[Closed] Are we going to see a 3" tyre craze (that requires new frame, fork and wheels)?

[quote=taxi25 ]we seem to be in a cycle of "inventing" the next new and better bike.

It should be about fun, but you seem to be convinced it's about speed.

Nope, i just like things to be proven as being better than what we have already, thats how products get better and racing is relevant to this...heard the old expression 'racing improves the breed'...?

If a decent level Enduro or DH team take on the 650b+/29+/semi-fat concept and makes it work, betters their previous results, beats existing standard tyres etc then i'll be first in line to hand over my money as i'll know the concept has been proven and its not just beardy men wobbling around the woods on rigids shouting 'fun' at the tops of their voices....or using the now cliched phrase that he was riding a fatbike "with a smile plastered across his face"....

You seem to have a very narrow view of what "better" or "mountain biking" are. Race testing things in enduro or DH can make better enduro or DH components for racing enduro or DH with some trickle down to the trail bike community. It doesn't mean that those same things work for XC, fat bikes, 29+, etc. or that developments in fatbikes (also through racing) need to be relevant to DH to make a better fatbike. For a rigid bike bigger fatter, low weight tyres do seem to be an improvement and big tyres would help mitigate trail damage and make traversing some stretches of muddy or wet moor possible. They make certain types of bike better and certain types of mountain biking better or even possible, just because they aren't the kind that you like doesn't make them irrelevant, stupid or laughable.

Nobody is saying that you have to ride them and calling people who ride them cockends and calling them silly bikes is a bit unnecessary. It is just people having fun on bikes. Why do you object to that so much? What is it about people having fun on a different kind of bike to you that so offends you?

Yes, no doubt some people have them as fashion statements, but then the same could be said of people who call what everyone else calls mountain biking "Enduro".

The defence of 'you cant be having fun on your own bike if you hate fat bikes' line is weak, having fun on my own bike doesnt stop me from wetting myself laughing at the achingly trendy wagon wheelers being posted on here.

No one said that. What came across from your posts is that people who enjoy riding fat tyres are just deluding themselves. Which seems a bit unfair and just a tiny bit arrogant. Let them ride what they please and let them decide if it makes them happy or sad. If you see them on the trail offer them a go on your bike and see if they prefer it.

And please, don't make any more comments along the lines of "achingly trendy waggon wheelers" while using the word Enduro in a serious context. My irony meter just exploded 😉

IME after riding suspension for a long time you only notice the positives but take it away and the negatives become apparent.

Having recently ridden fully rigid for the first time since 2001 I feel the exact opposite! Christ it's bumpy!

Having recently ridden fully rigid for the first time since 2001 I feel the exact opposite! Christ it's bumpy!

Ditto, but after a few rides I got back on the full sus and realised that I was now faster as I had relearned how to move the bike about to deal with the terrain rather than rely on suspension. Maybe not why everyone has a rigid bike but it works for me!

If a decent level Enduro or DH team take on the 650b+/29+/semi-fat concept and makes it work, betters their previous results, beats existing standard tyres etc then i'll be first in line to hand over my money as i'll know the concept has been proven and its not just beardy men wobbling around the woods on rigids shouting 'fun' at the tops of their voices.

but hardly anyone rides in a "decent level enduro team" most people just like going for a ride, infact I'd think the majority of mtb riders in the UK go out for a ride and don't race DH and walk uphill like you think is the be all and end all. Most people want a bike for fun and not out and out performance and that includes fat/thin/all sizes.

i think you need to calm down and go and ride a bike, it'll cheer you up and de-stress you, forget about racing the clock and just ride the thing

And please, don't make any more comments along the lines of "achingly trendy waggon wheelers" while using the word Enduro in a serious context. My irony meter just exploded

molgrips - Member

IME after riding suspension for a long time you only notice the positives but take it away and the negatives become apparent.

Having recently ridden fully rigid for the first time since 2001 I feel the exact opposite! Christ it's bumpy!

That's not the opposite of what I said... It is bumpy can't argue with that my point is its not squishy where it doesn't need to be 😉

First time riding rigid since the 90's btw.

Are we going to see a 3" tyre craze (that requires new frame, fork and wheels)?

I tried one on my buddy's Stooge and have ordered my own, it was perfect for slithery sloppy Surrey Hills.

So I'm calling this as [b]YES[/b].

and its not just beardy men wobbling around the woods on rigids shouting 'fun' at the tops of their voices.

Busted.

while using the word Enduro in a serious context. My irony meter just exploded

Why not?...its the racing format i partake in and it has been used in this context on the continent for the last decade without any problems....it only seems to be the UK that has trouble with the name.

I agree that calling 140+mm full sussers 'Enduro' is ****tish, i much preferred the term all-mountain as that is really what these bikes are designed for....you ride an AM bike to race enduro, simple really.

