Road Cycling - Specialized tires question

Sp' all condition pro-29.95$
Sp'.......... sport - 19.95$

The Sp' all con' pro is 60grams lighter but I don't care about that.
Is the 10$ difference is all about the weight ?

Also there is the Sp' Armadillo for 29.95$.
Any opinions on this tire ?

Sp' all condition pro-29.95$
Sp'.......... sport - 19.95$

The Sp' all con' pro is 60grams lighter but I don't care about that.
Is the 10$ difference is all about the weight ?

Also there is the Sp' Armadillo for 29.95$.
Any opinions on this tire ?

The Armadillo is designed for thorn protection and other road hazards.

If you ride where there are a lot of goatheads, glass, etc., then use the Armadillo. It is noticeably slower than, say, the Conti Ultra 2000.

But it is faster and easier than fixing flats regularly.

As i understand, one's foldable, the other's not.
As for the armadillo's, they're both slower, harder to put on, heavier, and a lot tougher. Armadillo's are nice for real trashy areas but specialized implements it's flakjaket protection on all of their tires, no matter what the price and I find flakjacket protects the tire reasonably well.

You didn't list this specialized tire, but I would go for the Modo Pro! This is a great tire. I had last years incarnation and ran them for 2200 miles with no flats... and one of the tires is still in use on a friends bike.
Did I mention that I was over 200lbs when I ran these tires? They are fast, light, offer great flat protection.

I bought them after a friend switched to them. He had switched from Conte Gatorskins to Armadillos... and his speed dropped considerably overnight. He was OK on flats, but he couldn't stay with me on hills. After a few rides(and ironically, a flat.. he ran over a nail with the Armadillos).. he bought the Turbo Cipi Pros(this years Mondo Pros).. and I had a hard time keeping up with him. I was so impressed I bought a pair to replace my Conti Ultra 2000's(which I had durability issues with, 2 sidewall tears in 300 miles)... They performed similar to the conti's but were more durable and had a higher PSI. Not a single flat.

I personally HATE the armadillos.. I could only imagine using them if you rode most of the time in the city.. on a commuter.. or a deliery bike. Even then I would highly recommend the Conti Gatorskins over these tires. Hold the tires in your hand.. and you can tell that they are two things "tough" and "slow" painfully slow.

anyone know a good place to get the Specialized Mondo pros online ?

jeff

Thanks everyone for all the input.
Sipper, you can buy Specialized tires online from the Specialized website
http://www.specialized.com/SBCEqSection.jsp?sid=04EquipTiresPavement

Sipper, you can buy Specialized tires online from the Specialized website
http://www.specialized.com/SBCEqSection.jsp?sid=04EquipTiresPavement
That'd be my recommendation, too. Last summer I went searching for a replacement Specialized MTB tire for my wife's bike after the sidewall on one of her tires was destroyed by a very sharp rock, and couldn't find them for cheaper prices anywhere. In fact, the couple of online retailers I did find with them were often over the price on the Specialized website.

Thanks everyone for all the input.
Sipper, you can buy Specialized tires online from the Specialized website
http://www.specialized.com/SBCEqSection.jsp?sid=04EquipTiresPavement

hmmmm.....How could a bald tire like this do well in the rain and on ascents? Anyone have these tires with a few hundred miles on 'em???

hmmmm.....How could a bald tire like this do well in the rain and on ascents? Anyone have these tires with a few hundred miles on 'em???
Tread on road tires is really only there for cosmetic reasons. The road surface itself has a rougher texture than the tread pattern, so grip is generated from the tire deforming, not the tread.

A bald tire like this one will be slippery on wet roads. But then so will a road tire with tread. Cosmetic tread put there for visual appeal only makes no difference on wet roads.

hmmmm.....How could a bald tire like this do well in the rain and on ascents? Anyone have these tires with a few hundred miles on 'em???

From the FAQ of the USENET group Rec.Bicycles, by Jobst Brandt, probably the world's number one authority on bicycle tire and wheel construction, author of books on wheel building ("The Bicycle Wheel", etc.:


From the FAQ:

Subject: 8.70 Tires with smooth tread
From: Jobst Brandt <jbrandt@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 1997 16:29:59 PST

Drag racers first recognized the traction benefits of slick tires,
whose benefit they could readily verify by elapsed times for the
standing start quarter mile. In spite of compelling evidence of
improved traction, more than twenty years passed before slicks were
commonly used for racing cars, and another twenty before they reached
racing motorcycles. Today, slicks are used in all weather by most
street motorcycles. In spite of this, here at the end of the
millennium, 100 years after John Dunlop invented the pneumatic tire
for his own bicycle, bicyclists have not yet accepted smooth tread.

