I'm cross posting this from the Mechanics forum, thinking commuters could possibly offer some insight to tires for kids bikes. Since many of you ride 26" and go thru a lot of tires.

My grandaughter is currently riding a Raleigh MTB with knobby tires (more of a Hybrid with fat knobbies.) She is 11 years old, tall and skinny.

I'm trying to make it easier, more comfortable, and more enjoyable, for her to ride. Right now, the bike fits her well, size wise. She rides it a lot.

Almost all of her riding is on sidewalks, streets, or paved MUPs.

I would like to change tires to a more slick, and higher pressure tire - hopefully, something like


Kenda Kwest 26X1.5, 60#, https://www.niagaracycle.com/product_...ucts_id=422514
Kenda Kwest 26X1.5 100# https://www.niagaracycle.com/product_...oducts_id=2375 ,
Forte Metro K 26X1.25 85# https://www.performancebike.com/bikes...0_20000_400237 ,
Forte Slick City 26X1.25, 85# https://www.performancebike.com/bikes...0_20000_400237

Does anyone have any experience with these tires? Or, other, better suited, "relatively inexpensive" alternatives.

Sometimes, being a "gramps" gets expensive - since you have to do for all, what you did for one...... LOL

The only good street tire I have experience with is the Specialized Armadillos. While they are pricier than your examples, they are a great tire that's hard to puncture, rides well, and lasts a lot of miles. I'm sure someone else has experience with cheaper alternatives. BTW, your links don't work. Good luck!

I wonder why Yahoo and Bike Forums are inserting all that gobbledygook in my links????

I did a similar thing for an old Diamondback MTB, at least what they called a MTB 20+ years ago, for my daughter to tool around on. 26x1.5 road tires from the LBS, can't tell you the brand, it was the only pair they had at the time. Definitely made for a much smother ride to get rid of the knobby tires and she is more inclined to ride it around now than before.

******* Edit

Got home and looked, they are Kenda Kwest, 65 psi max., they appear fine ( it's not a bike I ride ). I did notice though ...
The ---> Drive Direction marking on the side wall of the rear tire was pointed the wrong way. WTF, stupid tire.

They are not.
You copied the displayed text of a link instead of copying the link its self.

I don't understand - I copied from the retailers site, and when it comes out of BF, it also has their wording in it. It worked fine, before I pasted it into BF.

Big Apples ftw. Low pressure, not high.

I do not know what browser you are using.

For me, (running Firefox), to copy it is: right click -> Copy link location
Then to past it: middle click

I do not have slicks on my MTB commuter, yet, but judging from your post, I think any of the choices offer a good value.

If you want more opinions on them, at least the Kendas are available on Amazon, and other people have reviewed them. The Fortes might be Performance Bike only.

Also, I wouldn't be too fixated on high pressure. Old rigid MTBs (like mine) are, well, rigid compared to road bikes.

One last thing. How wide are her rims? Many newer MTB rims are plenty narrow, but mine (from early 90's) are 1.5" wide. I don't know if a 1.5" tire would work for me, but definitely not anything narrower. I'm looking at 1.6" and up, and have a lot more selection closer to 2"

Qft... I recently put some Big Apples on my Trek 4500 for commuting. Love them -- first ride they just put a big grin on my face. So comfy, but still fast!

these were cheap when I bought them
https://www.biketiresdirect.com/piksc...ty_tire/pp.htm

you might also consider these
https://www.biketiresdirect.com/pmbhr...26_tire/pp.htm

I have Kenda Kwests 26X1.5" for my mtb commuter and wife's bike. They are good tires for the $. No puncture. I believe the Kwests have aramid layer which is the chemical name that Dupont copyrighted as Kevlar.

Wanderer: I went to Waubonsie Valley High School and I saw Wayne's World IN Aurora!

I have Kenda Kwests on my Bianchi Milano. 26x1.5" 65 PSI. This is my second set of these tires.
The original red sidewall tires lasted about 20,000 miles. The green-er "Celeste" Kenda Kwests I'm running now will probably go about the same. They work fine on wet pavement, only OK on wet grass or mud. (I ride some singletrack on them)

I have rolled the Scwalbe Big Apples. Yes, they are super comfortable without much drag, but I hit a skim of mud, crashed and broke my arm on those tires so I can't recommend them. *laughs* I think they only had about 2,500 miles on them when I crashed. Wrinkled bolonga skin tread pattern wasn't enough that morning.
The Big apples were of the 2.3" variety (huge) on a mt. bike. They were slicker than the Kwests have proven in the rain and very slick on wet grass. Only the true slicks I've commuted on were worse in the wet stuff.

Anyway, the Kwests are inexpensive, last forever and are fairly tough with enough traction for everything but ice. They did well until they were paper thin. Then everything started pokin' holes in 'em.
I think they would be a dandy tire for the Prairie Path or the Fox River trail where you are on both paved and non-paved MUPS with occasional "detours" on real off-road sections. They would probably let your grand daughter run 1 higher gear than the knobbies and extend her ride-range a little bit.

