roccobike

My response to the poll is YES, I use tires.
For performance, I always go with non-gumwall tires.
For looks on a vintage ride, it depends on the bike. I have a limited quantity of gumwall tires and will use them on specific bikes because they are hard to find around here at a reasonable price.

bigbossman 

Performance über alle.

In the 700c world, that usually means black black black. Once you roll out on a high performance tire, everything else is just a secondary consideration. If you're just banging around town, buy the cheapest tire you like the looks of.

Personally, I'm opposite of most of you - I like the look of black over gumwalls/skinwalls. They just look "cheap" to me. Chombi - your Peugeot looks A LOT nicer to me with black tires on it, but that's just a personal preference thing.

roccobike

+1, Glad I'm not the only one. I looked at that blue Peugeot with black tires and thought, wow that looks good. Then looked at the same bike with gumwalls and thought, ehh, thats sort of OK. Not as impressive IMHO.

Chombi

Well, my other bike WILL NOT get all black tires on it either...



These are the same 330GL/Vittoria Rally wheels on the Vitus Carbone this time.
I'm building up some GEL280 wheels for this bike and I'm eyeing some nice skinwalled Schwalbe Tubulars at a LBS for it already.

Chombi

bikegeekmn

+1

bigbossman 

Nothing wrong with that - like I said, personal choice and performance über alle.

I've never ridden tubulars, but I hear they are very nice. Currently I have a set of Vittoria Open Corsa EVO CX clinchers on the Pogliaghi, and so far I have about 600 miles on them. They are A M A Z I N G tires. So amazing, I'd run them even if they were colored purple and yellow, and had little kitten faces printed all over them.

bikegeekmn

man I would kill for purple yellow tires w/kitten faces on them

Barrettscv 

OK;

I'm convinced that skin-walled tires are the way to go on the Paramount. What 700 x 25 to 700 x 32 size tire is best?

The Panaracer Pasela TG
Rivendell Ruffy Tuffy

The Pasela is half the price of the Ruffy Tuffy and is getting positive remarks.

Any other?

kfm

Personally I love gumwalls. I think they add a lot of warmth to a bicycle.

tarwheel 

It depends on the bike. I've got skin walls that look great on one of my bikes but I think black looks better on the others. The problem with skin/gum walls is lack of selection. Other than Panaracer Paselas, there aren't many options in some sizes, such as 700 x 25. There are several good options for 23s -- Torellis, Veloflex -- but I haven't found an affordable quality 25 with skin walls. In the larger sizes, 28-32 mm, there seem to be more options -- Panaracer, Rivendell, Grand Bois.

JohnDThompson 

The Panaracer Pasela is a reasonably priced, good performing tire available with tan sidewalls.

JohnDThompson 

I suspect there may be a generational thing going on with this. My experience becoming involved in cycling in the 1970s causes me to associate all-black tires with the nasty, heavy, cheap K-Mart tires found on department store bikes of that era, while skinwall tires were light, high-performance tires found on the best bikes at the best shops. I have a really hard time shaking that association.

Chombi

+1!!

Chombi

bigbossman 

Huh..... I grew up in the 70's, riding a Varsity.

I still like the looks of black tires better. The darker gumwalls are ok, but the lighter skinwalls look nasty to me and seem to wash out the asthetic of any bike they're mounted on.

auchencrow

Oh man, that is so 2009.

Chombi

My real "big" biking days were in back college in the 80's, the dawn of high performance foldable HP tires with kevlar beads skinwalls (Specialized Turbos) and even off-white whitewalls (Michelin Bibsports). The other side of the high performance tire world were tubulars, which all had skinwalls too. Back then, blackwalls meant wire beads/ heavy tires/not for "racing bikes"/Department store bike stylee.......not kewhl and "nasty" mon!
I think my brother's 40+ pound, Sears bought, Free Spirit two wheeled "tank" he used in college had blackwalls..... So at least for me, I think it is a generational thing. The new bikers today must look at skinwalls and feel like most people do today about sidewalls on car tires.
I read somewhere here that the blackwall trend might have been really pushed by the whole MTB movement.