I rode the Eastridge Enduro that Steve Parr put on in 2011, nobody referred to their bikes as Enduro back then and nobody wore flouro gubbins either....the magazines have brought much mirth and piss-taking to the scene by dressing like Moto-X dropouts in photos and using the term to describe everything from wheels to shoes which is frankly ridiculous.

They aren't great for grip/speed at trail centers/enduro races/downhill races. To pretend otherwise is daft.

Ever ridden one? The grip is otherworldy! It's pretty much the #1 thing anyone comments on when they borrow mine (that or #2 after commenting that it's nowhere near as heavy as they imagined).

650b+ would be cool on a trailbike, not had 1st hand experience of the Salsa but I imagine that without the rigid frame a fatbike might not be so easy to accelerate which it needs to be to maintian speed.

That's not the opposite of what I said

You said take suspension away and you notice the negatives of suspension. I noticed the positives of suspension. As in, I didn't notice how much work it was doing until I did without it!

As soon as I can afford it the Salsa is having suspension forks.

What are we arguing about again?

@deviant you have anger issues. Did Santa miss your chimney?

Did Santa miss your chimney?

You win euphemism of the day!

I doubt you'll see B+ winning high level Enduros
From what I've been told lately it'll be the exact opposite.

Yeah, I can see 2.95's the new 1.95 in a few years. I'll never buy a fat bike and since trying them I've been dreaming about short travel with 3-3.5" tyres. That Specialized up above looks to have a braw size of tyre and rim on it. So much so that I wouldn't rule that combo out of winning a WC DH. That has surely got to have a heap of benefits. It makes stuff around 2.5" look useless for just about everything MTB.

One thing I've noticed with my 3" Chronicle vs the 2.35" Hans Damps (so Enduro!) is the Chronicle is more grippy and less draggy. If that's not what you want in a tyre, then what do you want?

Does volume trump knobbles?

mattjg - Member

If that's not what you want in a tyre, then what do you want?

Is it as fast wearing and cloggy as a Hans Dampf? Skwabbly set quite a high bar with that, I doubt Maxxis have the technology to produce something so flawed and sell it for so much.

man, mud to Hans Dampt = **** to blanket

Chronicle's OK in the mud, fun actually

uhoh I used the f word

Hmmmm. Like some of the other posters here I am bemused by those who get worked up about who rides what and why. I have a fatbike. I only bought a pugsley after I tried one and enjoyed it on a whole range of surfaces and trails.

I don't ride it to look cool. I never look cool. I don't ride it to attract attention - usually nobody is looking anyway.

I sometimes ride with friends on their normal full sus bikes. It climbs faster than most. It is great downhill until it gets very rocky. I bought it in Feb 2014 and have done about 2500 miles on it so far. Commuting to work along the beach, bikepacking and touring round wales and Scotland and riding trail centres. It isn't ideal for all the riding I have used it for but it is always a good ride. It even makes forest roads good fun at 45mph.

My point is.... Why get so cross and worked up here about what people do on their bikes. Id love to try a range of wheel and tyre sizes. And I'd like to own a load of different bikes with different characteristics. all the carping and trolling make a useful discussion get cluttered up its hard to see the wood for the trees.

I guess I could just go elsewhere.... But there is a load of good stuff here I'd miss. I

Let people ride what they want and try out stuff that you may well enjoy one day.

mattjg - Member

@deviant you have anger issues. Did Santa miss your chimney?

No, he knew which one it was! 😆

[img] [/img]

Cornering grip is immense, you'll be washing out on your skinny tyres long before a fatty loses grip. But your rolling resistance will be much lower, like a maclaren v red bull kinda thing

Still, I expect you've extensively ridden both all types of tyres & know this already

I rode enough 2.7 Maxxis tyres to know that I never needed that width.

Thinner tyres cut through the mud down to the bedrock on DH tracks, balloon like tyres combined with the low weight of mountainbikes makes the tyres float over the mud, lowering rolling resistance - great for XC rides over boggy terrain. Not so great on high speed flat corners etc.

For enduro and downhill they also have a massive issue with weight, yes there are lightish fatty tyres but now imagine the weight of a dual ply fatty or even schwalbes 1.5 ply.

Well brake dive, and the way your body positioning/weight distribution has a drastic effect on the performance of the suspension.
IME after riding suspension for a long time you only notice the positives but take it away and the negatives become apparent.

And you will get those exact same effects with balloon like tyres, except they are undamped.

I'd say its very much the latter - keyboard warrior springs to mind...

Have you ever run your tyre at 20 psi for a laugh? If schwalbes system allows you to run that low a psi as reviewers have said, without much added tyre roll it will be great.

