Forum menu
First hardtail build. Anything special around tyre choice? It's 27.5 standard. It will take a battering so I was thinking a bigger tyre would be better? Was thinking of a high roller 2.4? Anything better? Should I actually go narrower to reduce drag? It's for a 150mm forked chameleon if it makes any difference.
Minion DHR II 2.3 flavour on mine does the job.
I like something wide, tubeless and relatively low pressure. But I am also big and heavy.
My hardtail (140mm forked 26r) is mainly run on a bit of a budget for winter and bad weather plus riding with the kids.
I've run narrow (2.0) tyres on it (mud tyres in winter and low profile stuff in the summer), which also works but they're more "vulnerable" and while more efficient is less fun.
Fwiw I am currently on a ghetto setup with a wire bead cheapo Rubber Queen but as noted above the key thing with this bike is budget / winter use. This proper knobbly tyre approach is my favourite way of riding this (type of) bike.
Spesh Butcher front, purgatory rear on my 150mm Shan..
Purg (grid) or HR2 suits me
It will take a battering
It certainly will. Don't be tempted to go for a small tyre back there. High Roller, Minion, Hans Dampf, something like that in 2.3"+ flavour.
I pretty consistently puncture the rear far more often than the front - it seems to be a straightforward consequence of trying to ride a bike with good front suspension and no rear suspension somewhat rapidly. So the rear gets a tyre at least as chunky as the front most of the time.
I managed to find a cheap 2.3 exo HRII for the back of my Ragley, with a super tacky Minion on the front and the thing's magic. Certainly safer puncturewise than anything else I've tried without a massive compromise running bouncy high pressures.
Fit the biggest tyre you can but not bigger than the tyre you have on the front as it looks very wrong.
However make sure you have a nice thick sidewall and run them tubeless.
I'v just replaced a Chunky Monkey / Smorgasboard combo with Spesh Purgatory Grid (F&R) on my Solaris. Only been out a couple of times on the new tyres and I really like them. As an aside, by far the easiest tyres I've tried to set up tubeless. Je James were doing them for 20 quid each which was a bit of a bonus
I've been running a minnion on the rear recently, nice and grippy but i've stupidly bought a unprotected sidewall version. Just found a nearly new Smorgasbord in the cupboard and that is going back on