Commercial aircraft, and especially motorcycles, demonstrate that a
round cross section tire, like the bicycle tire, has an ideal shape to
prevent hydroplaning. The contact patch, a pointed canoe shape,
displaces water exceptionally well. In spite of this, hydroplaning
seems to be a primary concern for riders who are afraid to use smooth
tires. After assurances from motorcycle and aircraft examples,
slipperiness on wet pavement appears as the next hurdle.

Benefits of smooth tread are not easily demonstrated because most
bicycle riders seldom ride near the limit of traction in either curves
or braking. There is no simple measure of elapsed time or lean angle
that clearly demonstrates any advantage, partly because skill among
riders varies greatly. However, machines that measure traction show
that smooth tires corner better on both wet and dry pavement. In such
tests, other things being equal, smooth tires achieve greater lean
angles while having lower rolling resistance.

Tread patterns have no effect on surfaces in which they leave no
impression. That is to say, if the road is harder than the tire, a
tread pattern does not improve traction. That smooth tires have
better dry traction is probably accepted by most bicyclists, but wet
pavement still appears to raise doubts even though motorcycles have
shown that tread patterns do not improve wet traction.

A window-cleaning squeegee demonstrates this effect well. Even with a
new sharp edge, it glides effortlessly over wet glass leaving a
microscopic layer of water behind to evaporate. On a second swipe,
the squeegee sticks to the dry glass. This example should make
apparent that the lubricating water layer cannot be removed by tire
tread, and that only the micro-grit of the road surface can penetrate
this layer to give traction. For this reason, metal plates, paint
stripes, and railway tracks are incorrigibly slippery.

Besides having better wet and dry traction, smooth tread also has
lower rolling resistance, because its rubber does not deform into
tread voids. Rubber being essentially incompressible, deforms like a
water filled balloon, changing shape, but not volume. For a tire with
tread voids, its rubber bulges under load and rebounds with less force
than the deforming force. This internal damping causes the energy
losses of rolling resistance. In contrast the smooth tread transmits
the load to the loss-free pneumatic compliance of the tire.

In curves, tread features squirm to allow walking and ultimately,
early breakout. This is best demonstrated on knobby MTB tires, some
of which track so poorly that they are difficult to ride no-hands.

Although knobby wheelbarrow tires serve only to trap dirt, smooth
tires may yet be accepted there sooner than for bicycles.

From the FAQ of the USENET group Rec.Bicycles, by Jobst Brandt, probably the world's number one authority on bicycle tire and wheel construction, author of books on wheel building ("The Bicycle Wheel", etc.:
Nice article... :) Explains the detailed reasoning behind no-tread road tires very well.

Great article, Fox!

I got the All Condition eventually, youll be surprised to know that although
they are labeled 700x23mm I measured them and they are actually 24mm (I used a very accurate caliper.)
I also measured my previous Kendas 700x25mm and they were too 24mm !!!
Am I discovering a tire width fraud conspiracy here ??? :D

[QUOTE=DnvrFoxl]From the FAQ of the USENET group Rec.Bicycles, by Jobst Brandt, probably the world's [QUOTE]

Good article. I'm still gun shy about tires since I bought the farm on the A*rFre* tires. They have the same motorcycle argument for smooth tires. But the narrow A*rFre* tires had no traction on even a damp road and even less on slight inclines. As I mentioned in another thread, no offense to the tire co...but I took some hard falls on those tires and wasn't able to ride.

Actually... if this were true my racing slicks would corner well and work well in the rain also. But that isn't the case....still skeptical.

You didn't list this specialized tire, but I would go for the Modo Pro! This is a great tire. I had last years incarnation and ran them for 2200 miles with no flats... and one of the tires is still in use on a friends bike.
Did I mention that I was over 200lbs when I ran these tires? They are fast, light, offer great flat protection.

I bought them after a friend switched to them. He had switched from Conte Gatorskins to Armadillos... and his speed dropped considerably overnight. He was OK on flats, but he couldn't stay with me on hills. After a few rides(and ironically, a flat.. he ran over a nail with the Armadillos).. he bought the Turbo Cipi Pros(this years Mondo Pros).. and I had a hard time keeping up with him. I was so impressed I bought a pair to replace my Conti Ultra 2000's(which I had durability issues with, 2 sidewall tears in 300 miles)... They performed similar to the conti's but were more durable and had a higher PSI. Not a single flat.