Chombi

Chombi

You never know, Hello Kitty CEOs might be big Keirin fans/betters.....

Chombi

Mike Mills

High quality skinwalls are not hard to find. Buy the Challenge Paris-Roubaix or Triathlon. They are GREAT!

I think the difference between gumwall/skinwall and black rubber is longevity. The natural latex does not seem to last as long as the other rubber compounds. Rubber can be compounded with waxes, carbon and other materials to provide smog and UV resistance that cannot be matched by latex.

USAZorro

I thought I replied already, but I'm not seeing it.

gumwalls and skinwalls

They look similar from a few feet away, but they are not the same thing. Very, very much not the same thing.

mkeller234

I have never used the Ruffy Tuffy so I cannot comment on them. I have two sets of Panaracer Pasleas (not the TG) and I do think they are a good value. One thing I have never really seen mentioned, I imagine that really high quality skin walls have a nice smooth line between the Skinwall and black portion of the tire. I have noticed on my Panaracers that the line is a little wobbly here and there. I'm sure thats probably just a visual thing, it may not bother you but I would expect it.

I have 700x25's on a Raleigh and 700x32 on my lotus commuter. The 32's are pretty awesome, my commuter bike feels so smooth and effortless and I assume the tires are a good chuck of that.

Barrettscv 

Well,

The Paramount will get the Panaracer Pasela TG.

The Trek will run on Gatorskins until I need to replace them.

Thanks, everyone.

tarwheel 

So what is the difference?

BTW, one point not mentioned is that skin/gum wall tires can get really nasty looking if you ride at all in the rain. I had some Paselas on my commuter bike for a while, and they looked great until the first time I rode in the rain. I was never able to get the stains off the sidewalls after that ride. Black tires will always look pretty much the same.

Here are 3 photos of my De Bernardi with different color tires - green Michelin Axial Pros, black Michelin Pro2s, and skinwall Paselas. I like the look of the Paselas best on this particular bike with the tan bar tape and leather saddle, but with black tape and saddle, the all-black tires look better to me.

Kommisar89

Well at least I'm not alone in not being able to shake my prejudices from the 70's. "Good" bikes always had lugs, tires with tan sidewalls, and European components. Department store bikes had welded frames with no lugs, blackwall tires, and components from some company called Shimano or something. Today when I see a new $5000 bike with a TIG welded frame, full Shimano Dura Ace, and blackwall tires it just makes me go, "Meh..."

Interesting too how "good" depends on your point of reference. For us "normal" was a department store bike or a Schwinn Varsity so a "good" bike was a $150 gaspipe Euro bike and totally awesome and beyond most of our means was a factory 531 or Columbus butted frame and Campagnolo components. When the "boom" crashed onto the seen in the early 70s most of us were in our teens or early 20s and didn't have money for high-end bikes and older guys who did have the money usually didn't ride bikes at all so you rarely saw even the high-end factory bikes and almost never the customs that are so highly touted today. I never heard of a Masi or a Colnago or a Rene Herse or Alex Singer at the time.

tarwheel 

Well, I started cycling back in the 1970s, and I don't associate tan sidewalls with higher quality. After all, I've ridden some pretty crappy skin/gum wall tires over the years. The first really nice clinchers I rode were black Michelin Axial Pros, and in most cases basic black just looks best to me on my bikes. I've tried tires in all sorts of colors, usually because the colored ones are on sale. However, I have mostly quit buying colored tires because I always end up with mismatched sets when the rear tires wear out. I'll have to agree, though, that on the right frame nothing looks better than tan sidewalls. Take a look at this Colnago cross bike. I patterned the color scheme of my De Bernardi after this bike because it looks so nice.

Oops, I just realized that Colnago has black tires. Oh well, it would look even better with tan sidewalls.

Barrettscv 

That bike, with the tan seat & bar tape really requires tan sidewalls! Very nice bike, BTW.

Michael