josephpiano

I ride (25c Conti Gatorskins currently) on a stiff frame, am wanting something more comfortable. Ride mostly on pavement, puncture resistant and speed would be nice too. Here's what I'm looking at currently:

panaracer GravelKing Folding Tire
Rene Herse Chinook Pass Tire
Continental Grand Prix 4
Serfas Seca Survivor Tire
Vittoria Corsa G2.0 Foldable Road Bicycle Tire
Vittoria Corsa G plus Graphene Pair
Vittoria Corsa Control G plus

Which of these best likely meets my needs? Any others I should consider? Please let me know. Would love to hear from you guys. Many thanks.

smashndash

The most comfortable tires would also be the most delicate. Race tires such as the Vittoria Corsa are a good idea if you live in an area that’s totally devoid of debris etc.

The rene herse is also known to be supple.

josephpiano

On the rene herse - is there a way to extend my bike (Giant Contend 3) to fit wider tires (eg. 32-38c)? Says 28c's the widest it can support, wondering if I can just loosen the brakes.

Jadesfire 

I could very easily be wrong, but I believe you are also limited by the rim width on your wheel set? That is another factor to consider, anyway.
On the subject of tires, I ride the crap roads of Louisiana and I really like the Panaracer Gravelkings (in comparison anyway to the GP4000 that are on my other not-ridden-as-often bike). They make a much more comfortable ride, and I feel a lot more secure on them riding in the rain. Disclaimer: I do not set out to set any land speed records on my rides.

FrankTuna

Can you run tubeless? I've been running Continental GP5000 TL's in both 28 and 32. I've commuted on them and other that 1 sidewall slash (which would take out any tire), I've had no issues with flats. I used to get flats every week or 2 running tubes!!

mprince

Best to do a bit of research on the tires you are interested in if you are pushing the limit of what your bike can handle size-wise (and no, you can't just "open the brakes" to fit wider tires). Many tires do not measure to the numbers on the sidewalls. I now use www.bicyclerollingresistance.com as a check site, as they measure mounted width and height of tires as part of their testing. I run Conti Grand Prix on my bike now, and when I went to buy them I ordered 28's as the old (different) tires were 28's. Problem was the old tires were undersized and the Conti's oversized - no go as the tire hit the underside of my brake caliper in the rear and was too close to the fork in the front. So they were returned for 25's, which are even a bit bigger than the 28's that were previously on my bike.

WhyFi

Not for nuthin', but this reads like a list of reasons to go tubeless.

guadzilla

Spesh S-Works Turbo are a pretty good blend of good ride quality and puncture resistance. Turbo Cottons are even better, but not as puncture resistance (works for me where i ride, though).

Cypress

Conti GP5K. Tubeless if you can swing it.

Rides4Beer

+1 for GP5000s, haven't had a single puncture in four sets, very fast and comfortable. Should be a very noticeable difference over Gatorskins, even with tubes.

Russ Roth

Challange paris-roubaix tire, I think they list it as a 27mm but I find their tires are a little oversized. I've got velocity a23 rims on my race bike and the 25mm Conti GP5k I have on there only measure 25mm, the Challenge critireum I had on there measured over 27mm and didn't give enough frame clearance. I've seen the same with their cross where they're clearly bigger. But they make a fast tire and the Paris-Roubaix is meant for rugged, comfortable road use. I'll be buying a set later this year for my old road bike that I use for riding a really damaged paved bike path.

DrIsotope

As the OP is on 25mm Gatorskins, the answer to "what tire is more comfortable" is... almost anything. Virtually any tire will be more comfortable. Going from a Gatorskin to a $20 Panaracer Pasela would feel like luxury.

I dunno if I would be recommending the direct jump to tubeless GP5Ks, as this is a $650 bike we're talking about, and the OEM rims are certainly not tubeless ready. The rim + tire investment to go tubeless could easily hit 75% of the bike's purchase price.

The pre-2020 Contend will clear 28s, I would just go with a more supple pair of tires in that width. Clement/Donnelly Strada LGGs are nice, and affordable. Same for Gravelking slicks. Pirelli PZero Velos can be found pretty cheap with some searching.

josephpiano

This is helpful. Thanks!