I personally HATE the armadillos.. I could only imagine using them if you rode most of the time in the city.. on a commuter.. or a deliery bike. Even then I would highly recommend the Conti Gatorskins over these tires. Hold the tires in your hand.. and you can tell that they are two things "tough" and "slow" painfully slow.

It's back to looking for tires...How do these tires handle in fast conditions on wet pavement?

It's back to looking for tires...How do these tires handle in fast conditions on wet pavement?

The mondo pro's are race tires, so they handle exceptionally well in fast conditions.

I just rode on a pair of mondo pros two weeks ago, but picked up some glass (or something) on my first ride (65 miles). They were great tires. Fast on the flats, very grounded on 45mph descents. I do not know how they perform in the wet, but my first road tires (two years ago) were specialized pro slicks, and I rode those in the wet all the time. I do not think the rubber compound was as soft as the mondo pro's, but they performed exceptionally well.

As an aside I did not discover the cut on the tires until my ride was over. There were two identical cuts, one on the front and one on the rear, so I must have hit something. The cuts were all the way through the rubber to the casing. Maybe the flak jacket saved me? I have a great local bike shop, and they stood behind the tires, even though it was clear that the damage was caused by road debris. They did not have any more mond pros, so I got the all condition pros to replace them. The all condition pros are fantastic. The literature says that rubber compounds are the same, but the all condition pros feel like they have a harder compound. The tires feel every bit as secure as the mondo pros. I have put about 200 miles on them so far, and no cuts yet. I also have not ridden in the rain yet so I do not know how they will handle wet roads.

I hope this was helpful.

A*rFre* A*rFre* .
Ooooooh You almost said a bad word! Twice! :D

ha ha! Good one! As quoted from a seasoned poster:
"Let's be careful out there"

Racing slicks, as in car racing slicks? Big difference between flat cross section tires (like those for a car) which can trap water underneath them and cause hydroplaning and round cross section tires (bike/motorcycle) which unless underinflated will not trap water underneath.



Actually... if this were true my racing slicks would corner well and work well in the rain also. But that isn't the case....still skeptical.

Since they don't give you the weights of this stuff (or in Armadillo's case the tire is 100grams heavier than their website claims). Here are the weight comparisions for the Amadillo All Condition:

Armadillo AllCond 14.5 oz (you do the math if you want oz)
Kendra (old tire) 7.75
Kendra (old tube) 2.75 oz
Performance Thorn resistant tube 10 oz

===================================
Total weight of old setup: 10.5 oz
Total weight of new (flat resistant) setup: 24.5 oz per wheel!!

Hope it'll be worth the extra load I"ll be lugging around.

Racing slicks, as in car racing slicks? .

No bicycle racing slicks. These are smooth also but the bald ones usually have poor traction in the rain.

the bald ones usually have poor traction in the rain.

Sorry to go around and around on this, but I do not think this is true. It may be your experience with the tires (and I do not mean to dismiss that), but there are many other people on the forums that have had opposite experience. It would be interesting to see what people's actual experiences were, and not just their opinions. It sounds like you have some specific incidences that have shaped how you feel about tires. In my experience, the hardness of the rubber compound would contribute to poor traction much more than the tread on the tire. I put about 2000 miles on true slicks (specialized pros) without a problem, then I rode some cheap Hutchinson excels with tread, and they were slippery. I have switched back to specialized tires with better rubber, and couldn't be happier; although as you can tell from my earlier post, I am now running a tire with tread.

I read your earlier posts, and I am sincerely curious about your experience with bad traction while climbing. Which tires were you using? You must generate a lot of power when you pedal to be able to spin your wheels on a climb. I have spun my wheels before, but only when I hit patches of road paint, or deisel fuel/oil in the road.

Happy riding

Which tires were you using?

I tried 2 brands of the A*rFr**. With the D*ytona Commuter, I didn't even make the corner of our flat (wet) driveway. Also problems on ascents and decents that are less than 10degrees. You are correct tho the tire was rock hard. The bald racing slick that came with my used Trek 2200 could not corner on wet asphalt either. Don't remember the brand but the slick was a softer surface.

Slide-outs and crashes are a surprise because they occur suddenly. Our roads might be differant here. Maybe the asphault, rain, or moss. It's hard to say.

