Plainsman

Who is still making a decent 23c clincher tire that is performance oriented? I don’t even see 23s in shops anymore, but that’s about all I can run.

DaveSSS 

Michelin pro service course or power endurance at biketiresdirect.com

Iride01 

GP 5000's come in 23 mm. My last 23 mm tire was a Vittoria Rubino Pro, they were nice. The GP 5000's are nice too and seem to last a tad longer for me. I've used bike closet for my last few orders of tires. Though they've had inventory issues too.

But they tend to buy things they know will sell quick, so you might have to look harder and be willing to pay more for a 23mm tire.

roadcrankr

I like the Michelin Power models, too, but get mine at probikekit.com. Slightly cheaper there, especially when the run specials, but they charge some shipping.
Supposedly, the best Power exhibits higher rolling resistance than the Conti's, but to me they ride and corner better and are less prone to sidewall cuts.

WhyFi

You might be able to fit a number of 25s. Many of the newer performance tires, those introduced within the last few years, are sized for wider modern rims, making them smaller than their older counterparts of the same nominal size. If you're running rims with an internal width of 17mm or less, there's a decent chance that some of the modern 25s will fit.

chainstay

Vittoria Corsa Graphene 2.0

delbiker1 

PMed you

chaadster

IRC still do their race Formula Pro RBCC in 23, and I think their endurance/training RoadLite as well.

Bob Ross

^^^This. I have Conti GP5000's on two of my bikes in 23mm (and in 25mm on a third). Never had any problem finding them...on line. Can't say I've even tried buying tires in a retail establishment recently...mostly because of how ridiculously inflated (no pun intended) the prices are. Last time I did buy tires at a brick&mortar LBS I literally paid twice what I typically pay.

chaadster

Interesting. If true, it could be a difficult paradigm to navigate, specifically in terms of time and cost. How can one know which tires are made that way, and whether it applies to all tires within that brand? It seems one would just need to mount them and find out.

To illustrate the minefield we’re talking about here, I recently got two pairs of American Classic tires, Timekeeper tubeless 25c and Torchbearer tube-type 25c. I mounted the Timekeepers on 18.1mm internal rims and got a measured width of +26mm. The Torchbearers went on 18mm internal rims and measured out to only +23mm! Go figure.

So yeah, what you say is true, it’s just hard-nigh-unto-impossible to know which tires those are without actually mounting them on your rims and plugging them into your bike! I have a Breezer Venturi whose fork is so tight that, while I can squeeze 23c rubber on 19.4mm internal rims, I doubt— and wouldn’t even bother— trying to find a 25c that doesn’t rub. It’s that tight; I forget what the 23c Pro One measured out to on that rim, but I’m pretty sure it was wider than nominal.

WhyFi

At this point, you mostly need to look through marketing literature or read reviews - many will mention that their tires are made to measure out to their nominal at a certain rim width (19mm is the probably the most common, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more in the 21mm+ region). Hopefully, more manufacturer will adopt the WAM/RAM specs (Width as Mounted/Radius as Mounted) that were pioneered in the gravel space. Pirelli is among those publishing WAM/RAM on the side of the box of their road tires, hopefully more will follow suit.

edit: ah ha! I thought that I'd snapped a pic of this previously and, sure enough, it was in my gallery -

chaadster

WhyFi Yeah, that’s cool…I’ve not seen that on a tire box before, but like you, would like to see it on all tire packaging! I’ve seen it mentioned in manufacturers’ tech specs at which width the tire is measured, and it’s good and appropriate for the reference size to be bigger than 15c, but it’s rare that retailers ever put that info out there, so that’s something else which would be cool to see done more commonly. The Pirelli box also affirms the paradigm I thought was true, that regardless of nominal size, within the ETRTO approved rim width range, the Width As Measured increases with wider rims, which is why it was so perplexing that the AC Torchbearer 25 should come out with a 23.3mm WAM on an 18mm IW (Internal Width) rim while their Timekeeper 25 upsized over nominal on an 18.1. Clearly they cannot be referencing the same rim IW for both tires, which is just crazy (from a consumer perspective).

Sy Reene

From what I recall looking at this a number of years ago, ETRTO rule of thumb seemed to be that a WAM tire should roughly match its nominal width when put on a rim that has an inner width ~2/3rds the value. Or reversed, divide your nominal tire width by 1.5 to find what rim that the inflated width will match its nominal (eg. 28mm tire / 1.5 = ~19mm ID).

Iride01 

Manufacturer's probably never thought people would be worried about 1.5 mm difference in clearance across a 6 mm difference of rim internal width.

Now some are catching on that some worry about tiny differences, or maybe they are tired of the question tying up so much time with emails or calls to their support staff.

tempocyclist

Conti GP5000 tyres are probably your best bet for a good 23mm tyre.

If it's all out performance, the Pirelli P ZERO Velo TT 23mm may work for you also.

WhyFi

You're missing the most important point - it's not that they're showing a 3mm difference over a 6mm rim width difference, it's that they've provided *any* measurement for a specific rim width. Measured width for a given nominal can very significantly across manufacturers and lines. Until two or three years ago, most manufacturers didn't even bother to state their reference rim width. This is very much a move in a better direction.

Iride01 

Well my point is why is that 3 mm difference that only gives 1.5 mm difference in clearance to the frame important? Most people keep more clearance than that from the tire to the frame, so if a 1/4" was my normal clearance I tried to keep, I'm not going to be worried if it's now suddenly only 4.85 mm instead of 6.35 mm.

mahons

Veloflex Corsa Race in black or gum sidewalls.

WhyFi

Your point wasn't terribly nuanced or well thought out - I understood it. You're still missing the point.

These kinds of measurements are helpful, for instance, for someone coming from Conti GP4ks, which are oversized by modern standards.

They may have been using nominal 25s for years, knowing that that's all the clearance they have. Stepping to a modern tire like this, though, and blindly buying a 25, under the assumption that it would be the same size, would leave them with a significantly skinnier tire that needs higher pressure than they prefer. Referencing a chart like this, though, would inform them that a nominal 28 in this model is actually closer to what they're used to.

​​​​Again, because there are a lot of tires on the market, and significant variation in width/radius between tires of a given nominal size, charts like this are very, very helpful for people moving from one tire to another.

tempocyclist

I find these charts and standard very helpful, more so for my older bike where clearance is tight!

The old-version GP4000S tyres in 25mm would rub slightly but newer "actual" 25mm tyres are fine. For the Pirello P-Zero tyres, the outgoing 23mm tyre came up wider than the new 24mm version.

urbanknight

This is my favorite clincher hands down. They roll and corner like tubulars (to me).

I'm surprised the OP can't find 23's. Most of my LBS's still have them, and online they seem to always be on sale since most people are buying the wider sizes.