Tandem Cycling - Slick tyres for MTB tandem

Hi, I will be in Lagos, Nigeria for a period of 30 months. We will bring our MTB tandem to Nigeria with our first home leave to South Africa due in April/May. We intend bringing two wheelsets with. One set with Continental foldable tyres. We currently use Continental slick tyres (26x1.3) on the tandem for road use. We do not seem to get proper mileage on them. (1000- 1400km at the most) What other brand slick tyres can we use..... preferrably in a folding tyre as it saves a lot in space when taking our stuff by air?

Thanx in advance.

Big H

We have been using the 26x1.4 Ritchy "Tom Slick" tires with pretty good success for about 2000 miles. I imagine it will be a good bit wider than your 1.3 Contis, as they are wider than the 1.5 WTB tires we have on another bike.

The tire is available in both wire and kevlar (folding) bead. We have been running the latter. I choose these tires in part because they had listed a fairly high thread count, thus presumably yielding a nice supple casing. However, when last I checked the Ritchey website, I didn't see TPI information listed.

Over the course of about 2k miles, we have had a few flats due to cuts from sharp fragments of clam shell, which sometimes serves as gravel in these parts. While the tires still show a good bit of tread remaining, they do exhibit a number of tread cuts, and some cracking of the rubber is starting to appear at the base of the tread.

Specialized has a nice assortment of 26" slicks. From 1" and up in size. I could not tell you what I get for mileage with them... but have been happy with what I have used.
glenn

Schwalbe has 26" slicks. we have using "marathon slick" http://schwalbetires.com/files/x_img_marathonslick1.gif and now we use "marathon racer"
milleage around 4000km
http://schwalbetires.com/files/x_img_marathonracer.gif

EnfinLeTandem (http://enfinletandem.blogspot.com/)

Have recently bought some Conti 1.3's for the Tandem and they are narrow. The Schwalbe Marathon 1.4's I used before are at least 50% wider and only half the tread has gone in about 1500 miles.

I've had good luck with the Continental Town and Country...They have an inverse tread but ride like slicks and are bit wider which is noticably nicer for the stoker. (26 X 1.9) I haven't had enough time to assess the wear, but because they are a lot wider and have some depth to the tread, I would expect them to wear quite well.