I tried 2 brands of the A*rFr**. With the D*ytona Commuter, I didn't even make the corner of our flat (wet) driveway. Also problems on ascents and decents that are less than 10degrees. You are correct tho the tire was rock hard. The bald racing slick that came with my used Trek 2200 could not corner on wet asphalt either. Don't remember the brand but the slick was a softer surface.

Slide-outs and crashes are a surprise because they occur suddenly. Our roads might be differant here. Maybe the asphault, rain, or moss. It's hard to say.

Could be different, but I don't think so. I got a chance to live in Seattle for a while, and unless it was a rain storm after a long dryspell, your roads and wetness were pretty similar to the roads in the northeast. It sounds like you got some lousy tires. However, I am not trying to change your mind about which tires to use. In fact when it comes down to it, I think one of the most important factors with tire safety is confidence. If you (this is the collective you not the personal you) feel safer on a tire with treads, then you will ride with more confidence, and make fewer errors and smoother transitions (braking, turning, acceleration) which will lead to fewer crashes. Of course, I still wouldn't reccomend mountain bike knobbies to anyone who rides on the road, and I will still put true slicks on my bike when I can, but that is what I am comfortable with.

Happy riding

Could be different, but I don't think so. I got a chance to live in Seattle for a while, and unless it was a rain storm after a long dryspell, your roads and wetness were pretty similar to the roads in the northeast. It sounds like you got some lousy tires.
Happy riding

I've lived in both areas also. So you're experience is as good as gold. I'll keep this in mind for the next set of tires. Thanks! :)

Sorry to go around and around on this, but I do not think this is true. It may be your experience with the tires (and I do not mean to dismiss that), but there are many other people on the forums that have had opposite experience. It would be interesting to see what people's actual experiences were, and not just their opinions. It sounds like you have some specific incidences that have shaped how you feel about tires. In my experience, the hardness of the rubber compound would contribute to poor traction much more than the tread on the tire. I put about 2000 miles on true slicks (specialized pros) without a problem, then I rode some cheap Hutchinson excels with tread, and they were slippery. I have switched back to specialized tires with better rubber, and couldn't be happier; although as you can tell from my earlier post, I am now running a tire with tread.

I read your earlier posts, and I am sincerely curious about your experience with bad traction while climbing. Which tires were you using? You must generate a lot of power when you pedal to be able to spin your wheels on a climb. I have spun my wheels before, but only when I hit patches of road paint, or deisel fuel/oil in the road.

Happy riding

The Jobst Brandt post was excellent and does a good job of explaining why lack of a tread pattern is
better overall for paved conditions. There are also other factors that affect tire adhesion and rolling resistance. One of these is the quality of the tire casing. A high thread count casing on a top of the line road clincher will flex more readily as the tire rolls along the road thus keeping the tread glued to the road. A less supple casing on a heavier tire will "bounce" & "skip" off the small aberrations in the road surface to some extent, although the difference can only be measured by tests and instruments designed to measure bicycle tire performance. Conti, Specialized, Michelin and all top tire makers avail themselves of this technology when they are evaluating tire performance.

Another variable is the hardness (durometer) of the tread. Bicycle tire companies are forever seeking the "holy grail" of tread compound, which ideally would give you maximum wear andtraction.
As it is, if you want maximum wear, you generally give up some adhesion and vice versa. Bicycle tire manufacturers are sensitive to the consumer's needs, so they try to give the customer the best of both worlds.

*bump*

Yesterday I purchased a pair of Armadillos. Up until then it had been Specialized Turbo sports.

There was a small drop in speed, and the ride felt not as smooth, maybe it's in my head...but I pray that these will fair better against road debris. Had 2 flats in 2 days this week with the other tires. Upon examination after removal, they felt so soft like donuts. Shame I cant continue to use them, as they flew across pavement so smoothly, and even during the rain this week, performed very well. Didn't even think about it until I read the above article. Good read.

Armadillos vs. New York street...has anyone else used these tires under similar conditions with positive results?

A quick plug for the mondo pros...I rode 'cross the country with a new specialized Allez Elite this summer...the Mondo Pro on my front wheel is still going strong with nearly 4000 miles on it. Maybe three flats the whole way across, none in the last 1000 miles. I took it off (briefly) and replaced it with a new panaracer...the Specialized was quite a bit faster, even after 3000 miles. Needless to say, I put it back on, and I'm going to ride it until it disappears.