can see it might be doable. If you use tape and deliberately leave a section unstuck to get you started, that might work too. (I’ve heard triathletes used to do that). If it’s raining and everything is getting wet and mucky, I’d be surprised if you got the replacement to stick at all.

top tip, add some stans to the tub 🙂

edit: already suggested

As a teenage roadie ran tubs only, as did most roadies in those days, never had any problems changing a tub at the roadside, used tape and a taped up spare. you can run a punctured tub a bit more than a tyre and tube due to their deflation characteristics hence the use of them on velodromes. I wouldn’t go back to them for extended road use but they aren’t as bad as people are letting on here, I remember one pot hole which knackered a gp4 rim but didn’t pop the tube.. Fixing them was no great problem, just a little time consuming but as a skint teenager that was acceptable.

Just buy a pair of Veloflex Open Corsas from Ribble and enjoy the benefits of clinchers with tubular comfort and grip. Simples.

On good days, I do 35km. But not in town, mostly countryside.
According to the Garmin, it took me less than 10 minutes to swap a tubular tyre on side of the road. Don’t think I would have been quicker with clinchers.
I quite like the Gatorskin in 25mm but have been unlucky , massive glass bit on the front, Stan could not fix it and even when repaired with a patch it still would loose air. Had to bin it after a week.
Bike discount have good prices on Tufo, so will order some of them as well.

Ok, so I say do it, clearly you are happy with changing Tubs and well who am I to say do something else. I do have to add I’ve used Tubs a lot. I even tried to use them here in the Downs for training and well we have lots of field run off here and masses of flint.. It didn’t end very well at all that experiment. Then I changed to Clement Strada’s or Challenge Elite (both Open Clinchers) which very closely feel like Tubs, and have been using them for Donkeys years.
So it takes me a few mins to fix a puncture or slam another tube in, but far better IMO than trying in vein to get a Tub to glue, and stay glued, and have confidence to press hard into a corner without my bum making morse code signals to those behind me.

Have fun.

Ride hard.

😀

i used gatorskins all last summer, 25mm, no punctures but they wear out kinda fast

Kind off worth it as its a decent distance but I still wouldn’t go that route. Changing a tube on a freezing cold wet night is bad enough but trying to rip a tub off and stick back on wouldn’t be for me.