Fizzaly

im mostly just venting but why is it that tires cost so much, ive been shopping around as it nears time to replace my three year old tires that i paid 40/pair for, and the prices are nuts i mean really the average price nears that of tires for a car. A friend of mine bought a pair for 120 bucks and got 2k miles outta them thats just not enough miles to justify the price for me my highroads V have around 5k on them and the only reason im replacing is a tear in the side wall from a huge staple i ran over. Are these new kevlar tires really that much better?

Doohickie

HYWTFU (YW = Your Wallet)

Buy economy tires, maybe $20 each. Maybe you'll get lucky. If you want protection against the nasty junk on the road, you're gonna have to poney up a few Jacksons. Get used to the idea.

CCrew

Yeah, but I'll give him the vent. I can buy tires for my car for the same price or cheaper than good ones for the bike. There's a bit of a skew there.

Conti's at PBK are the deal right now. Best to stock up when a good sale hits.

colleen c

Get them on sale. Performance had Gatorskin on sale and along with my coupon I had from a bike I bought, my total price was about $80 a pair for foldable.

If you ask this same question in the other forum, you may get a no answer. Here in the commuter forum, you most likely will get many yes answer since most of us commute by bike to get to work to earn a days worth of bread and butter for the dinner table.

As a commuter for work, I generally don't like to make a habit of changing tubes 4:30 am in the morning in dark cold and sometime wet weather morning. That being said, my answer is yes.

jeffpoulin

Yeah, good bike tires cost about as much as car tires, but car tires will get 10-20 times more miles before wearing out. So, yeah, a bit of skew.

corkscrew

I have a better way of looking at it. Good bicycle tires cost the same as cheap car tires, unless your looking to outfit a geo metro, where they might line up.

I run armored tires on my road bikes. Panaracer Pasela TG's or Vittoria Randoneur Pro's. They are worth the price to me in time saved fixing flats, and have worked better for me than tire liners, thick tubes, slime, etc. If you hunt for online sales you can get pairs for $60 or less. LBS markups on tires are usually pretty high.

Also, the Highroad V's are usually only $12/each @ Nashbar. I have a set on my longbike.

EKW in DC

They seem pricey to me sometimes, too. On the plus side, you can easily change/mount them yourself (unlike car tires)!

Doohickie

Good point. I can remember being shocked by that too. Now I'm just numb to it.

As to whether the price is justified, consider that quantities for aftermarket tires for bicycles are probably in the thousands versus the millions for cars. The nonrecurring costs (design, tooling, etc.) constitute a larger proportion of the price of the bicycle tires when compared to the car tires. Think about how many car tires are sold in a day in a city versus bicycle tires. I live in a city of 700,000; I bet thousands of car tires are sold during a typical day, and maybe a dozen, two dozen bicycle tires. There's not nearly the volume when you're talkin' bike tires.

vik 

If they made bike tires in the same volume as car tires you'd get the same economy of scale....since bike tires are made in much smaller numbers they cost more. You can certainly get cheap tires if you don't care what you are running. You can probably get free tires from a decent sized LBS by asking for the used tires they take off bikes when the owner puts on new ones...you can run them until they are really dead.

Personally tires are so important to my bikes running well I buy quality tires and accept the cost as part of the deal. Ultimately I get so much pleasure and health benefits from cycling the cost of decent tires doesn't bug me.

Fizzaly

i dunno what im doing yet i keep going back and forth on what tire im buying im a full time commuter with no car and i ride 20-30 miles a day with errand and what not so im prob gonna bite the bullet and spend some dough any ideas for some 26" one i dont like the armidiilos(or however you spell it) ive tried them before on my 700c and was not impressed

lshaped

in my years of cycling i've learned that you get what you pay for-anytime i've gone cheap
i've always regretted it later- cycling shoes, closing, bibs, etc. especially tires. i can remember riding to work
in december when it was 20 degrees thinking "it would really stink if i got a flat right now"

bhop

My car tires are over $100 each, so replacing one bike tire once a year for 40-50 bucks is a bargain.

prathmann

Apparently you ride too little and drive too much. My car tires last for a decade but I need to replace bike tires twice a year since they only last 5000 miles.