Have you ever run your tyre at 20 psi for a laugh? If shchwalbes system allows you to run that low a psi as reviewers have said, without much added tyre roll it will be great

Yes, I have. But have you ridden the Procore system? Have you ridden 29+ or 650b+? If not then how can you possibly say one is better than the other?

Yes, I have. But have you ridden the Procore system? Have you ridden 29+ or 650b+? If not then how can you possibly say one is better than the other?

If you want to be a dick about it then, yes. I've ridden a 29 fatty a number of times. And I've ridden plenty of 2.7 inch tyres and have plenty of experience of knowing what tyres to pick from following my brother (who beat Danny Hart a few times in junior/youth) at the races.

Fat bikes are fun and particularly great at some types of riding, some people think they are the future for mountain biking though. They aren't, although I guess they might be if the fashion takes over - to the detriment of the sport.

If you want to be a dick about it

You've ridden a 29er fatty? As in a 29er fat bike?

I don't want to be a dick about it - I just don't see how you can recommend something you've not tried yet berate something else having also had no experience of it. I've not tried either, I'd like to just to see if its any better/more fun.

And I beat Danny Hart twice, but he doesn't like to talk about it..

29+ rigid or whatever. 3 inch tyres.

I'm not berating them, I think they are hilarious fun. I just don't think massive tyres are suited to being the next "norm". Different tools for different jobs etc, some of you are getting very defensive.

I want one for winter XC riding actually, don't really have the room or the money though right now.

Yeah. I might try one for mud if I had the cash. But then I'd buy quite a few different bikes if I had the cash.

As far as I am aware I have never beaten Danny Hart and neither has my brother.

Snap Molgrips, if I had the cash it would be

- BMX
- 24 Inch DJ bike
- 26 inch Hardcore Hardtail
- 29 XC Bike
- 29+ Bike
- 120mm slack 27.5 full suss
- 120mm FS 29er
- 160mm 27.5 enduro gnarpoon
- 180mm Park bike
- DH bike
- Carbon Road bike
- Titanium Road Bike
- Belt drive Fixie
- Touring bike
- Recumbent for the lolz

Lots of lovely lovely bikes for different uses.

Would a 29er fatty be 36"? My fat tyres are 26" so not sure how they get called a "fad" they are practically obsolete these days

180mm Parkbike

Would that work on the slide as well as the swings?

You've never attempted to ride a bike down a slide?

Haven't lived have you.

Tom_W1987 - Member

Thinner tyres cut through the mud down to the bedrock on DH tracks,

Sure, but spikes still aren't the right choice on some muddy tracks- depends on the mud, how much there is and what's in it. Have you tried the 2.5 Der Baron? It's bigger than the 2.7 Maxxisses you mentioned and can be hugely effective, it's not as good in pure slop but in everything else I reckon it's better and it's certainly better at mixed tracks. (it's like a swampthing that works, or a more spaced Minion)

As far as I am aware I have never beaten Danny Hart and neither has my brother.

Well one of you needs to do that before you come on here spouting your opinions. Obv.

Poor Danny, doomed to spend the rest of his life being chased down by STW forum warriors trying to add some gravitas to our keyboard wafflings.

Sure, but spikes still aren't the right choice on some muddy tracks- depends on the mud, how much there is and what's in it. Have you tried the 2.5 Der Baron? It's bigger than the 2.7 Maxxisses you mentioned and can be hugely effective, it's not as good in pure slop but in everything else I reckon it's better and it's certainly better at mixed tracks.

Not yet Northwind, haven't really ever moved away from Maxxis after some bad experiences with contis. How is it on muddy off camber high speed stuff? Never got round to riding it as I'd heard mixed opinions about it.

Tyre choice is a dark art. It's all about the tread pattern anyway, for trail riding I still find 2.35 High Rollers give me better grip than a set of 2.4 Rubber Queens under all conditions - without that great an increase in rolling resistance.

Poor Danny, doomed to spend the rest of his life being chased down by STW forum warriors trying to add some gravitas to our keyboard wafflings.

I was getting irritated by being told that I was berating peoples bikes, I'm not, I just think there are different tools for different jobs - neither did I ever accuse fat bikes of not being fun - they clearly are.

Tom_W1987 - Member

Not yet Northwind, haven't really ever moved away from Maxxis after some bad experiences with contis. How is it on muddy off camber high speed stuff?

Rounder shouldered and shorter knobbed so doesn't have the spike of a... dur, spike. It's just like the Baron really- not a full mud, but a trailbike tyre that's been adapted for mud. So not a replacement for a spike, just a different thing.

I think mainly what I'm saying is, your examples of big tyres just aren't that good, rather than it being a big tyre thing. And the situations where a narrow dualply work are very specific so doesn't really suggest that narrower is better.

Fair point.

I still think for general use big arse tyres are to much and to heavy with decent sidewalls, I'd rather grip came from compound, tread pattern and suspension before width.