SethAZ 

You should examine your bike front and rear and see exactly where the bike comes closest to the tires, and do some measurements with your current tires. You may also find that you have more room on one end of the bike than the other. For that reason I rode a 25mm GP4K on the front of my old bike and a 28mm GP4K on the rear, since that's what would fit. The places most likely to constrain you on space are the top and sides of the fork and around the brakes in front, and the seat tube itself, where the chainstays meet the seat tube at the BB shell, and where the seat stays meet the seat tube and brakes in the rear. For brakes if you're only worried about getting the tire on between the brake pads, but the inflated tire itself would sit comfortably with room to spare from the actual brake mechanism, you can always mount the wheel with the tire uninflated and squeeze the rubber with your fingers to get it in between the brake pads, then inflate the tire on the bike. That's what I've done with my wife's crappy hybrid bike, which is wearing 32mm tires that would never fit between the brake pads inflated, but once mounted are inflated and fit well enough inside the frame and brake mechanisms.

This. I rode Gatorskins for a few thousand miles after I first made the jump from my mountain bike with slick tires to an actual road bike since getting back into cycling a decade ago, and I didn't appreciate how crappy the Gatorskins feel on the road until I tried something better. It was pure chance that what felt so much better happened to be Conti Grand Prix 4000s, because as DrIsotope says, almost anything would have felt better. About the only way you could make the Gatorskins feel worse is to install an anti-puncture strip into it and then fill the tube with slime. I've ridden a couple of other tires besides GP4Ks since then, but I rode those the most and really liked them a lot. I doubt you'd go wrong with the newer GP5Ks.

One option mentioned was the Rene Herse tires. I bought my current set of Stampede Pass tires when the brand was still known as Compass. Rene Herse gives some options with at least some of their tires in terms of durability and suppleness and weight of their casings. My Compass Stampede Pass tires were purchased with the Extralight casing, which is, to nobody's surprise, very light in weight (these 32s weigh about the same as most 28mm tires) and very supple. They feel really good, and have been my favorite tires so far. In a couple thousand miles I've had a couple pinch flats that were my fault due to experimenting with tire pressures that were too low, then riding them over some insanely rough roads where road cracks are measured in inches of width, and one legit flat I can think of where a shard of metal embedded itself in the tread. I'm not sure what tire would have stopped that metal shard. They are in no way a flat-resistant tire by design, but I've had very good luck with them so far, knock on wood.

If your bike has room for them I don't think you would go wrong with Conti GP5k tires in 25mm size (they'll probably measure out at more like 28mm mounted), or even the 28mm size if your bike will fit them.

josephpiano

While we're on the topic - do you recommend latex tubes to further aid in smoothness? I just ordered Vittoria PV/Latex Road Tubes.

Also, went with Rene Herse Chinook Pass Tire. We'll see if it works!

SethAZ 

Which casing style did you go with, Standard or Extralight? I've been using the Extralight in my 32mm Stampede Pass tires and they are awesome. Haven't tried the Standard, so I don't know how they'd compare.

With regards latex tubes, I've ridden them before for a few tubes' worth of miles, and it's hard to put it in words how I feel about them. I'll give it a whack though: I love the feel of them, but they are overall just more of a hassle to deal with than butyl tubes. I have no idea what a "tube's worth of miles" is, but I do know that it's fewer miles than with a butyl tube. The road feel is great. As far as them being a hassle, it has to do with them being more finicky in the install (be very, very careful with them), and just generally more fragile than butyl tubes. I did have one get pinched under the bead or something during an install and it exploded while inflating it in a way that scared the living fecal matter out of me. I was exceedingly careful after that. They also seem to deteriorate with age in a way you just don't see in reasonable timeframes with butyl ties. They also bleed tons of air per day, so you'll have to put a few strokes of your pump before every ride with them. Put it this way: I enjoyed riding latex tubes, but the last several tubes I used in my bike were butyl, until recently anyway. See below.

If you've got more money than sense you can try what I'm trying right now: Tubolitos. The Tubolito company have manufactured a plastic inner tube. I wouldn't do it justice trying to describe them, so just Google them up and read for yourself. They are exceedingly thin and lightweight, and in my opinion they feel very much more like latex tubes than like butyl tubes. They're supposed to be more durable than conventional tubes. Due to having to replace one Tubolito that came with a slow leak at the base of the valve stem, one Tubolito has a few hundred miles on it so far, the other has only a couple hundred miles so far. They're expensive as hell, but I was in a mood to try them out just out of curiosity and to see what they're like. So far zero flats, they lose air only slowly (maybe 1 stroke with the pump per day if that, 2-3 strokes after a week or so), and to be honest they've been so trouble free that I forget that I've even got them on my bike. They feel nice. I'm satisfied so far, and if they last a long time then the high cost won't have been that big a deal. My one weakness right now is that I only carry one butyl tube as an emergency reserve in my saddle bag, and I don't have the Tubolito patch kit yet, so I could survive one puncture, but if I punctured both tubes right now I'd be done for that ride and in need of recovery. That bugs me, and I'll come up with a solution (either getting the Tubolito repair kit, or else maybe packing two butyl tubes as backups). ps: while typing this I opened a new browser window and ordered the Tubolito "Flix" repair kit, so soon I won't be as ill-prepared for a double flat as I am now.