I try not to spend more than $10 for bike tires and have found that the ones at that price last just as long and ride as well as the ones that cost $50 or more.

BarracksSi

$40 car tires can be compared to $10 bike tires. If you wanna complain about bike tires costing 40 bucks a pop, you'll have to compare them to car tires that cost $140. $80 bike tires = $250+ car tires, roughly speaking; that's when you get into fancy high-grip, short-lifetime rubber compounds and special construction.

One quick note to the OP -- when a description of a bike tire mentions Kevlar, it's almost guaranteed to mean that the bead—the inside "rim" of the tire that hooks into the wheel rim—is lightweight, foldable Kevlar fiber instead of a thin steel wire. Kevlar is strong and very low-stretch, so it can substitute for steel in an application like this. There aren't many bike tires that use Kevlar fabric in the carcass to protect against flats (besides, since it's a fabric, small sharp objects can still work their way through the weave).

Andy_K 

Car tires may be cheaper per mile used, but bike tires are a much better deal if you consider the cost per mile enjoyed.

Just_Ryan

bhop

Nah.. I ride around 100+ miles a week. My rear Vittoria Randonneur lasted around a year. Maybe you shouldn't buy cheap tires.

Although, the last time I bought tires for my car, I wasn't bike commuting, (2+ years ago), currently my car tires are still in great shape. I'm sure they'll last a long while since I barely drive now. So I guess, in the long run, they're more of a bargain even though they cost a lot more than bike tires, but I think Andy_K's comment above is pretty spot on.

agarose2000

I spent the last year tearing up Conti GP 4000s, Rubino Pros, and Michelins. Ironically, the longest lasting tire I've had that is still going strong on my bike is the $20 (retail) Conti Ultrasport that I only installed at first because I needed a quick fix until my GP4000s arrived in the mail. I'm very happy with it, and it's not too pricey.

ItsJustMe

No kidding. A car tire is much more complex, has to meet very high standards, contains a lot of layers of various materials, weighs probably 100 times as much, lasts 10 or 20 times longer even with 10 times the weight on them and running at 5 times the speed and hundreds of times more power, yet they don't really cost much more.

I'd like to find a good source for a reasonable tire that would last me 5000 miles or so, and just buy a dozen of them at a time if that would get the price down to the $10 or so they should cost.

Fizzaly

i guess i shouldnt have brought up the car tire thing golly i dont even own one but anyways i ended up just buying another pair of high road V's i figure ive done 5k on the ones i already have and they have aparently gone down in price since the last time i bought them 30bucks w/shipping so thanks i didnt mean to start an argument

Fizzaly

yeah there is a reason i dont own a car its because i cant afford one so of course im gonna complain about 40-50 bucks a pop ive been riding the same bike to and from everywhere for the last 7 or 8 years

RT

I just got Michelin City tires, 700x32C for $7.99 each. Bomb-proof commuter tires, especially with Slime tire liners. Forte Gothams are also nice for commuting, if durability and puncture-proofedness is your concern. They weigh a ton, but hey, I'm not racing.

EDIT: Performance now has them on closeout at $6.99.

bhop

This is an internet forum, that kinda stuff is inevitable. Not your fault in the least.

colleen c

It's all about luxery is it not? Kind of like lots of us buy Nike tennis shoes knowing they are manufactor in a country where the labor get paid super low wages, but yet we are willing to fork out the outragous extra cost to feed the pockets of those who provided us with such goodies. $120/pair for my armadillo all condition elite was a hard pill to swallow, but hey what the the heck right? Minus well like if I drive a Corvette, I sure won't be putting on $40 tires.

Look at the poor country where bike is the only mean of transportation, surely they cannot fork out $60/tire nor $500+ bikes and they just put up with fixing flats all the time on their Walmart special. But not here in US where it all about luxery. I'm just surprise the politician have not place a luxery tax for folks who commute by bike yet

EDIT:No, there's no argument here. We're talking tires here not about helmet or music earphone while riding

Seattle Forrest

Yes.

I'm using Vittoria Randoneur Pro's, which have kevlar side walls, and are otherwise rubber. I think I got mine for $58 for the pair. They've stood up to a lot of bad luck and questionable judgment on my part. I've put about 2,000 miles on mine so far ... probably 85 % of them on pavement.