Know anywhere where I can get one cheap to try out on the front? Pinkbike review is having me um and ahh on trying it. It seems like it's a bit compromised at everything, not very stable at braking/in turns, not as good at cutting into mud. Struggling to see where it fits - maybe I should just try one.

Having taken the time to get our pressures dialed in properly with an accurate gauge, we settled on 28 psi up front and 30 in the rear as a baseline from which to work when using standard XC based tubes. For a point of reference the equivalent for when we run Minions is 30 psi front and 36 out back. This will partly be down to the greater volume of the 2.5” Continental over the Maxxis casing. What we did find when on the initial occasions that we flatted was that it would happen precisely where we expected it to - you’d have an almighty hang up on a square edged rock at Fort William for instance and the pressure would disappear. Would a Maxxis have done it differently? Perhaps, perhaps not. Every hit and subsequent puncture is different. They’re perhaps marginally less resistant at the same pressure than the Maxxis (which is after all, the benchmark tire many riders are used to), but once we had the pressures set properly we eliminated punctures from our riding, without a loss of performance thanks to the soft and supremely grippy rubber compound used.

The Rain King/Der Baron is a wet conditions tire, although it is emphatically not a mud tire - that will arrive soon with the introduction of the new 2.2” Mud King. When the ground is soft, loose and damp, littered with roots and rocks and generally pretty gripless these tires do a fantastic job of clawing onto the surface and finding what grip there is. Thanks to that Black Chilli rubber, they hook up well on the roots and rocks so that even when they do inevitably begin to slide it’s predictable and controlled. The first time we tried them was in sub-zero conditions at a Winter race in early 2010. The ground was hard, polished ice and many riders were really struggling yet it was here that the soft rubber came into its own, feeling planted and predictable, really allowing you to push hard.

Under normal conditions we initially felt that the Der Baron didn’t brake as well as some, possibly due to being wider and struggling to cut into soft terrain, also maybe down to a relatively narrow braking edge. But it’s definitely not bad by any means, and it’s still the equal of many others, it just doesn’t instill the same level of confidence as it does in the turns. It is also a large 2.5” which does somewhat limit mud clearance on tight fitting frames. In deep mud though, clearly a tire as large as this isn’t going to be ideal, and so it proved. But if you’re riding thick mud over rocks and roots it still manages to claw back some of the disadvantage it otherwise has in the mud as a result of its size. Overall it’s a very impressive tire, well suited to wet, wooded or rocky conditions where the going is soft, but a spike is unnecessary.

this thread needs more pictures

or less words

The pinkbike review nailed it pretty well I think- it works on slippery but relatively hard stuff. So muddy wet trails full of roots and rocks, rather than deep mud or constant slop. Just the exact job a swampthing was supposed to do, but was never good enough at, really. Probably not a great dh race tyre, too allroundy but ace if you want a one-tyre-does-it-all uplift tyre or similiar. I've used it a couple of times for enduros too, probably makes no sense for a really good rider but the confidence in chaosy muddy roots is great.

TBH I think even if the + size thing doesn't take off we'll see more fat "normal" tyres in the near future- there's the wide rims to support them and manufacturers have got better at fighting the weight down.

PS my brother couldn't beat Danny Hart but I did once see Danny ride a chicken run, where I had ridden a different but harder chicken run, so I reckon I'm better. [i]And[/i] I've beaten Crawford Carrick-Anderson * and Lewis Buchanan **...

(* 2 punctures, I still only beat him by about 10 seconds)
(** had to go home for his tea)

If I had a brother he'd have chased down a young steve peat no bother

The pinkbike review nailed it pretty well I think- it works on slippery but relatively hard stuff. So muddy wet trails full of roots and rocks, rather than deep mud or constant slop. Just the exact job a swampthing was supposed to do, but was never good enough at, really. Probably not a great dh race tyre, too allroundy but ace if you want a one-tyre-does-it-all uplift tyre or similiar. I've used it a couple of times for enduros too, probably makes no sense for a really good rider but the confidence in chaosy muddy roots is great.

I think this is a maybe for me, I'll see if anyone I know has one that I can errr borrow. 😈

If I had a brother he'd have chased down a young steve peat no bother

You guys really do viciously defend your fatbikes don't you. It's like the argument over 29ers but worse, militant fat bikers - you're all secretly ashamed of riding them and consequently blow up when someone takes the piss.

(* 2 punctures, I still only beat him by about 10 seconds)
(** had to go home for his tea)

My comment was a bit stupid to be fair, was just getting mildly irritated.

would your virtual brother have beaten my real brother at chasing down the virtual Steve Peat?

You guys really do viciously defend your fatbikes don't you.

That's a tad harsh, especially as I don't have one!

would your virtual brother have beaten my real brother at chasing down the virtual Steve Peat?

😯