SethAZ 

One more request: I'd love to hear how you like the 28mm Rene Herse tires after you've been riding around on Gatorskins. If you've got any connection at all to how your bike feels the difference won't be subtle.

blakcloud

I have the Rene Herse Chinook Pass 28's on my Domane and I love them. When you go with a supple tire you have to accept the trade offs. Puncture resistance is not its forte but you get a great riding tire. Don't over inflate them, you lose whatever you gained.

HTupolev

I dunno. Latex is definitely pickier about setup, but in the wild if anything I seem to get fewer flats. I've been running latex across a couple bikes for a few years, and I've never pinched or punctured one of those tubes on the road, unless I count the instance where an object punched a huge cut straight across the tire's tread rubber.

Cyclist0108

Standard butyl tubes should be fine. Latex are claimed to be a little more supple, but you have to pump them up every day (kind of like tubeless).

I haven't had any flat problems with Compass/Rene Herse tires. (I'm using 38mm). Cram in the widest the frame will accept.

SethAZ 

Yeah it's all going to depend on the individual bike, road conditions, relative size of tube to the tire used (how inflated it is), etc. Where I live it's hot as hell half the year, and I was running these latex tubes in 28mm rear and 25mm front tires that expand larger than nominal size (Conti GP4Ks), so it's possible my tubes were stretched thinner than yours, my tubes got hotter than yours so any chemical degradation was accelerated, etc. In my own experience, with careful installation I'd love riding the latex tubes for a while, but in at least two cases I can specifically recall ended up suffering a flat that was catastrophic during a ride. By catastrophic I mean the tube wasn't just punctured and could be patched, but in fact punctured and ripped apart at the site of the puncture, so was unrecoverable. I absolutely hate going from full pressure, at speed, to zero pressure in like one second, and riding the rims with just flat tires separating them from the road while I maintain control and come to a stop. The tubes were a few months old when these occurrences happened. Fortunately during those rides I had a spare tube in the saddlebag so I self-recovered, but just didn't ever replace the butyl tubes with new latex ones, and that's how I gradually moved off latex.

I've gone through this cycle a couple different times, since eventually I got the hankering to ride latex again, so the cycle recurred. It was while feeling the tug of latex again that I ran into the Tubolitos and decided to give them a try. Expensive, but in the interest of science I gave them a try. It's early days, but so far so good.

Rides4Beer

I run latex with my GP5Ks and like them. I check my pressure every ride anyway, so having to give them a few pumps each ride is not a big deal for me.

As mentioned, be careful with the install, but it's not as difficult as some people make it out to be. My process is: talc the tube, slightly inflate, install one side of tire, install tube making sure its in the rim, install other side of tire (deflate tube), re-inflate tube slightly, carefully check around both sides of tire to make sure tube is not peeking out under the bead, inflate fully. Sounds complicated, but I mounted a new set of tires with latex tubes in about 20 mins yesterday, just taking my time.

I carry butyl spares, because if I get a flat (haven't yet with the latex), I don't want to deal with that process on the road, just want to slap the tube in and get riding again.

berner

A few years ago I was using Conti Gator Skins. They were a rough ride but long wearing. In fact the last one went about 4500 miles. I got tired of looking at it and it now in on the trainer. In the meantime I've been using Specialized Turbos and these too are long wearing but much more comfy. The last one I replaced had about 5000 miles on it. I should add that I'm a small guy at 160#.

Racing Dan

Most comfy? By what standard?

Ppl like to throw around words like "supple", "grippy", and the like. But apparently no objective data exist. Only subjective anecdote. Id say if the differences are really as noticeable as claimed it should be a small feat comparing several tyres with data to prove the claims. - I for one dont really notice much difference between comparable tyres, for instance 28 mm road tyres, as long as they are at the same pressure. Imo pressure is the #1 determining factor to comfort or not comfort. -> If you want comfort go wide and go soft. Im sure you can find tyres that transmits more vibration, if all you care about is anti puncture and longevity, but I have never noticed the wast differences ppl go on about on the forums.

DaveSSS 

Michelin power endurance tires are long wearing and supple. I've not had a flat in the last 6500 miles. If goatheads are the problem, then tubeless is the answer, but that might require new wheels. Even then, you'll eventually be riding on tires with many sealed punctures that will hopefully stay sealed.

Don't over inflate any tire if a good ride is the goal.