Ah the Prairie Path...I was just a little shaver (maybe 3-4th grade?) with a 24" American Eagle road bike...
Just about every weekend I would take off alone down that trail and ride all day. Great adventures. There was still a lot of evidence of the old rail line back then. The crumbling platforms, old rail bridges, missing bridges...The trail was far from complete at that time. I would visit the library and check out maps and try to figure out how to get through Wheaton where the trail disapeared in town. Later, in high school. I would ride from Naperville back to Lombard to visit my old friends. I would also go north clear to Elgin to visit my girlfriend.

The Fox River Trail, the Prairie Path, and all of the connectors and branches, are much more "finished" now. Very few unpaved sections left, and what there are, are hard packed aglime. It's like riding on concrete, only softer - LOL. You can almost go anywhere, from anywhere, on them now. Oswego to Wisconsin, west to well beyond Sycamore, east to "The Lake" , with tons of connectors for others.

We spend many hours on these MUPs, many enjoyable hours.

Is that a typo????

I use 26x1.5 Forte tires that are probably really similar to the ones that were mentioned above on my Hardrock, and they work great on it for pavement and the occasional big of dirt I ride in. They're a lot easier to pedal with too.

I have a set of Michelin City tires w/reflective sidewalls for less than $20 each.

Maxxis Overdrive 26x1.75. Kevlar belt puncture protection, smooth rolling, 50PSI, reflective sidewall strip, $60/pair on Amazon. I commute on those right now. I was going to pick up some Shwalbes but these work extremely well.

Specialized Fatboys on my hardtail (approx $20 a piece). 26x1.25 and 100psi. Much faster than the Michelin Transworld citys they replaced. Puncture resistance was ok when I first got them, but seemed to improve (does that sound strange?) the more they were ridden.

+1 on the Maxxis Overdrives. Man, they're tough.

This site has started to 'wrap' posted URLs in a redirect from this site, probably for tracking reasons among others (they can see how many people went to, say, Performance Bike from here and call them up and offer to advertise their stuff). Don't know when it started, but it's pretty recently I think. I've noticed because my work proxy sometimes blocks the redirect, calling it (correctly) "advertising". In other cases on other sites I can manually copy/paste the real site I'm trying to go to but they URL encode the link (changing special characters like slashes into their URL-safe equivalents), so I'd have to change them back after pasting and it's a hassle.


Example: I'm going to place a link to https://google.com. Note that a) my "link" link is actually to go.bikeforums.net/(etc). I used the built-in link generator for that. But also I manually typed out the URL for google (http, colon, slash, slash...etc.). It automatically linkified it (useful) and wrapped it with the go.bikeforums.net noise (not useful).

They hide it by forcing the text in the status area of the browser (that usually shows the link location) to show the location that they're redirecting to, but the actual URL is to go.bikeforums.net. You can verify on most platforms by right clicking the link and selecting "properties".

Edit: it looks like the source actually keeps the original URL, so this is done via javascript or the like. Also, it seems my work proxy stopped blocking this, so it's less of an issue for me [not really opposed to tracking, but opposed to hassles]. I'd self-delete this post for off topic but it's been up a while; looks like the rest of you didn't really contribute to the threadjack and for that I thank you.

I recently picked up and put on some Serfas Vermin tires from my lbs. They ride very smooth and I am very pleased with them. They have a smooth rolling light tread, with some lug action on the shoulders in case the tire should sink down a little. They also have an embedded protective belt in case you should run over something too sharp. I've ridden them a few times, unfortunately its been too cold for me to put significant miles on them, but that will change shortly. They are a leap and then some ahead of my knobby Roll-x I had on there before.

EDIT: I was also looking at the Maxxis Overdrive's, but the tires above my lbs had in stock and he recommended them very well. Plus, having the side lugs vs the Overdrives, at least if I get into something soft like the washouts on the Hennepin Canal Bike Trail here in Illinois, I hopefully won't be *AS* much of a turtle. The Serfas is a 2" tire which looks and feels pretty decent.

I'm not seeing what you are talking about.
I even examined the page source, and both of those links go directly to the google link as you intended.

I've been running Michlin XC Road slicks on my commuter for a little over 2000 miles and have been impressed. Only change I've made during that time was to add puncture liners when I got new wheels a couple months ago.

https://www.biketiresdirect.com/pmirx...ad_tire/pp.htm

I have Continental Town and Country on my 26" folding commuter. 2.1" Nice and big, not too heavy, and they were a step up in terms of grip, comfort, and ride feel from the old Kwests that were on the bike when I got it. (the kwests were pretty worn and dried out, so it might not be the fairest comparison.)