Best Tyres for Wet Conditions
 

Can someone give me some advice on good tyres for wet conditions on the road, It is coming to winter in England and at the moment I have 1.5" by 26" schwalbe Marathons, which are great in dry conditions, but slippy in the wet.
I have been looking at Schwalbe Big Apple tyres, but unsure if they would be suitable for my mountain bike frame, Until today, i had never heard of Balloon tyres, and this is what they are classed as, but they have good reviews, I was thinking of 2.125" by 26"
Any suggestions would be appreciated?
Thanks
:)

If the Marathons aren't sticky enough I'd try the Schwalbe Hurricane (26 by 2.0)... I personally find the Marathon to be fine in the rain and have Hurricanes on my winter bike.

They roll out fast, ride well, and have given me some amazing mileage.

Serfas Drifters...the inverted tread, similar to the Conti Town & Country (used to be my favs before they started having quality problems), is the ticket for wet conditions.

I did a wet ride with my Serfas Drifters last night. Amazing tires for wet roads. The inverted tread acts like little suction cups. You actually hear the suction as you turn a corner.

I'm not sure "Drifter" is a good name for a tire. I'd rank it just above "Detonator" for inspiring confidence. :D

I've got a set of 29x2.0 Schwalbe Marathon Supremes on my rain bike. Schwalbe gives them their highest rating for grip, and particularly wet grip. The Big Apples get a pretty good rating too. Honestly though, I'm not sure I've ever had problems with wet grip on pavement with any tire. It's the leaves you have to watch out for, and I don't know of a tire that has good grip on wet leaves.

Big Apples work great on a MTB frame, but for the wet I'd get the Big Apple Liteskin. The compound is stickier in the dry and the wet.

Beyond that, as Andy K has stated, the Supremes are excellent wet weather tires.

As for tread patterns and their impact on wet weather riding; any tread pattern that reduces the amount of rubber in contact with the road decreases the grip of the tire. Our website covers this a bit, but this could be viewed as biased and self-serving. So, I'll defer to Sheldon Brown (RIP good man) who wrote:

Tread for on-road use

If only all roads were just nice smooth pavement and we never had to go off those Utopian roads, we wouldn't need tread patterns.
But sorry, I ain't found Utopia yet. ;)

It is the 1950's and you are somewhere in the United States. You are 10, 12 years old. Your bike is a massive steel thing of incomparable beauty. It weighs 30, 40, 50 pounds. It has a "fuel tank" surrounding the top tube, a perfect place to put the D cells for a headlight that looks like a sealed beam. It is painted in the latest fashionable paint scheme. It is a single speed, coaster brake, swept back handle bar (with tassels on the grips!), kid powered land rocket. It is as modern as a '57 Chevy. It rides on 2.5x26 inch "balloon" tires. They are whitewalls.

All the Euro-snobs with their skinny tired, 10 speed toy bikes just laugh at them, especially the tires. Don't listen to them, they ride fast but they know nothing. Here, take these clothes pins and these baseball cards and clip them to your front fork so the cards ratchet against the spokes. Now follow me down to the drive in. We'll grab a tall, cold root beer float. We'll watch the lightning bugs flashing in the still, warm summer evening air. We'll wait for the stars to slowly come out as the sun fades in the west. And we will see which bikes the girls all flock around....

Life was good!

Ken

It's in Texas, about 80 miles WNW from San Antonio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia,_Texas

After putting over 50, 000 miles on in Washington State; I would rate Continentals above any other when it comes to wet weather riding. Because of their tread compound they stick. I'd ridden a lot of miles before them but after the first set I won't go back. I may try different tires on some of my other bikes, but for my main rider, I'll keep the proven. They also wear well at 3500 miles for a rear.

BTW as you're from London; western Washington (Puget Sound) is very wet. If you ride you get wet. Period.

I am really happy w/ big apples for year-round use. I don't ever run them higher than 50psi, more usually at 40psi. They are soft enough and deform enough to grab onto anything.

Dude, that's a wicked good pen.. take me away!

Who woulda thunk to look in Texas? :lol:

I don't know about the 1950's or the Euro-snobs, but current European commuters seem to have embraced the gospel of 50-pound bikes with fat tires and swept back handlebars.

The "Serfas Thorngrabber" never caught on either.

I love the way Drifters ride, but HATE that glurp, glurp sound they make in the wet.

The BEST tread pattern I've found is the diamond tread on the Michelin Country Rock. At a moderate speed (say 13mph), they roost less in the wet than any other tire I've tried. That tread design helps keep the water on the tire instead of flinging all over the place. I appreciate it greatly as I have no front fenders on most of my bikes. Unfortunately that rubber compound seems quite a bit less grippy than the Drifter's to me.

That there is funny.

I commute to downtown Chicago, and cannot avoid the steel grated bridges. It's a very unnerving feeling having your rear wheel slip left and right uncontrollably. Countless are the stories about bicyclists falling and hurting themselves during wet weather. To me, crossing a wet steel grated bridge is the true test of the grip qualities of a tire.

I only trust Schwalbe Marathon Supremes on wet bridges. With any other tire (I also have bikes with Vittoria Randonneurs, IRC Metro Duro and Specialized Nimbus Armadillos) I take the sidewalk when the bridge is wet.

Last year I was running 32mm nokian studded tires for a bit when I thought the icy season was going to be, and I had far less grip w/ those in the wet than from marathon supremes. Supremes still grab onto thermoplastic street markings, and those studs would slipslide right across and back.

Conti Top Contacts are the best, IMO (for 700c)...but so pricey that I am afwaid to mention them in most of these threads. :eek:

I had Top Contacts on my Univega road bike for a while. Nice tires.

Top Contacts roost pretty bad, though. No problem for anyone with full fenders, but...

For pavement slick tyres work best... for wet, rainy, and cold conditions it comes down to the tread compounds that are used.

Marathons are nearly slick and quite good in the rain with a pattern that is there for aesthetics and marketing as it contributes nothing to traction... if anything the treads in many tyres serve to pick up debris which can then cause flats.

Much of how well you handle riding in the rain comes down to your skills as a rider... no matter what tyre you run wet traction will be reduced and if you ride like it's a dry summer day you are more likely to crash.

I have found the rubber compounds in Schwalbe tyres handle colder temperatures really well without much in the way of degraded performance.

Tread compound becomes important when you not only have to deal with wet weather but cold weather as this is where many tyres fail... the tyre that is supple in warm weather stiffens up when it is cold and will lose traction.

^ That has been bugging me about the Marathons -- that they are arguably THE "insider" all-weather commuter tire but they are treaded to be marketed to Fred. I almost want to NOT buy them because of that.

However, my years of being the target demographic are long gone.

Interesting, I don't have a rooster tail problem with them on my fenderless xcross bike...but most of my rain riding is done on my fendered bikes, so perhaps I just never noticed.

I am becoming a big fan of Schwalbe tires, The Big Apples are grippy, the Supremes are better. In the Winter, Ice Spiker Pros rock! They allow me to ride where I can't walk! If you get the BAs, try running them down to 35PSI or even lower, there is little loss in speed, but marked improvement in ride. The Supremes, maybe 40?

I often shortcut through a patch of woodland, the BAs handle wet grass quite well, even thin mud with care.